Psalm. Our preaching and our singing
should have the same message. And that one sure did. As all
the songs do, we sing here. We don't sing foolish songs.
But that song, as I was singing it, was just a real blessing
to me. Turn to Psalm 134. This Psalm
here, like 133, has three verses in it. Let me read it, and I'll
lead you in prayer, then we'll look at it. Behold, bless ye
the Lord, all ye servants or all servants of the Lord which
by night stand in the house of the Lord lift up your hands in
the sanctuary and bless the Lord the Lord that made heaven and
earth bless thee out of zion or bless thee out of the church
and i pray he does that tonight As we gather here, his church,
that he will bless us with his presence and give us a hearing
ear and an understanding heart. You know, he says in the scriptures
that the seeing eye and the hearing ear is of the Lord. And I pray
he'd give that to us tonight. Our Father, thank you for your
word. Every verse, Father, is full. full of meaning, full of wisdom,
full of Christ. Help us tonight to rightly divide
the word. Help us to listen, arrest our
attention, and be our teacher. Lord, be our teacher. And we
ask that you be with us tonight. Leave us not alone. Lord, this
is not a worship service without you. We pray and give thanks,
Father, for all that you've done for us, all the blessings we
have, temporal blessings, spiritual blessings, you've given them
to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, even before the world was. We
pray for those in this congregation and throughout the world who
are hurting who are going through trials and heartaches, difficult
situations. Lord, help them to look to you,
help them to do so, help them to trust you. Father, in Jesus
Christ's name we pray, and amen. I titled this, Bless the Lord. That keeps coming up here. Bless
ye the Lord. I think, what, one, two, three,
four, There's five times the Lord's name is mentioned, the
Lord, Jehovah. This is all about Jehovah, Jehovah
Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is the last of the Psalms
of Ascent. We started out, and let me read,
I copied this down, wrote it down. how all these ascend like
climbing a ladder. And listen to this. In Psalm
120, it tells us of deliverance from our cruel enemies. In Psalm
121, it speaks of God's continual preservation of His people. Psalm 122, of joy and delight
realized in the worship of the Lord. Psalm 123, of waiting continually
upon God in times of trouble. Psalm 124 speaks of deliverance
from fierce foes that we have in this life. Psalm 125 of experience
of God's guardian care. And Psalm 126 of the joy of God's
salvation. See how this keeps climbing.
And Psalm 127 of the Lord alone being our keeper. And then Psalm
128 of God's grace and goodness sweetening the home. And then
Psalm 129, of afflictions many, but of preservation in them all
by the Lord. Psalm 130, of God's blessed uplifting
of His people. Psalm 131, of the soul kept in
the peace of God. Psalm 132, of the prosperity
of the church. 133, of her unity. And here,
the command is to bless the Lord. You know, we have a lot to bless
the Lord for. It's like taking a trip or it's like sitting down
and looking back over your life. And then when you have considered
your life and what the Lord has done for you, you get this statement,
bless the Lord. Bless the Lord, you servants
of the Lord. And then those Levites say to
the people, we'll get to this, but they say to the people, the
Lord bless you. The Lord bless you. But this
is the last of the Psalms of Ascent. Pilgrim here, which represents
all God's children. He started out with this cry
of distress, and now he's leaving Jerusalem. He's ready to go back
home. He's about ready to make this
long journey. If he lived a long ways off, he's making a long
journey back home. But before he leaves, he turns to the Levites,
the priest of the temple and say, bless the Lord. Bless the
Lord. Behold, give attention to this. This is important. When they
use the word behold, it's important to give attention to. Bless ye
the Lord, all servants. that ye has been added, but all
servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the
Lord. Now he's addressing here all the servants of the Lord.
Specifically at that time, he's addressing the priests and the
Levites who serve the holy things and the sacrifices and they take
care of all those things of the temple. That's primarily who
he's talking to, but this also belongs to us. It belongs to
every one of us. So as Pilgrim leaves to go home,
he cries out to them, bless the Lord, bless the Lord. Never let
his service, never let his service become wearisome. And never let
his service become without heart. This really struck me as I stand
here all the time. Every week I stand here and I'm
in the study. Never let that become mundane. Never let that just become, this
is what we do. Our heart has to be in this every
time. My heart has to be in the study
before it's gonna be out here. You know, I'm in the study and
I bless the Lord, I thank the Lord, I'm grateful to Him, and
I pray for this church. And you do for me, as you do
for me. We are not robots. We're not
robots, just going about the service. And it became that way
with the Pharisees. It became that way with the church
at Ephesus. Remember what the Lord said?
He speaks of all that they have done, and it's good. But he says
there's a problem. And I mean, it's a big problem,
a glaring problem. He said, you've left your first
love. Your heart's not in it. You show up for service. You
open the page of the songbook and you sing, but your heart's
somewhere else. You've left your first love.
