You can open your Bibles to Psalm
95. Let's just work our way through
this Psalm. I assume that it's David that
wrote it. And it says, come let us sing for joy to the Lord,
that is to Jehovah. That's his personal name, the
name by which he identified himself to the covenant people of Israel. And therefore, since we believe,
according to the New Testament, that the church of the Lord Jesus
is God's true Israel, the Israel to whom the promises were made,
the children of Abraham, who will all be blessed through the
seed of Abraham, then we say that this scripture is to us
and this name of Jehovah is intended for us. And the name is very
simple. Now we pronounce it Jehovah,
some say it should be pronounced Yahweh or Yahweh, the thing is
It's been, what, roughly 4,000 years or so since the Lord uttered
this name to Moses, and you know how the sounds of things change,
the sounds of names. But it's not the sound of the
name that's important. It may surprise you to know.
that there are churches devoted to figuring out how to pronounce
the Lord's name. For it is written, whosoever
shall call upon the name of Jehovah shall be saved. And they say,
if you don't pronounce it right, you didn't call on his name.
And I passed a couple of them as I crossed Missouri. And I
thought it was funny. I say funny, it's funny in a
sad kind of way. But for years I drove by, there
was just one of them. And before long, there were two.
And I found out there were two because someone came up with
the idea it was pronounced differently than the first church said. So
they had to form a new church so they could pronounce it another
way. And of course, the first church must be totally lost because
they don't have the correct pronunciation. But brethren, it's not how it
sounds, it's what it means. that makes the difference. And
it's derived from what our Lord said when Moses said, whom shall
I say sent me? And he says, you tell them I
am sent you. I am. And our Lord Jesus showed
us something of the significance of that name when he says that
God says, I am the God of Abraham. And God is not the God of the
dead but of the living. and therefore part of what his
name means or indicates is the certainty of the resurrection
of all his people that they are once alive forever alive with
him but in saying I am he sets himself outside of the time and
space that you and I live in therefore he's unaffected by
time and space. Now every four years In this
nation, we get all up in arms because there's the possibility
of a change of administrations, and of course, according to our
Constitution now, there must be a change of administrations
come this January, and everybody's, I say everybody, nearly everybody,
is all up in arms about who it'll be, and everybody's got their
opinion about who it will be. Well, you know something? Things
are gonna change here. Things are gonna change in the
United States. I don't know how much, but some. Because there's
going to be a different man in the Oval Office and he'll do
things differently than the previous man. And I'll leave it up to
those that are enamored with politics to figure out whether
that'll be good or bad. But I know this, the one who
sits on heaven's throne never changes. It will be of no significance
to him who is in the White House. In fact, he's the one that's
going to decide who's there. The president doesn't change
him, he changes presidents. And he sits in the Oval Office
and upon the thrones of the various monarchies of the world. He sits
in the various palaces and whatever, whatever kind of leadership all
these countries have. It is this unchanging I Am who
puts them all in place in order to fulfill his unchanging purpose. Now I'm not saying that We can
ignore what goes on in this world or have no concern about it. I suppose everybody here has
an opinion of who they think ought to be in the White House.
But even as we have our opinions about what we think, we can be
assured of this. The purpose of God according
to election never changes. The purpose of God in his grace
towards his people never changes. And nothing can ever come to
their real harm until God changes and he will not and cannot change. He is the Lord. He said, let
us sing for joy to the Lord. I like this, we're not just gonna
sing any old song. Some must sing dirges, some must
sing sad songs because their God is incapable of doing what
he wills. In the religion in which I was
raised, they did some of that. They thought it was a really
good thing to do because at the end of the service, they would
pick a slow song designed to engage all your tearful emotions. And they'll begin to beg people
to accept Jesus. And I remember seeing so-called
evangelists actually weeping tears, whether they were sincere
or not, I do not know. But they would say things like,
Jesus wants to save you, but you must let him. And he's so
upset if you won't come. And if you don't come, the day
of judgment will come and he'll have to say, I'm sorry, but I
have to send you. God never says, I'm sorry. Never. He owes an apology to no one. He regrets nothing. He is the
Lord. He does as he wills. Everyone
he came for, he got. Everyone he wants, he has. Let
us sing for joy to that God. Let the gods of men, the gods
designed by men, let the men who worship them sing sad songs. Let's sing joyful songs. We've
got some good news. The Lord reigns, says the psalmist. Let the earth be glad. And I'll
tell you, the earth's glad, even if not everybody on the earth
is glad about it. And you and I who are part of
his kingdom can be glad because Jehovah reigns, no matter what
men are doing, he's still in charge. And in the end, everything's
going to come out for the eternal welfare of God's people. Let
us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock
of our salvation. Remember, of course, we sang
in our youth group, Jesus is the rock of my salvation. His
banner over me is love. Our Lord later came and he issued a parable. Talked
about the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And
then the tide came up, storm came up, undermined the foundation. and the house fell. But the wise
man dug down deep, and he found some bedrock, and he built his
house upon rock. And the storms came, and the
winds and the waves beat against the house, but it stood firm.
