Psalm 96, I want to read through this Psalm with you, and then we will go back and look at some of the important points here for tonight. Psalm 96, verse one, O sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name, show forth His salvation from day to day." You can see from that first verse, the exhortation here given, it's God's call, really. God's call to His people to sing to Him, to the Lord. A new song, to the Lord Himself, all the earth, to the Lord, to bless His name, to show forth His salvation from day to day. A continuous worship and praise in song. Verse 3 says, Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. So the gospel is sent into all the world.

And the heathen here is just a name for the nations. It's a title given to those who are not Jews, and it really refers to the Gentiles, those who by nature don't know God. That's us. And the Gentiles by nature are no different than the Jews by nature. All of us by nature don't know God.

And so this is telling, the Lord is saying here, He's given this warrant, and this is God's grace, He's given a warrant. to declare His name, His glory, to the Gentiles, to those that don't know God. Isn't that a gracious thing, that God would tell His ministers, His servants, to declare His glory to those who don't know Him? all of his wonders, his wonderful works to all people.

Verse four says, for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. It's not like that there are many gods truly, but there's only one God. But men think of many things as being God. and they make gods out of things that are not gods. And so the Lord is telling, in declaring His wonders among all people here, He's telling, part of that message is to declare to them that He is to be veered above all gods.

Whatever we formerly trusted in becomes something that we abhor when the Lord saves us, when He shows Himself to us. When we see the Lord Jesus Christ, everything else becomes no God. Verse five says, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. So now right away we can see that even though the idols of men do nothing, they can't do anything, Because they're idols, they have mouths, they don't speak, they have hands, they don't handle, all these things that Psalm 115 talks about. Here he's saying, yet in contrast, the Lord made the heavens. That's our God. Our God is the Lord and he made the heavens.

Verse six, honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Where God dwells, where his people see him and know him, where they hear him and see him declared to them in the sanctuary, that's where his strength and beauty are seen.

Verse seven, give unto the Lord. Oh, you kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due to his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth.

Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. The heathen are those people like us who don't know God by nature and the Lord sends the gospel and the message of the gospel is saying to his people that the Lord reigneth. Remember Isaiah 52 where that's the message? And so I wanted to mention that to you here in this context. Say to the heathen, say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. He says in verse 10, the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved. He shall judge the people righteously. Whatever God does is holy and right. And so he's saying here, he shall judge the people righteously.

Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. So all of God's creation. All of God's creation is called upon by God to rejoice and the earth to be glad. Let the sea roar and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall the trees of the wood rejoice. before the Lord, for he cometh to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth."

So in the last two, verse 11 and 12, He's talking about how the Lord, the heaven shall rejoice, the earth should be glad, the sea roar, the fullness thereof, the field be joyful, and the trees of the wood rejoice therein. That's everything in creation. And God is really saying here that everything in creation is going to rejoice which you can understand it not as inanimate objects like trees and mountains actually saying something, but God's people, His new creation is compared to the old creation in a way that shows that everything that God has made in the old creation brings glory to him, but more especially in the new creation, everything that is represented by the old creation actually gives praise and honor to the Lord. So for example, in Isaiah 61 in verse three, it calls God's people trees of righteousness. trees of righteousness.

Here he mentions the trees of the wood rejoicing. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 9, the Apostle Paul calls the church of the Corinthians, he says, you are God's husbandry. The Lord is, remember what Jesus said in John 15, my father is the husbandman. I'm the vine, my father is the husbandman and you are the branches. And so you can see that God compares his people, his congregation, his church, to a plant, to trees, to a vine, these different things. And so you can see here that the creation that he's speaking about here is not just the physical creation, which simply is a representation of a new creation. All right, so that's gonna go through here. We're gonna see that more and more.

But what I wanna do tonight is I want to focus on beginning at verse seven. I'm sorry, I'm looking at the wrong chapter. Yeah, verse seven, where it says, given to the Lord. You see that in verse seven? All right. So let's read these verses from verse seven to verse nine.

It says, given to the Lord, O you kindreds of the people. Again, kindreds, that reminds us of the families of the earth. In Revelation 5 verse 9 it says they sing this song to the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb. They say, Thou art worthy to take the book. For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation.

So the kindred refers to all the various families of the earth out of which the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed his people. This is quite amazing, if you think about it, in this psalm. In the Old Testament, predominantly, the people of God were restricted to the nation of Israel. And that was by design, and yet, even in that design, God was saying, He has an elect people. that are not limited to that physical nation, but are in all of the nations of the world.