And that's why when Pilgrim leaves, he looks at them standing on
the wall. He looks at the priest in the temple and all those who
are going about the service of God. And he said, bless the Lord,
put your heart in it. Do it with all your heart. Bless
the Lord. Now the word bless here has the
meaning of praise the Lord. As you go about your service,
praise the Lord. As you go about your daily work,
you know whatever God's given you to do is your service to
Him. We work as unto the Lord, not
as unto men. I don't care if it's on a job
site, we work as unto the Lord. And we can praise the Lord throughout
the day as we go about the business He's given us for that day. It
also means to speak well of Him. Speak well of Him. I listened
to the funeral message that I preached today. I listened to it again
today before I put it up on the internet. Several have asked
me to put it up. And I said to them, I said, I despise this
statement that Jesus is my co-pilot. The man upstairs, that's not
speaking well of God. That's belittling God. You know,
to say that he's my co-pilot is to say, I'll fly the plane.
If I need your help, I'll ask you. He's not a co-pilot. He's the
Lord of Lord and King of Kings. And that's how we ought to speak
of God. That's how we ought to speak of our Lord. It also has the meaning of this,
one writer said, it had the meaning of make the Lord happy, well-pleasing
to Him. And what is it that pleases the
Lord? Well, you know it says in Hebrews,
without faith it's impossible to please God. Well, what's the
opposite of that? By faith it's possible to please
God. There's obedience. There's praise. There's love. We love one another. And then here's another way is
this, by ascribing to the Lord the glory due His name. That's my responsibility and
that's your responsibility and also privilege. It's a privilege. But my first purpose for standing
here is to give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. That Christ be lifted up, that
Christ be praised. That's my responsibility, to
lift Him up. He said, if I be lifted up, I'll
draw all men to me. Lift Him up in His true character. Lift Him up as He's revealed
in the scriptures. Not trying to bring Him down
so people will accept Him, but to lift Him up, whether sinners
are saved or not. It's to lift Him up. But I tell
you this, when Christ was lifted up, He said, I will draw all
men, all types of men, is what He's talking about, from every
kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation under heaven. It says in Psalm
29 too, GIVE UNTO THE LORD THE GLORY DUE UNTO HIS NAME. WORSHIP THE LORD IN THE BEAUTY
OF HOLINESS, BUT GIVE UNTO THE LORD THE GLORY DUE UNTO HIS NAME. THE LORD'S GLORY IS FOUND IN
WHO HE IS, AND WHO HE IS IS FOUND IN HIS NAME. And I began to think about that
over the last two or three days, and I thought, well, if you're
going to describe ascribe the glory due to his name, you have
to ascribe who he is. How about Jehovah Jireh? The
Lord will provide. Do we not ascribe unto our God
the provision of all things? He has provided us with salvation.
He has provided us with righteousness. He has provided us with justification.
He's provided us our daily bread. The Lord will provide. That's
blessing the Lord. That's blessing the Lord. How
about Jehovah Rapha? The Lord our healer. Who healed
you? Who heals? Who's the healer?
Who's the great physician? The Lord Jesus Christ. He heals
us spiritually and physically if we need it. All healings of
God. He may use medicine. You know,
God is a God of means. He may use medicine or He may
just speak a word and heal you. But all healings of the Lord. And we ascribe that to him. He's
the great physician. We recognize that. We recognize
our need of healing, our need of spiritual healing. It's not
necessary that I'm physically healed. It's a blessing if I
am. But the best day of our lives,
I tell Johnny, is when we die. That's the best day. It says
precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. If God sees my death as precious,
how should I see it? As precious. That's how I should
see it. I should see that day coming
as a precious day. How about Jehovah Nissi, the
Lord our banner? The Lord our banner. He's the one we gather under. It's in His name we fight the
good fight of faith, isn't it? How about Jehovah Shalom, the
Lord our peace. Bless the Lord. Well, let's give
unto Him the glory due unto His name. He's our peace. The Lord
Jesus Christ is our peace with God. I tell you, as I get older, this
gets sweeter. It just gets sweeter and sweeter. I have peace with God through
the Lord Jesus Christ. When I'm troubled, my soul's
troubled, When my sins trouble me, I go to the cross. I go to
Calvary. There's my peace. There's my
peace with God. There's my justification. There's
my righteousness. There's the blood of atonement
that God requires. There it is. Boy, I tell you,
you learn more and more about Calvary the older you get. And
the closer you get to the grave, you really appreciate these things.
How about Jehovah-Raw? R-A-A-H, how do you pronounce
that? Ra? It's Ra. For right now, anyway. It means the Lord our shepherd. Aren't you glad the Lord's your
shepherd? Aren't you glad he leads you beside still water?
