Praise ye the Lord. We began last week with the final
verse of this psalm and spoke about fearing God and we did that because this
whole psalm leads up to that thought and shows why God is
to be feared. We talked about how fear is the
very beginning. You won't hear God, you won't believe, you won't
have any desire for him or anything he says, no interest. When our Lord said to the Pharisees,
you will not come to me that you might have life. He wasn't
just saying you shall not come. He was saying you have no desire
for me. until the fear of the Lord comes
first there must be a reverence there must be a realization of
who he is the definition of the word fear
in verse 10 includes the word awesome a word that's used for lesser
things but really should be reserved for God because God truly is awesome David says, I'll praise him with
my whole heart. And you can't, you won't do that
until you fear him. You'll see that really every
verse in this psalm applies to verse 10, and that's why we looked
at it that way. With the whole heart, to praise
God with the whole heart, without reservation, without any second
thoughts. We have praise for some people. Scriptures teach us to give honor
where it's due, among men. There are things that are praiseworthy in people, even in temporal and lesser things. You know, somebody might be a
great singer, but there's always a There's always reservations in
there. Well, I like the way they sing.
They have a great voice, but I can't stand their personality.
You know anybody like that? Or someone's a great athlete
and worthy of recognition for that, but they said something
blasphemous or something conceited or something just so stupid.
left a bad taste in your mouth toward them, you know. So there's
praise among men, but there's always, it's never with the whole
heart. You can't praise a sinner with the whole heart, really.
You can acknowledge their talent, you can acknowledge their achievements,
but everything about God is awe-inspiring. When you fear him, That includes
all of his person, all of his attributes. And we can praise
him unreservedly and sincerely, that's what David is saying,
with all my heart, with all my praise. He's altogether lovely,
Solomon said. You know anybody else like that?
Altogether lovely. And so our whole heart is drawn
out in praise to him. And he says, I'm going to praise
him in the assembly. We've seen before how the word
church in the New Testament means assembly. God's always had his
church. There's always been a holy convocation
since the Passover. The Lord ordained that a gathering
of people to worship him. And David said, that's where
I'm going to praise him. I'm going to praise him there. Because
you see, we praise him some in the world. We may have a rare
opportunity to praise God among those who don't know him. And
that can be a good thing, that can be a wonderful thing. But it almost seems out of place,
doesn't it, in the world. I know religious people like
to walk around spouting off about Things that just are out of place,
aren't they? Usually in this world it's out
of place to praise the Lord among the heathen. David asked this
question in Psalm 137, 4. How shall we sing the Lord's
song in a strange land? That's hard to do, isn't it? It's not always easy or even
possible to praise the Lord in this world, but what a delight,
what a special privilege it is to praise him in the assembly.
That's what we come here to do. Everybody's in on that here,
pretty much. In the church, I'll never forget
one Wednesday evening at Laird Street Baptist Church in New
Caney, Texas, my pastor Jack Shanks got up in the pulpit And
I think it was the first thing out of his mouth that night.
He said, y'all have come here tonight to hear me say good things
about the Lord Jesus Christ. And I said, yeah, that's pretty
much why I'm here. And just him saying that that
way put a perspective on the worship for me that I've never
forgotten. That must have been, I don't
know how many years ago. No telling how many years. Come here to
brag on him. That's what David's saying. We're
going to praise him in the assembly. That's what we like. That's what
we're here for. That's what David is doing in
this song, saying good things about the Lord. And that's what
we do here. We're gathered to hear somebody
say good things, to praise the Lord Jesus Christ, not just with
the lips. Our Lord said to the Pharisees,
you honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from me.
That's why David says here, let's praise Him with our heart and
with all of our heart, unreservedly. And look at verse 2, this is
important to verse 1. The works of the Lord are great,
sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. What does that have to do with
verse 1, with praising the Lord? Well, I just want to remind us
that just saying praise the Lord is not praising the Lord. Lot
of people confused about that in this world religious people
They just love they love to go around just saying well praise
the Lord and I'm thinking well, why don't you then? Don't you
say something good about him? Just saying praise the Lord is
not praising him. David does not praise the Lord in verse
1 He instructs us to praise God and then he says that he's going
to But in verse two, now he's praising the Lord. In verse two,
you see that? His works are great. He said something good about
him there. You see what I'm saying? Something good about him. He
said something good about the Lord. Why is he worthy of your
praise? Well, his works are great. They're
great. And you know, we would agree
with that. His works are great. until he
works something that we don't like. And then we kind of tend
to think it's not so great. We might still answer the question,
right? Does the Lord do all things well? Well, yeah. But in your
heart, are you really feeling that? That it's well for you
to suffer? It's well for you to lose something
or someone precious to you. David will get more specific
later in this psalm, but it's good to see and realize that
everything God does is great. A great God can only do great
things. The things he does are great
because of his greatness. Paul said in Hebrews 2.3, how
shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Which at
the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard him. What we talk about is the great
salvation of God. It's not some sad attempt or
failed attempt to save everybody. This is the God we fear now. He saves who He wants to save.