And in this Psalm, we see that, don't we? We see that in verse two, declare his glory among the heathen. And here again in verse seven, give unto the Lord, O you kindreds of the people. And then we see it a little bit later. He says in verse 10, say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. So he's declaring the sovereignty of God in that statement.

And then in verse 11 and 12, as I mentioned to you a minute ago, all of creation is compared to God's new creation, which is his people. Eventually this physical creation that we have now is going to be dissolved. A new creation will emerge from it. Christ is going to create a new creation from that out of the ruins of the old. The old will be destroyed and like a resurrection Christ is going to raise up his people.

And when I say that, I'm trying to emphasize the fact that God's purpose has always been an eternal purpose in that new heavens and the new earth. So that what we see now is temporal. Temporal means something that's bound to time. And whatever is bound to time is going to fade away. It's going to be folded up and the Lord is going to put it away like a garment. But the new creation, the creation that is the Church of God and everything that is in the new kingdom, the kingdom of Christ, That's going to be eternal.

And so what he's saying here is, give unto the Lord, O you kindred to the people, that's the Gentiles who are saved by the Lord. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due to his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth.

Okay, so I wanna focus on those verses tonight. And I wanna focus on them because there's questions that come to mind when we look at those verses, especially verse nine. It says, oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The first thing we see there is that God is the one we worship.

Oh, worship the Lord. We don't worship the earth, the mountains, the trees, and all these things that are mentioned later. We don't worship the clouds and the sun and the moon. We don't worship the things of creation. We worship the Creator. And more specifically, we worship the Redeemer.

He says also in verse nine, oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. So, There's several things to ask questions here. First is, how can I worship God? How can I? Because he says here, verse nine, oh, worship the Lord. And the first thing I ask is, how can I worship God? It's important, God's telling us to do it. See, if God has said to do it, then we ought to be doing it. How can I do that? Okay, that's the first question.

The second question I have is, what does it mean by the beauty of holiness here? He says, oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Another question under that is, is the beauty of holiness God's holiness? In other words, is God's holiness, the beauty of His holiness, the object of our worship? Or is the beauty of holiness the Holy Spirit given to us that enables us to worship God in truth by the Spirit?

Or maybe it's both. And so those are the questions that kind of lead us into our thinking about this verse in verse nine and the verses that precede it. Give unto the Lord and give unto the Lord and offer to the Lord. So these things are important. And I think if we understand something about them, then we're going to see the magnitude of God's goodness in this psalm. The magnitude of his greatness and his goodness. Now these questions about how can I worship God and what is the beauty of holiness, they really go right to the depth of the meaning of this psalm in general, and in this particular verse, verse nine. But also, they really get to, like a lot of things, the truth of scripture, they get right to the heart of the gospel. And that's why I find them so endearing. He says here, Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and the verses that precede it given to the Lord, given to the Lord. Are you kindred to the people given to the Lord? The glory to his name. Give to the Lord glory and strength and offer.

Bring an offering. Come into his courts. OK, so we got it. We got to ask a question here. Do we give to God? Can we give God anything? It's kind of a trick question. Let's think about it for a minute. Does God need anything? Is there anything that God doesn't have that He wants? Can we give that to Him? So I think if you ask the questions in that way, you'll begin to think about the verses that we're going to read here now.

In First Chronicles, Chapter 29, Solomon was praying and he said this. He said in First Chronicles 29, verse 11, Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. You just go on and on, huh? Everything. For all that is in the heaven and the earth is thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Okay, so this is significant. Everything belongs to the Lord. Anything, greatness, power, glory, victory, majesty, all of it's the Lord's. Heaven and earth is the Lord's. And God is exalted above all.

And then he says, this is Solomon continuing in First Chronicles 29, verse 12, he says, both riches and honor come of thee. And thou reignest over all, and in thine hand is power and might, and in thine hand is to make great and to give strength to all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee and praise thy glorious name. Why? Because everything is the Lord's and he gives strength.

But who am I? Solomon said this. Who am I and what is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort for? And here's the truth. All things come of thee and of thine own have we given thee. OK, so that's the that was the point I wanted to get to here.