You wouldn't open that Bible if he didn't do it. And I wouldn't
either. We wouldn't open up the word
of God other than when we come here if it wasn't for the Lord
leading us in the green pastures and making us to lie down beside
still waters. He's our shepherd. He takes care
of us. The Lord, my shepherd, I shall not what? Want. Want. I don't have a want at
all. He provided everything. And then Jehovah said, Canoe,
the Lord, our righteousness, God demands it. I can't provide
it, but he did. He did. I am righteous in the
Lord, Jesus Christ. And so are you who believe. Jehovah
Shama, the Lord is here. Oh, don't you hope that's true
tonight? I listened to that message that
I preached at Mom's funeral, and I told Vicki a little while
ago, because I didn't want to put it up until I listened to
it and see if I fumbled and fell all over myself. I told Vicki,
I listened to it, I said, that wasn't me. That wasn't me. The Lord is here. The Lord is here. And then we
bless His holy name. The Word of God says to give
thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Are you glad God's
holy? I'm glad God's holy. He's perfect. He knows no sin. He cannot lie. Boy, does that give you comfort.
I can take God at His Word. I can take the Word of God to
Him in prayer, knowing He's going to be good for His Word. He's
good for His Word. Take Him at His Word. You know,
that's what faith is. Faith is taking God at His Word. That's what real faith is. This is the first attribute Hannah
mentioned as we looked at Sunday in her prayer. None holy is the
Lord. None. In the Old Testament, there were
two attributes of God mentioned the most, God's holiness and
God's power in creation. The prophets of old mentioned
God as Creator time and time again, because whoever created
this is God. Nobody else could do that. All
the stars and all the galaxies and this earth and all that's
on it and the way it harmonizes and works together, only God
can do that. Only God can do that. And to
think that God, who did all this, came into this world and became
a man. He didn't become an angel. He didn't become an angel, he
became a man, that he might bleed and die and offer up himself
as a sacrifice for our sins. Now this blessing here, bless
the Lord, this belongs to all the servants of the Lord. This
belongs to everyone here who believes God. This belongs to
you too, not just me as a pastor. It's for you who serve the Lord.
Our lives are to be lived by faith in the service of the Lord.
The just shall live by faith. And that faith glorifies the
Lord. It blesses the Lord. It praises the Lord. The scripture says that He has
made us kings and priests unto God. You see, Pilgrim is speaking
to the priests and the Levites. That's us. He's made us kings
and priests spiritually. We are. Do we not intercede for
one another? Do we not do that? Do we not
offer up the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving? Do we not do
that? That's what we do. And then this is interesting
here. When Pilgrim speaks to the servants
of the Lord, He says, which by night stand in the house of the
Lord. You can see that in 1 Chronicles
9.33. There were singers that were appointed to sing day and
night in that temple, in the house of God. They were appointed. Over in Luke 2.37 it speaks of
Anna when she was day and night in the temple. Nighttime is a time for sleeping,
but not for the ministers of the Lord. There's never a time
that we don't worship the Lord. They were to be busy by day and
by night in the house of God. They were not clock punchers.
They didn't punch in and out. They were not hirelings. They
were the servants of the Lord day and night. That's total commitment. We are totally committed to the
Lord, to His praise. Is that not what we're here for?
It says in Ephesians that we are to the praise and glory of
His grace. Devoted to Him. I'm His, day
and night. I don't punch out and then I'm
His in the morning. It's day and night. I couldn't
tell you how many times I woke up in the night thinking of a
scripture or thinking of a sermon, or just, I woke up and just prayed. It was just impressed upon me
to pray at nighttime, two or three o'clock in the morning. We're devoted to Him, we're His,
we're His servants all the time. And listen, the work of the priests
and the Levites was to keep the fire on the altar burning. It was not to ever go out. And
those lamps that was there, they were to never go out. They were
to always be burning, always. I know this, I don't know what
all that means, but I do know this. I am to always preach the gospel. Always every time I stand in
this pulpit to always preach the gospel That was their work and this
is my work and this is our work your work is supporting me and
so the gospel can be preached here And also they were to protect
the valuable things from robbers I Wrote down by this we are guardians
of truth and Paul said, I fought a good fight.
I've kept the faith. We are guardians of truth. We
have been entrusted with the gospel. God has entrusted me
and this group of believers here at Bethel, he's entrusted us
with the most precious thing, with his chief glory, and that's
the gospel of his son, the gospel of redemption. He's entrusted
it to us. And these servants of the Lord
were not to sit, but to watch, work, and pray all night long.
They were on night shift. They were on night shift. I worked
night shift. And you can become a little complacent
on night shift. You get tired. And what's the
old saying? When the cat's away, the mice will play. And he's
saying to them, don't get lackadaisical. Don't get humdrum about this.