The interesting thing is, is there was no difference between
the house built by the foolish man and the house built by the
wise man. The difference was what the house
was built on. And we who have believed the
Lord Jesus Christ have built our house upon a rock. And there
is no storm that can destroy a house built on the rock, Christ
Jesus. Now that goes for the storms
of life. We all have some storms. Some of us, it's a light rain. Others, it's more like a hurricane
or a tornado. And there's everything in between.
You know, we don't get to choose which trials come our way, do
we? We don't get to choose whether or not we have trials. We don't
get to choose which trials we have. And we have no control
over the trials that our neighbors have unless we determine we're
going to be one of their trials. But there's not a trial in this
life that can destroy the house of him who is founded on Christ
Jesus. You may be in that house, afraid
and shaken like a leaf, but the house won't fall. Because you
see the house is not strengthened by your faith, it's strengthened
by God our rock on whom we've built. You may be inside that
house so broken in sorrow over things that have happened to
you, you don't even want to be alive. But the house still won't
fall. Because you see this house founded
upon the rock was not so much founded upon the rock to endure
the trials of life, but to endure that great trial called death,
after which comes the judgment. Now the question is not whether
or not your house can withstand the trials of life. Even the
house of the foolish man can withstand many of those troubles.
Why, unbelievers go through some unspeakable, indescribable troubles
and they survive. Just like some believers do.
But here's one storm they can't survive, and that's the storm
of God's judgment. Of course, one way they try to
convince themselves that their house is equal to the task of
standing that judgment is by denying that there's any real
judgment after all. They deny that the God of heaven
would actually punish people. They think he's just a sweet
old granddad, a doting grandfather, who can't find anything wrong
with all his sweet grandchildren. And he just said, well, isn't
that a fine boy? But the scriptures do not present
God that way. They present him as unchangingly
strict in the application of his justice. Even Christians are warned to
keep this in mind. Our God is a consuming fire. Now we rejoice in the Lord, we
take joy in the Lord. As children we may feel free
to, as some describe it, run and jump into the lap of God
our Father. But let us never forget Our God's
a consuming fire. We must never trifle with God. How do people trifle with God?
They trifle with God by thinking such things as, you know, I'll
give God his proper place. You will now, will you? Yes,
I'll give the Lord his due. I go to church Sunday morning.
Well, didn't he just tickle to death? Do you know what God's due is
if you're going to give it to Him? If you're going to render
to God what you owe Him, you owe Him perfect satisfaction
for all your sins. You owe Him the endurance of
an eternal wrath for your sins. I don't want to give God His
due. I rejoice that the Lord Jesus
Christ gave God His due. He's the only one that could.
And I pray, and I'm up here trying to pretend that I do this right. Don't get me wrong. In fact,
one of the reasons I so easily see the shallowness of human
religion is I feel so shallow in my own faith, in my own devotion
to God. So, what I see in me, I see in
others. But we don't trifle with God.