All things are God's, and if we have anything, then it's the Lord's, and whatever we give to the Lord, we're only giving back to him, we're returning to him what he gave to us. That's a very important truth. We need to really keep that in the forefront of our mind, because that means that everything that we have, our breath, It feels good to breathe. The water we drink, our heartbeat, our mind, everything, our sight, everything, everything we have, our ability to hear, to comprehend, to feel, to touch, to think, to believe, to pray, to know God, everything comes of His hand and He gives as it pleases Him. And the result of His giving is what? we return to the Lord from what he has given. That seems like a very basic principle, but it's an important one.

In creation, when God created everything and he looked at what he did, he assessed his creation, and he looked at it and he said, it's very good, remember? So God himself received honor and glory from his work. God himself assessed his work and ascribed to himself honor and glory for what he did, because it was good, and God is good, and so for God to fail to ascribe to himself good for what he did would be a failure to give honor and glory to the only one who deserves it. Now think about that.

In creation, God creates living things, flowers and trees and birds and whatever, all the breathing things. And these things all live and go about doing whatever the Lord has assigned for them to do. And so in functioning according to God's creation, the purpose in creation, those things bring honor to God according to His will, don't they? Now, that's to teach us the same principle here, that whatever God gives to us is to return to the Lord, praise and honor and worship for who he is.

But we can't do that unless he gives it to us. Okay, so in Psalm 96, in verse seven, he says, give unto the Lord. How can we give to the Lord? Well, only if He first gives to us. No one has first given to Him. Remember Romans chapter 11? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. Jesus, in Colossians chapter one, verses 16 and 17, it says, all things were made by Him and for Him. And He's before all things. And by Him all things consist. So everything has its being in order to praise God, in order to give glory and honor to God.

Now, God doesn't need our honor and glory, but honor and glory belongs to Him. He deserves it. He's the only one who does. So as we think about these things, it helps us to see what's being said here with a great deal of emphasis and impact on us. Give to the Lord. How can we give to him? He has to create us for the purpose of giving, doesn't he? He has to create us for the purpose of giving whatever he's asking here. He's calling us to worship.

But the way we worship is he gives to us life, He gives to us breath, He gives to us light to understand, and He causes us to see His glory, and seeing His glory, therefore, we stand in awe of Him. We realize, we recognize by His grace, we recognize His greatness, and that recognition of His greatness is a work of grace in us that produces in us this admiration for God. It's the response of His work, isn't it? So we worship God only by God providing for us the worship that He requires from us. We can't produce this.

I've been in church services. In fact, we used to meet in a building where there was a service that followed ours. And the group that came in after ours, they started their service, a few instruments would begin to play and someone took the microphone and he started to talk and he said something basically like that rock and roll song, let's get something started in here.

I don't know the name of that song, but I thought how, How shameful that is. How sad it is that we gotta get something started. That sounds like the prophets of Baal, remember? Jumping up and down and cutting themselves and stuff, trying to get something going. We can't do that. Let's dive deeper into this, okay?

So is the beauty of holiness, God's holiness, And is God's holiness beautiful? Well, no doubt that is the truth. It's the beauty of God's holiness that we are to worship. But how is it that God's holiness is beautiful? Well, it's beautiful just in the purity of His person.

God is unlike us. He's separate from us. As high as the heavens are above the earth, He says, so are my thoughts than your thoughts, saith the Lord. So we can't measure God, we can't comprehend him. He has to reveal himself to us. And when he does, as sinners, what do we do? Our first reaction is we're terrified. We want to hide like Adam. We want to cover. what we truly are because we can't face the prospect of standing before God in that uncreated light of his all-seeing eye. There's a hymn that reflects that thought. It says, let's see, how's it go?

It goes, it says, eternal light, eternal light, how pure that soul must be, which placed within thy burning light shrinks not, but with calm delight can live and look on thee. The angels that surround thy throne may bear this burning bliss, for surely they have never, never known a fallen world as this. But how shall I, whose native sphere is dark, whose mind is dim before the ineffable appear, and on my naked spirit bear the uncreated being?

There is a way for man to rise to that sublime abode, an offering and a sacrifice. A Holy Spirit's energies and advocate with God. These, these prepare us for the sight of holiness above. The sons of ignorance in night may dwell with the eternal light through the eternal love.