You can't fear the God who's trying to save everybody and
just can't quite get it done. You afraid of Him? You have any
respect for Him? Then you don't know the true
God. Because once you know the true God, you can only fear Him. His awesomeness eclipses all
others. Great is the Lord, David sang
in another place, and greatly to be praised. That's why we
praise Him with our whole heart. Because He's great. And everything
He does is great. We can't praise Him greatly enough.
All we can do is praise Him with all of our hearts. And even that's
questionable. Can we really even do that? You
reckon? We want to. We want to. What does it mean that God's
works are sought out? Well, at least in two ways, his
people seek out his works. The word sought out there means
to resort to. We resort to his doing, to what
he has done, to what he is able to do. His works, as opposed
to our own. Certainly it means that we, in
all of our lives, in every need that we have, in every circumstance,
we resort to God doing something. You see that? Because what are
we going to do? Really? I come here tonight seeking
for God to do something. I know by God's grace I'm just
a voice. I can't do anything. I know that unless He does something,
nothing worth doing will be done. You see what he said? We resort
unto Him doing something. His works. Also, we seek to know what He
has done. That's the second way. His works
are sought out, aren't they? You see the first one. We seek
out Him doing something. Because He's great. What we do,
unless the Lord is just doing something through us, it'll be
undone or it won't be worth doing. But also we seek out what he has done. In a sense,
that's what we read the Bible for. John said many things Jesus
did. And I wrote some of them down,
John said. That's what the Bible is. It's what he has done. He made a world in Genesis chapter
1. And in Revelation 22, He made
a world. You see that? A world of a spiritual
world. His people, the Spirit and the
Bride say come. Let him that heareth come. Let him that's thirsty come.
And He's coming back to His world. And all through it talks about
what he's done. John said, I wrote down some
things that he did. And I did it so you'd believe
on him that he's the Christ. That Jesus is the Christ. And
that believing you might have life. That's what the Bible did. Religion wants to speculate about
what he would do in any given situation. But as I've said to
you before, they didn't know what he did even after he did
it. No, we look into the word of
God to find out what he has done. That's the gospel, not what he
would do, or especially not what you need to do. The gospel is
what he did. You know, that's what a preacher
tells you. As sinners, before God tonight, you know what we're
telling you? You that believe. Do you believe
on Christ? You know what the gospel is?
It's just God telling you what he did for you. He already did
it. He did it a long time ago. And
part of it, the part where He woke you up, gave you life by
His Holy Spirit, I don't know when He did that, but if you
believe, He already did it. And we talk about what He's gonna
do too, His salvation. It was an eternal work. He's
still saving us. And He's gonna plumb save us
one day. But the scriptures are a record of what he did. The
work of salvation is finished in the sense that Christ has
accomplished our salvation with his perfect sin atoning death
and his perfect without sin life. And we seek to know that, don't
we? What he did, his works, what he will do. When are you going to find God?
David said we search, we seek. His works are sought after. When
are you going to find God? When you seek after him. With
what? All your heart. That's what he
said. And he said we do it because
we have pleasure therein. Now think about this. Not many
sinners have pleasure in what God did. In what the Lord Jesus Christ
did. Not very many sinners have pleasure in that. Religious sinners
only have pleasure in what they have done and are doing. And need to do. That's all they
talk about. Here's what you need to do to be saved. Here's what
you need to do to live the Christian life. Here's what you need to
do. No. That's not the gospel. Not any rest in that. You know, God Almighty finished
the work of creation. And then the Bible said he rested
on the seventh day. You know why he did that? Because he was finished. and
to teach us that a sinner can only rest in the same thing,
a work finished by God. You can't rest any other way.
If there's anything left for you to do, where are you going
to do it? Have you done it? Did you do it perfectly? Is it
worthy of a holy God? A finished work of Christ. We
take pleasure in his work. You see that in the end of verse?