You know, night time is the time you want to go to sleep, but
they were to serve the Lord all night long. And then when day
time comes, the others came in and they would go home. But something else this shows
here that God is to be worshipped at all times by His servants. God is to be worshipped at all
times. Not just when we come here. but all times in all places. And here's a note of interest.
The servants of the Lord, many of them, lived in the house of
the Lord. They lived in the house of the
Lord. They lived there. The Lord is to be worshipped
in our homes. He's to be worshipped in our
homes. I tell you this, If I don't worship the Lord in my home,
you can be sure I don't do it here either. If I don't do it there, I won't
do it here. They were to worship the Lord,
bless the Lord, there in the house of the Lord. And we worship Him in our homes.
And we worship Him here in this house, the church, not this building.
We do it here in this building, but it's the church. And then he says, then they say
to them, lift up your hands in a sanctuary and bless the Lord
to lift up their hands in prayer and praise. We do this figuratively, don't
we? We don't do this. We don't stand here and go like
this. You know, you're watching people on TV. You see them in
their little song fest and they're just sitting there waving back
and forth. We do that spiritually. Now listen,
spiritually, we're not waving back and forth either, but spiritually
we do lift up our hands. The spiritual man, that new man
that's born of God, lifts up his hands to God. He lifts up
his hands in praise. He lifts up his hands in prayer.
The hands were to be used, or their hands were to be used in
the service of the Lord, not idleness. That's what they're
saying. Let your hands be busy in serving
the Lord. You know, our hands serve our
appetite. I was thinking about this today.
Our hands serve our appetite. Let our appetite be the same
as our Lord's. My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me. Our hands be about His service.
But I'll show you something else here that the lifting up of the
hand show. It shows dependence. It shows,
Lord, have mercy. Lord, I need your help. I need
your forgiveness. And when you lift that hand,
when you lift up your hands, like lifting up your heart, and
David said when that psalm was read tonight, I lift up my soul
to you. I lift up my soul to you, heal
it. It shows dependence. We are at
his mercy. We are at his mercy. And then
comes the benediction. from the Levites on the people
before they depart to their home. You see that the people here
said, Behold, bless you the Lord, all you servants of the Lord,
which by night stand in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands
in the sanctuary and bless the Lord. And if there's a sense
of fervency here, there's a sense of your heart being in it. And then here comes the response. You know, the Levites didn't
say, well, thank you. I appreciate that. No, they in
turn said, they in turn said, the Lord that made heaven and
earth blessed thee out of Zion. See, the Levite here mentions
the Lord as the creator of heaven and earth. And here's why. Seeing He made heaven and earth,
He's able to make all things work together for our good. The
one who made all this is able to bless you. There's nothing
that can stop Him. No one can put a check on Him.
No one can put a check on Him. He's got the POWER to bless you. Creation speaks of His POWER
and DOMINION. And I say, I pray this, may He
bless us with growth in grace and in the knowledge of Christ
I continually pray that for this church, that He'll bless us with
growth in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
may He bless us to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy,
peace, longsuffering. Lord, make that to grow in us.
Let's make that to grow. And you'll notice here, he says,
bless thee out of Zion. He doesn't just say bless you,
bless you out of the church. You see how important it is for
this assembly? You see how important it is to come here? There is a special blessing when
we come together. The Lord is with us. The Lord's with us. I believe all the growth that
I have had was sitting under Henry's ministry, sitting there
listening and reading. And when I go home and read and
listen and come back and listen. And over time, over time, you'd be
amazed what effect that has on you as a believer. As a believer,
you're growing. You're growing. You know, I didn't
notice when I was younger. I didn't have too many growth
spurts, maybe one. It wasn't many. But when I was growing,
I didn't really notice it. But you know who did notice it?
Mom. My pants were short. You know,
your pants look like short pants. You know, they're too short.
You're having these growth spurts. I didn't notice it, but she did.
My shoes, everything, and she noticed it. I didn't pay any
attention to it. We notice one another's growth before we notice
it ourselves. We notice it in one another.
And he says here, the Lord blessed thee out of Zion, out of the
church. And I believe he's making reference
to Numbers 6, 22 through 27. I'm going to read this and close. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his son, saying, On this
wise you shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
And I pray this, I pray this tonight that he does this for
you and me. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make
his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord
lift up his countenance. upon thee, and give thee peace.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I
will bless them." So when the Levites said to Pilgrim, the
Lord bless thee out of Zion, the Lord who created heaven and
earth, the only one there is, bless you out of Zion, this is
what he's talking about. that he bless you, keep you,
make his face shine upon you, be gracious to you, lift up his
countenance upon you, give you peace. I pray the Lord bless
you in that manner. All right.