He must never be a part of our life. I hear people say, well,
you know, since I asked Christ into my life, what do you mean? Is he just something you needed
to add on to what you already have? Or was he something you
felt you needed instead of what you had? Jesus Christ is not
an addition, He's not an accessory, an adornment to our life. Paul
put it this way, when Christ, who is your life, shall appear,
then shall you appear also with Him in glory. Those for whom
Christ is just an accessory, someone to improve upon the life
they already have, they won't appear with Him in glory. Jesus Christ said, I've come
that they might have life and they might have it to the full,
they might have it abundantly. And I remember hearing, yes,
you can have the abundant life through Christ. And what they
meant by that is that Christ comes in your life and suddenly
your life is more productive, your life is happier, your life
is fuller. They forget what the Lord said
in the first part. He said, I come that they might
have life. What's that saying? That they
don't have life, that's what it's saying. This which we call
life is merely a lingering death. And for some of us it lingers
longer than the others. But nonetheless, it comes to
an end. Our Lord came to give a life
for which there is no end. And a life that in and of itself
is full and abundant. And we who by the grace of God
have built our house upon the rock of God. We have a sure foundation that
not even judgment will be able to destroy that house because
this rock is called the rock of our salvation, not the sands
of our destruction. Verse two, come let us, or let
us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and
song. Hold your finger there and turn
over to Romans chapter one. Now the psalmist is telling us
about worship, what it is to worship God. to worship as he
desires to be worshipped, to worship him in a way that anybody
whose heart has been opened to his truth would worship. In verse 18 of Romans 1, It says,
the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness
and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
since what may be known about God is plain to them, because
God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the
world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine
nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has
been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew
God, They never glorified Him, they neither glorified Him as
God nor gave thanks to Him. Now if I were to ask the average
person in the United States, what is it to worship God? How
do you all worship God? And most of them would describe
the kind of worship services their churches have. Well, we
get together and we sing contemporary Christian hymns, we've got a
band at church and all that. Now, understand, I'm not trying
to describe that one form of church worship is better than
another. Actually, what I want to show
you is it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. But one will
talk about that and say, oh, you can tell, I can feel the
spirit when the band starts to play. You know, that kind of
thing. And then you've got others that say, oh, in our church we've
got a pipe organ and we sing the great old hymns of the faith. That's kind of the two extremes.
You've got others that say, oh, we don't use any instruments
at all, because you can't find in the New Testament that they
used any instruments, so we don't. We sing a cappella. In my smart-alecky attitude,
which I know surprises you. I always want to say, so then
most of you sing out of tune, huh? When you sing a cappella. Hey, I like a cappella singing.
If the group knows how to do it. I don't know that there's
anything more beautiful than the human voice. But it doesn't matter to God. I remember Henry talking once
about people doing special music and they put on airs like what
they're doing is wonderful. He says, you think you impress
God with your solo? He says, angels surround the
throne and sing to him. You think you can compete with
that? We ought always to do as good as we can, but let us never
think that we are going to be able to do something good enough
to impress God. He is not impressed with the
quality of our talent. Here's what it is. And here's
what those that don't worship God don't do. In verse 21 there,
Romans 1, they don't glorify Him as God. You take all that
it means to be God, they don't ascribe that to Him. And in our
day and age, the particular thing they will not ascribe to Him
is absolute sovereignty. They don't believe that God has
the right to do whatever He wants to and cause to happen whatever
He wants to. They believe, most of them, and
they're being taught this by their preachers, they believe
that God must leave it up to us. Leave it up. Do you really want
your eternal destiny put in your hands? Do you want your fickle
will in charge of where you will end up? I may want one thing in the morning
and something else in the evening. Do you want your eternal destiny
founded upon your wisdom to figure out what it is you need? Or would
you rather it be in the hand of God, who is known to be merciful,
is known to be all-wise and all-powerful and unchanging? They didn't glorify
him as God. They didn't bow to him and say
that you are worthy. Man has been so consumed and
enamored of himself from the beginning, he cannot glorify
God. But notice this next line here,
and I always thought this was interesting. It said, They didn't
glorify me as God, nor gave thanks. They didn't give thanks. Now,
many of us, whatever we eat, We stop and we give thanks to
God, and that's good. That's good. I'm not putting
this down. But you can do that. You can say those prayers and
not give thanks. You know how that goes. I tell you, of all the prayers
that I've ever prayed, I would hate to find out what percentage
of them were actually sincere as compared to what percentage
of them were me just saying the words I know that you're supposed
to say when you pray. to give thanks, to be thankful. Why should we be thankful? Well,
we should be thankful because, first of all, we're not in hell.
That's something to be thankful for. That's where we deserve
to be, but we're not there. So we can give thanks for that.