Why? Because it's His work. Because
it's great like He is and because it's done. It's done. We rest in it. We are complacent
just like God the Father is. In Christ alone, we're satisfied
only with Him. That's what pleases us. What
pleases me? It is finished. A finished salvation wrought
by Christ Himself. Everything that He did, up to
and including His obedience unto death, even the death of the
cross. Verse 3, His work is honorable.
His work was done for the sake of honor. He did what He did
in order to honor His Son. There are a couple of ways to
realize and understand this. honorable and glorious. God is
holy and just and righteous and pure and all that he does is
as he is honorable. But also consider this Christ's
work as a man in my place was and is honorable and glorious. Think about this now. These are
not just meaningless accolades. These are not just something
to pass over. What he did is honorable. He honored his father
in everything that he did. You know, in talking about the
word honor, I thought of this verse, he that honoreth not the
son honoreth not the father. And you know, that's all of us
by nature. None of us have honored the father because we haven't
honored his son. Not as He's worthy of it. Well, let's just say it like
it is. We haven't honored Him at all. Everything we've done is dishonorable.
Even our best deeds are filthy wracked. But Christ honored His
Father in our place, in our stead, instead of us. And made us honorable
when He did it. And it's glorious. Think of this.
A man Can you even get your mind around the fact that a human
being did always those things only that please God? A man, there is a man who never
had a selfish thought. There is a man who never had
a thought that was evil in any way. A man who never transgressed
against God or even disappointed Him. A man always said exactly the
right thing. There is a man who always said exactly the perfect
thing to say at the perfect time. There is a man who was identified from heaven
itself by God Almighty with an audible voice. Do you remember what he said?
He said, this is my son, my beloved son. in whom I am well pleased. God said that about a man. Isn't that glorious? If we ever
enter into that, it'll be glorious to us. The God-man, the man, son of
man, son of God, his works We seek after his works and we take
pleasure in his works and his works are honorable and glorious.
His works. He said, I must work the works
of him that sent me while it's day. While I'm here. And he said, I have finished
the work that you gave me to do. Glorious and honorable. And the
righteousness, the last part of verse three, His righteousness
endureth forever. That's talking about the same
thing. What is his righteousness? Well, specifically as a man,
I believe this is what we're talking about here. And that's
the work, the honorable and glorious work that he did while he was
our representative on this earth. Born of a woman, made of a woman,
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, made under the law. that
he might redeem them that were under the law. The righteousness that he accomplished
and wrought for his people is unimpeachable. It stands eternally. It can't ever be called into question.
Since his father was well pleased with it, who's going to question
it? Now, all sin is against God. The only one that has a right
to be honored and pleased and served and obeyed his God. And he was well pleased with
his son and none can bring a charge against us, his people, because
of the quality of his righteousness. And because of who he is in his
holiness and righteousness, His precious blood is what it is.
Powerful. Sin-cleansing. There's power
in the blood because there was no sin in the man. The blood
of the spotless Lamb. Your Lamb, God said, shall be
without blemish. That's what we talk about. Righteousness.
The eternally righteous Son of God. Lamb of God. Which washes
sin away. Christ's righteousness. which
is everything he did as a man in human flesh stands eternally
as the only human righteousness that there is, that there ever
has been, that there ever will be. And we stand in him or we don't
stand. Not before God now. In verse four, he hath made his
wonderful works to be remembered. There's a lot in the word of
God about remembering the word of the Lord. He makes his wonderful works
to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and full
of compassion. How does he make us remember
his works? Well, we already mentioned he
wrote them down. Well, you said John wrote it, Chris. Well, he
did. But he wrote it by inspiration of God. God has a book. And thereby he
has made his wonderful works to be remembered. This is the
record that God has given concerning his son. And because we have
this book, we remember his works. Can you imagine if the things
of God were only passed down through generations by word of
mouth? We can't get the story straight on what happened ten
minutes ago. Thank God for this book. By His
grace, we remember. We remember His works of old,
His mighty works. He's been saving His people from
the beginning. And we see that in this book. And then God sends
preachers to remind us. You remember what the Apostle
Peter said in 2 Peter 1.12? He said, I'll not be negligent
to put you always in remembrance of these things. That's how God
makes you to remember his word. He sends you a preacher. And
may I, like the apostle, not be negligent to put you in remembrance
of the great, honorable, glorious, mighty works of God. Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy
4.6, if you put the brethren in remembrance of these things,
thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of
faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained." I want to be a good minister
of Jesus Christ, don't you? He's made us stewards of his
grace. How do you do that? Paul said,
always remind. Remind one another of the gospel, the things of