Now that song captures the fact that God is holy and that His holiness to us is intimidating until He reveals Himself to us in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Redeemer. And then, having seen that by Christ's redeeming blood, God has redeemed us to himself out of our sin, then God's holiness takes on a whole new perspective for us. Because not only did God redeem us with the blood of his son, but he gave us his spirit to see. to have the revelation of God's character given to us through the eyes of faith by the Spirit of God, He shows us from His Word, Christ's glory in His humility, in His grace, in His love, in His mercy for sinners, that He would accomplish our salvation. And that accomplishment of our salvation in His blood would be our righteousness before God. So that when it says God has made him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We see that the righteousness of God, we are made to be in Christ and made that righteousness in Christ because Christ bore our sins as his own before God and answered God in justice and in fulfillment of all righteousness.

Now when we see the Lord Jesus Christ and we realize this is God manifest in the flesh, this is the Word made flesh, this is the one through whom God's grace and truth are known. And Jesus said, whoever sees me sees him who sent me. He told his disciples, if you've seen me, you've seen my father. So we know that the Lord Jesus is the express image of God, the brightness of his glory. And we see the brightness of his glory in the beauty of his holiness when we see the Lord Jesus Christ crucified for us.

And because he redeemed us from our sins, which would have damned us under the justice and wrath of God, because He redeemed us from our sins, He made us holy in His blood, and therefore gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by the Spirit of God in us, unbelievably incomprehensible, He makes us to see the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, and in seeing Him, we see the beauty of God's holiness, you see.

And then we're enabled, it's as if our mouth is opened in awe and our eyes are fixed on the wonder that God would be so glorious in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the revelation of the gospel to us. And that's when he says, oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. We see here, this is another call, like Psalm 95 was, to sing to the Lord Jesus Christ, this is a call on God's people to worship God in Christ. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ, and by worshiping Christ, we're worshiping God, because God is revealed in his Son. And in the Lord Jesus Christ, we see all of God's truth and all of God's grace.

This is wonderful, isn't it? This is a song we never grow tired of singing from our heart. Oh, sure. We have our ups and downs. But when the Lord declares it to us, then it resonates in us by the Spirit of God, and it produces this faith, which is sight of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and that causes us to stand in amazement and wonder and admiration of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we join those who praise Christ in Revelation, where he says, unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and He has redeemed us to God by His own blood. Unto Him be dominion and power and glory and majesty and blessing and honor forever and ever. Amen. Right? That's the way the gospel is given to us. Okay, so this is very important. It's important for us to see many of the truths here.

First of all, the beauty of holiness is the beauty that belongs to God himself. And the beauty of holiness is seen in Jesus Christ and him crucified. There we see the holiness of God in all of his justice and righteousness, the holiness of his love, his wrath, the holiness of his mercy, his truth, all of God's perfections, we see it in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Moses said, Lord, show me your glory. And what did God say to him? I'll make all my goodness. I will declare all of my goodness. I'll make all my goodness to pass before thee. And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

That's what God said when Moses asked to see his glory and Isaiah. Remember in Isaiah 6 when he saw the Lord high and lifted up and he heard the seraphim crying, holy, holy, holy. What did Isaiah say? He said, he said he saw these things when he saw the Lord Jesus Christ high and lifted up.

So he was seeing the glory of God, which is the goodness of God in his grace and in his truth when he saw Christ exalted. And seeing Christ exalted was seeing God in His humility because of His love for His people, sacrificing Himself in our nature, God appearing as us in our nature in order to bear the weight of His law and lift that weight from us and so give us rest. So that when we see him, we say, oh, who can possibly comprehend or begin to think of anything besides this, this beauty of God's holiness in the Lord Jesus Christ? Who could ever even begin to wickedly imagine needing to add something to the Lord Jesus Christ in all of his glorious perfections seen in the cross where he made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant and as a servant was made in the likeness of men and as a man became obedient and that obedience was unto death, even the death of the cross. He keeps stooping lower and lower and lower in order to exalt us out of the riches of His grace."

You see? And this is amazing. The redeemed of the Lord delight in God, not merely out of constraint. In fact, not out of constraint at all. but out of delight because they see this holiness is beautiful in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only way we can see it.

Faith in Christ is a delightful obedience. Faith is called an obedience in the gospel, but faith is delightful obedience. Don't you find it to be so? Trusting Christ is such a delightful obedience that I'm constantly asking the Lord to give me this grace to just lay it all on Jesus. And not think for a moment about what I'm going to do, but about what He has done. and all of his greatness because of what he's done.