When we wake up in the morning, we should give thanks that we
actually did wake up, because some who go to sleep tonight
will not wake up. We should be thankful that we have food to eat. You know what I find, I was gonna
say I find this in other Americans, but I tell you, I find this in
me. The more I have, the less thankful I am for what I have. I remember back in 1980, I was making my living doing
construction, which meant I wasn't making a living. Nobody was building
anything. Me and my business partner, we
could find a little shingle job here, put in a screen door over
here. That's the only kind of stuff
we could get. I remember coming home from work one day, and Bonnie
had put in a little garden out behind the trailer we lived in
at that time. And I can't remember what vegetables had come in at
that point, but some had. And we sat down at the table
and everything on that table came out of our backyard, essentially
free. And I remember that day I gave
thanks. We had only what God pulled out
of the ground for us. And I'll tell you, when you're
poor enough, you realize that. But if God blesses the natural
means of making a living, And our jobs go well, and our businesses
prosper, and we see the money rolling in, and we pay our bills
and put some in the bank, and we can go at any time and find
out, hey, I've got so many dollars in the bank. We've got money
for months to come. And when our houses can keep
getting bigger and bigger and nicer and nicer, and we're able
to pay it, and we've got new cars and all this, do you know
what we forget? We forget who it is that's giving us all that
stuff. We forget that no matter how well we prosper in this world,
it's because God prospered us. And when we eat, even if we went
down to the store, if we got rich enough to go to the fine
deli and get our food more expensively than everybody else and supposedly
better, even if we eat like that, Even if we go to the finest restaurants
and sit down and eat, it is as much a miracle we're sitting
there eating as the day I went home and we had lettuce and radishes
and other things like that that came out of the garden in the
backyard. Everything you have that's good came to you as a
gift from God. We did not earn it. So what do
you mean I did not earn it? I went to work and there's a
lot of people that go to work and they work just as hard as
you and they don't get anything. Why do you get something when
you work? Because God makes it happen.
Didn't give thanks. And friends, I've only touched
on the things that regard this life. I'm always brought back
to what the psalmist said. Praise the Lord, bless the Lord,
O my soul, that all that is within me his holy name, bless the Lord
oh my soul and don't forget all his benefits and the first one
he mentioned who forgives all your sins. Now I'm one of those foolish
believers that for all I know about the grace of God I don't
trust it very much. I'll just I'll just own up to
that. therefore I carry a lot of guilt
around with me. I walk around under a burden
of my sin. I guess it's because for all
that my spirit believes my flesh still does not and will not. And I have a mind that is able
to lay hold upon every failure, remember it, and keep it in reserve
in case I ever accidentally start to feel good about things, one
of those memories pops back in. But brethren, whether or not
we feel it, you who trust the Lord, whether
or not you feel it, whether or not psychologically you carry
around an enormous burden of guilt, here is the reality of
it. He has forgiven all your sins. He's forgiven the little ones
you did. He's forgiven the big ones you've done. And here's
the real kicker. He's already forgiven the ones
you're going to do. He's already forgiven the ones
you haven't even thought of yet. That you haven't lived long enough
to do. Now this isn't true of everybody. Only those whose confidence is
in the Lord, only those who've called upon the name of the Lord
for salvation can lay hold of this promise, but nonetheless
it's true. He does not hold our sins against
us. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute iniquity, says the psalmist. And I'll tell
you that is some blessings for which to give thanks. I've got
a lot of sin. God's not going to blame me for
any of them. He's not going to charge me with
any of them. He's not going to lay that into
an account. He's not going to make me answer for them. I had
an uncle, half-brother to my mother. He was one of those fellows
that everybody outside of his family thought he was one of
the nicest, sweetest guys. But inside his family, he was
a monster. full of anger, which he took
out on his wife and children. And when he died, well, he divorced
that particular wife, and she raised the kids pretty much on
her own. But when he died, and I was talking to my aunt and
my cousins, you know, the remark was made, he's got a lot to answer
for. Isn't it something? that we think that people are
really gonna have to give an answer for the things they did
that hurt us. Now, if a guy's known to be a
blasphemer, I mean, he just, his language, he takes God's
name in vain all the time. Nobody ever says, well, he's
gonna have to answer for that. But let someone steal, and the
one from whom he stole, he's gonna have to give an account
for that one. They said he's gonna have to, he's got a lot
to answer for. And I couldn't leave that be.
Now my aunt's a sweet woman and she was very helpful and comforting
when my mother died and all that. I don't want to speak ill of
those I love dearly, but you understand the principle here.