Christ, the things of God. And then he makes his works remembered
by us personally, by his Holy Spirit. causes us to remember because
you can hear me preach and still not remember but if he comes
the holy spirit he don't allow the things of christ to be just
mundane and to escape our notice to be routine become for us to
become hardened to them and lukewarm towards them he takes
them our savior promised he'll take them and show them to you
And when he shows you something, you've seen it. And then, of course, we have
the ordinances too. This is something God puts a lot of emphasis on, doesn't
he? Us remembering. Remember. He gave his church these ordinances,
baptism in the Lord's table. Do this in remembrance of me. And look at the last part of
verse four. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. You know, you might think talking
about the fear of God and how that he's awesome and and his
works are glorious and honorable, that the fearsome and the awesomeness
of God might have more to do with his justice, his power, his vengeance upon his enemies. But there's nothing as awe-inspiring, there's nothing that strikes
reverence in the hearts of a sinner, more than to see that the God
who is just and holy and reverent and fearsome and awesome is full
of compassion towards sinners. It's the goodness of God that
leadeth thee to repentance. Not the threat of hell. His goodness and compassion,
his grace. The Lord, he would be undeniably
awesome and reverend if he were just without mercy. If he just
displayed his power and his inflexible justice. But the great glory
of God is uniquely revealed in that he will have mercy on whom
he will have mercy. He's full, full of compassion. You know, we tend to think that
one of God's attributes is mitigated by another. In other words, God
is merciful, but He's not all that merciful because he's just
too. He may not show you mercy. He's
full of everything that he is. He's all merciful and all just. Perfectly just and perfectly
full of compassion. The law and religion passed by
the dying sinner And only the good Samaritan came where he
was. Why? Do you remember? Do you remember
why he did? It says he had compassion on
him. There's every reason to disown
the prodigal. You know, he forfeited. deliberately willfully left his
father's home and said, I want what's coming to
me. And that's what he got. But when he came home, the father
not only has compassion upon him, but runs to meet him and welcomes him with the kiss
of eternal love, eternal love. Our father loved us when we were
in the pig pen. He loved us when we despised
him. Didn't care for him. Didn't care to be in his house.
Decided to be on our own. Just wanted what we thought was
coming to us. He loved us then. And he loves us now. Verse five, he hath given meat
unto them that fear him. Now our Lord gives us our daily
bread, we're to pray for it. We're to ask for our daily bread. But when you read this, think
about John chapter six. I want to read you a passage
from John six, beginning with verse 51. Think about this. He
hath given meat or bread, the word is food, unto them that fear him. In John 6.51, our Savior said
to a group of sinners, I am the living bread which came down
from heaven. If any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. And the Jews therefore strove
among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh
to eat? Religion is still confused about
this. They still think that salvation has something to do with eating
his flesh, his physical flesh. You talk about blind, how blind
were we? before the Lord. What do you
think the Lord is talking about when he said I will give my flesh
for the life of the world? You who know the gospel. When
he hung on Calvary he gave himself a body thou hast prepared for
me. And he offered himself body and soul as a sacrifice unto
God for sin. That's him giving. He said this
is my flesh which I've broken for you. That's Christ crucified. That's the gospel. That's where
life comes from. Not from this body consuming
anything. Much less in some horrible, cannibalistic,
weird, super spiritual thing. I don't even know what it is.
I don't even know what to call it. Do you? It's just disgusting
and weird. It was then and it is now. He
said, I give my flesh for the salvation of the world. That's
our Lord laying down his life for sinners. And then said, and he said, here,
take this and eat it. By faith, we feast upon Christ
crucified. He's our bread. He's our life.
He's our sustenance and our pleasure. We don't just eat to sustain
life. It brings us joy too. And there's
no bread, no meat like Him. And Jesus said, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man,
and drink His blood, you have no life in you. And weird religion says, Oh,
we do that. Do y'all do that? They didn't
do it. He died on a cross and they buried
him and he rose again and went to heaven. Nobody took a bite
of his body. Did they all go to hell then? The blindness of religion. But he said, you've got to eat
my flesh and drink my blood or you have no life in you. Whoso
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and
I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed,
and my blood is drink indeed. His flesh is his person, a body,
God in human flesh. If he doesn't come in human flesh,
I can't have life. And if I don't by faith partake
of him, I can't have life. And His blood is His precious
sin-atoning work on Calvary. If He doesn't shed His precious
blood, I can't have life. And if I don't drink His blood
by faith, if I don't partake of Him, if I don't say, He is
my life, my sustenance, my joy, my all, then I can't have life. And then the last part of verse
five, he will ever be mindful of his covenant. God never forgets
his covenant. His covenant. You know, David,
what does his covenant mean to me? Do you forget his covenant?
He said, I won't, I will ever be mindful. You think about that. Is there anything in this world
as you go through life that affects everything you do? Everything you do, you have this
thing in mind as you're doing it. I would venture to say everybody
in here has something like that. What about your family? Do you do anything that doesn't
have something to do with your family? As men, as head of your
household, what do you do that doesn't have something to do
with your family? What God is saying, you're ever mindful of
them, aren't you? Ever. And as believers, we must
ever be mindful of His covenant. We're mindful of whose children
we are. We're mindful of our hope. We look at this world, there's
no hope in this world. But we're mindful of our hope
in Christ, that Christ is our hope, the anchor of our soul.
We can never do anything independent of that. without thinking of
that, without that being somewhere in the back of our mind. And
he's saying, I will ever be mindful of my covenant. Has God ever
done anything that you know of that didn't have something to
do with you, with his people, with his sheep, with his mercy
and love and grace in Christ toward his elect? Can you think
of something? Can you name something? I know
that he does what he does for himself, for his own glory, and
rightly so. He's worthy. But he didn't come down here
and die on a cross only for himself. He said, this is my body. I broke
it for you. I did it for you. He did it for
himself, to honor himself, to glorify himself. But for you
he's ever mindful of his covenant with you And we are too david
said it's all my salvation and all my desire How are you going
to get away from that? If truly if if this covenant
that god has made is all your salvation and all your desire
You're going to always be mindful of it You know, David said, it's all
my salvation. And you know what? It's all yours, too. The covenant
that God made with himself and with you, the eternal covenant
of grace. You want to hear about it here.
Here is your salvation. Let me read it to you again.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel. And with the house of Judah,
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of
the land of Egypt. Because they continued not in
my covenant. Your salvation, your eternal destiny is not going
to depend on that covenant. Because if it does, you're a
goner. You're not faithful to it. You didn't live up to your
side of it. So you're a goner. But this covenant is not like
that one. How is it different? Well, you continue not in that
one, but this one is not about you. It's for you, but it doesn't
depend on you. For this is the covenant that
I will make with the house of Israel after those days. Now
think about this. He said the old covenant, you
didn't continue in it. And so I'm making a new one,
which of course we know is eternal. The old, the new one was in place
before the old one was ever given. But it's new to us when he saves
us. He reveals Christ to us and in
us. It's new to us. And what is it? The old covenant
was what? This do and live. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.
Do that. Do that. Do that. And I'll bless
you. You know what this new one is?
I will put my laws into your mind and write them in your heart. And I will be to you a God, and
you shall be to me a people. And you shall not teach every
man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the
Lord, for all of you are going to know me from the least to
the greatest. I like this covenant so far.
How about you? I like this covenant. You know
why? Because it's God saying, I will,
I will, I will. Here's what I'm going to do for
you. It doesn't have to do with anything of you doing anything
or need to do anything or have done anything. It disregards
all that you have done, all of your sin. It doesn't require
you to do anything now. I will. And here's the... Can there be
a best part in something that's perfect in every part? If so,
this is the best part. I will be merciful to your unrighteousness and your sins and your iniquities
while I remember no more. You see why David said that's
my salvation? That's all of it. That's every
bit of it right there. What God did for me. And he never forgets that covenant. He forgets my sins, but he don't
forget his covenant. And how can God do that? We're
out of time, but let me ask one last question tonight. And by
His grace, answer it. How can God forget my sins? Verse 9 of our text. He sent redemption. We are justified freely by God's
grace. How? Through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus. That's how God can forget my
sins. He washed them away in the blood of his son and they're
gone. They are no more. All of the
benefits of this covenant, which is all of the salvation of God
and all of my salvation, all of the benefits of that covenant
are mine because the blood of the everlasting covenant was
shed Why is it called the blood of the everlasting covenant?
Because that's the one condition. In the first covenant it all
rested on you. There are conditions to be met
every moment of every day. Am I living up to it? Am I doing
enough? Have I quit enough things? But not in this one. His precious
blood is called the blood of the everlasting covenant because
that covenant was ratified. It was authenticated. It was
validated. By that precious blood and all
of the benefits of that covenant sealed to me. By that precious
blood. That's what we mean when we sing
under the blood of Jesus safe. Safe. All my salvation and all
my desire. And I can rest knowing that God
is always mindful. that Let's pray