And I wrote back and I said, all of us have a lot to answer
for. And if we have to answer for
any of it, we're lost. If he's in Christ, or excuse
me, I said if Uncle Wendy was outside of Christ, he must give
an account of everything he did, and none of it will pass. But
if he's in Christ, he will not be called on to give an account
of anything that he has done, because Jesus Christ already
gave the account, and in giving the account, he cleared the account.
Brethren, that's the gospel. That's the gospel. I was talking
to one of the brothers here recently. He made a remark, he said, if
it is not all of Christ, I'm lost. If the whole work wasn't done
by him, I'm lost. If any of it's left to me, I'm
lost. Is that how you see things? If
that's how you see things, oh, how great should our thanksgiving
be to him who actually made it that way. We couldn't make it
that way. We couldn't go into heaven and
say to God, well, I know I've sinned a lot, but there's your
son. I'm going to let him take the blame for it. God would say,
well, what do you mean? You don't have the authority to lay the
blame on him. I didn't lay my blame on him. The Bible says
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Only God, the judge, has the
right to transfer guilt from one person to another. And he'll
do it only if there's someone willing and worthy to receive
that guilt. That's the way our Lord was.
He was worthy. Who is worthy to take another
man's guilt? A man that has no guilt of his
own. Who is willing? There's only
one I've ever heard of who is willing. to take on himself the
responsibility for the sins of a multitude no one can count. And among that multitude was
me. Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song. Why? For the Lord is the
great God. Now we live in a culture that
pretty much says there's only one God. Among those who believe
that there is a God at all, nearly all of them believe there's only
one God, and nearly all of them believe that that one God is
the God of the Bible. But also, even among those who
believe that the one God is the God of the Bible, there are so
very few that have any understanding of what he's like. And that's
why it says here, the Lord is the great God. The psalmist could
look at the cultures around him and see all kinds of gods. And
all these gods were represented in statues and various things
carved out of wood and stone and maybe overlaid with gold.
And he looked at them and said, there's nothing to those gods.
They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they
can't hear. They have arms and hands, but
they can't say. They can't do anything. They
may be gods, but they're not much. We worship the great god,
the god who rules over all. He's called the great king above
all gods. It's not as though the psalmist
is saying there are other gods, he's just saying to all of those
who think there are other gods, understand this, our God is God
over your God. I was on the internet and this
was back long ago that I was on dial-up. He just had the old
dial-up modems, you know. And so you got on discussion
boards, because that was easy. It was just text going back and
forth. Didn't take a whole lot of bandwidth. And somebody was,
they were all getting all up in arms about Satanism and what
Satanists were supposedly doing. And I remember being scared of
that. I remember preachers talking about, you know, what they're
doing, this, that, and the other. So on this particular discussion
group, there was somebody trying to get everybody all up in arms
about the devil. And there was a Satanist in the
group. And he was getting pretty big
and talking about all that his god, Satan, was doing. And I said, I'm not afraid of
him. And you know, that kind of, weren't
you afraid of the devil? Do you know how powerful he is?
I said, well, he's more powerful than me. Well, then why aren't
you afraid of him? And I said, because my master
has his foot firmly on the neck of that man's master. He can't
do anything to me. He is the great king over all
gods. There's not a power in heaven,
earth, or hell that is not in the absolute control of our God,
Jehovah, Jesus Christ. If there is, we're in a lot of
trouble. I've told you this before, but
it's a good illustration. I saw a television special on
tornadoes And they were showing the aftermath of a tornado going
through a small town, showing some of the religious services
they had in response to it. And here was one, and they were,
I don't know if it was at a funeral or just some gathering where
they were trying to find some comfort about it. And here was
this, and I don't know which denomination it was, It may have
been Episcopalian because I know that they allow for women priests.
But whatever denomination it was, here stood this woman with
priestly robes on and all these insignia of being a religious
leader. And she read from where the prophet
said, I saw the whirlwind, but the Lord was not in the whirlwind.
And this was her message. God wasn't in that tornado. That just, it just came. There's
no explanation. But God didn't send that. My
friend, if I ever see a tornado coming across the field, back
of my house, toward my house, here will be my hope and my confidence. God's in that tornado. He sent
it. And if it goes around my house,
it'll be because he decided to spare my house. If he lets it
go right through the middle of it, and suck it up and all the
contents, including me, and fling us across the countryside, even
to my death. God was in it, and it'll be all
right. He's the great king above all
gods. Pagan nations have their gods
of storms. Our God is the God of the storms.
They have their gods of agriculture. Our God is the God of agriculture.
I'm glad for the science of agronomy, and I'm glad for all the progress
they've made, and how they can virtually ensure a good crop. But when it comes right down
to it, I don't care what man does, you get a good crop if
God wants it. And you get a bad crop if that's
what God wants, or a mediocre one. He's the God of everything. In his hands are the depths of
the earth, meaning the depths, the very deepest parts of the
seas, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land. You know, one of the reasons
I believe that men do not worship God, and I'm even talking about
religious people, they don't really worship him. They don't
stand in awe of him, they don't give him thanks, and here's why.
They no longer believe he made this place. How many generations now have
we been teaching our children that this universe got here more
or less by accident? And that it took on the form
it took just because that's what happened. As someone said, Basic atheistic
principle is this, in the beginning was nothing and all at once there
was something for no reason whatsoever. Well friends, if I believe that
this universe created itself, I wouldn't worship God either.
But the Bible says God spoke and it came into being. He commanded
and it stood firm. He brought existence into existence
and he established all the laws that make it operate in the way
that it does. He it is that holds it together even now. And the
only reason it exists today is he continues to will that it
exists. Verse six, come let us bow down
in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is
our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under
his care. Now in this case he's not talking
about natural creation. When he said He is the Lord our
maker. It means he is the one who has
made us spiritually and called us to be his people. He is our
God and we are the people of his pasture. Now God's the creator
of everything. But those who have been chosen
by him and redeemed by the Son and called by the Holy Spirit,
and moved by grace to call upon the name of the Lord for salvation,
they are especially called the people of God. And they are especially
considered the work of his hands. They are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care. And all what gratitude and worship
should flow from our hearts on that account. My whole existence belongs to
God the creator. And my salvation is the special
work of his sovereign grace. Why am I among the people of
God? Because he made me that way.
He made me spiritually alive. He made me his sheep. He put
me in his flock. I was a wandering sheep. He called
me his own. He brought me home. And I feel quite confident if
He were to take down the fence of His eternal grace, I'd wander
right away again. All the glory belongs to Him.
Well, let's hear the conclusion then. Today, if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts. Today, July 26, 2016, if God speaks
to you, do not harden your hearts. Would you harden your heart against one so gracious? as to
let you hear his voice. What do I mean by his voice?
His gospel, the word of truth in Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ
came and lived a perfect life and then laid himself down as
a sacrifice for his people and the promise goes out, whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Have you
heard his voice in that? If you have, don't harden your
hearts against it. Why would you ever harden your
hearts against such a gracious word as his declaration, call
upon me, I'll save you. And then how dare we? How could
we possibly harden our hearts against the voice of him who
controls absolutely everything? Do you think you'll get away
with it? Do you think that the one who called the universe into
existence is not going to have sufficient power to deal with
you in justice if you harden your heart against his word?
Do you think that the one who plunged the whole world, the
whole human race into sin and death because one man took a
bite out of the wrong fruit? Because that's what happened. All Adam did was eat the forbidden
fruit and God cast the whole human race into death. Do you think that such a God
as that, if you harden your heart against what he says, do you
think he'll spare you? Do you think the one who looked
upon the earth and saw the violence going on in the earth and wiped
out the entire human race, in fact the entire animal kingdom
except for those two of each kind that were put on Noah's
Ark, do you think that he's not going to find satisfaction against
your rebellion? Do you believe that the one who
rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah for their
wickedness won't do something similar to you in eternal matters
if you harden your heart. So for two reasons, out of fear
of the consequences of rebellion against God and out of a sense
of awe and wonder at the great grace of God to speak to us in
such tender terms, will you harden your heart or will you bow before
the great king over all gods, the great God over all gods.
Will you plead the righteousness and blood of his son, the Lord
Jesus Christ? Will you say from your heart
to the living God, just like that publican did, that tax collector,
God, be merciful to me, the sinner. For right there is the very essence
and foundation of worship. to bow in humility, confess what
we are, and plead for his mercy, then give him thanks for it.