The second thing we see here is that not only does this beauty belong to God and seen in Christ, but fallen man cannot see beauty in God. That's phenomenal, isn't it? I think that's one of the mysteries of godliness, that a fallen man, a fallen sinner cannot see beauty. How can you worship what you can't see beauty in? And yet here, God is saying, give unto the Lord, give unto the Lord, bring an offering, worship the Lord. What is he saying therefore?

Well, first he has to have a will to create us in Christ for this purpose. Second, he has to redeem us by the Lord Jesus Christ so that by his precious blood we're made holy to God. Third, He has to give us His Holy Spirit to dwell in us that His life would be our life. We would see that Christ's righteousness is our righteousness before God. His blood is our cleansing. His blood is our holiness. His faith is our faith.

We keep ascribing to the Lord Jesus Christ. We just sum it all up and say Christ is all. And suddenly we realize that we have this delightful desire to ascribe everything to the Lord Jesus Christ, and we find that that obedience of faith is a delightful thing, isn't it? We love to trust Christ. We just wish we could trust him as we ought to. But fallen man can't. And so the Lord has to give us this.

He has to give this to us in order that we might return to Him the life that He's given to us, the faith that He's given to us, the understanding, the perception, even though it's so insignificant, our own faith and our own understanding are so insignificant, Yet there's a blade of grass out there somewhere that's doing exactly what God has designed it to do. Just sitting there growing, absorbing sun and water and air, and doing what God has designed it to do.

So much more, God's people are doing exactly what God designed them to do when they see Christ in Him crucified and they stand in awe of Him. and they worship Him in the beauty of His holiness. And then the subjective side of it is that the Spirit of God in us is the Holy Spirit, therefore we worship God by the Spirit of God. Worship is not merely directed toward God, it's produced by God. We can't worship God unless God gives it to us. He has to give us a heart that's set apart by Him, a new nature that delights in who He is, and spiritual perception to see Christ by His indwelling Holy Spirit. And all of this is required for us to worship Him.

So when God issues the call to worship in this Psalm, when He says, give unto the Lord, O ye kindred to the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength, can you not hear It's like the voice of creation, God commanding the light to shine out of darkness and shining in our hearts by the gospel. In the gospel, God is commanding that light to shine in our hearts to do what? to see the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You see how God's gospel produces that light, and that light is the knowledge of God, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God is seen in Christ? That's from 2 Corinthians 4, verse six.

So we see that this is what the gospel is telling us in the New Testament. Christ in all of his holiness and all of his fullness on the throne is seen in his cross. The one who sits on the throne is the one who was crucified. And this is something else that I think that we naturally don't realize this. We don't realize this.

Why is Christ exalted? So that we would understand that the one who was crucified is the only one worthy. of being exalted by God. Whoever exalts himself will be abased, but whoever abases himself will be exalted. And there's only one who's exalted, and that's Christ. In Proverbs, I think it's 13, chapter 13, verse 7, it says, there is that maketh himself rich and has nothing. There is that maketh himself poor and has great riches. That's the Lord Jesus. All right. So the holiness of God is made visible and approachable in the Lord Jesus.

The barrier of our sin is removed and the spirit of God is given. That's the way we worship God in spirit, enabled by his spirit, because we're born of God and it's an incorruptible seed we're born by. It's God's own seed, his Holy Spirit and our holy life. And we're renewed day by day. by the Spirit of God, and this is in truth. It's centered on Christ.

It reveals Him alone, in whom God alone is truly known. And what this means to us. What does this mean to us? Well, it means this. It means that we behold Him. We behold Him. We linger. upon what the gospel says about who he is and what he has done. We see that the one who purged our sins is so glorious in his work of saving us from our sins and from the death we deserved and from all of our enemies. We see His holiness and His mercy and His grace and we behold Him in His righteousness. We consider the righteousness of God and the obedience of Christ and we're amazed.

I was thinking just the other day as Denise and I were traveling somewhere and we were listening to something and I thought, you know, we know that the Bible says that hell is eternal. And it's incomprehensible really to even think about that. But the fact that hell is eternal, it means that men in hell will never see, they'll never see light or life. Because, you know why? It's because hell is always being under the burden of trying to produce or trying to come up with an obedience that you can never come up with. and always failing, continuously. That's an eternal weight that you cannot bear.

But the Lord Jesus Christ came and He alone did. He understood what God required. He came and He fulfilled God's holy law and died under that law, bearing our sins. And he actually fulfilled the obedience that God's law required, both for righteousness and in satisfaction to his justice.

No one could ever do that. All of our attempts would always fail. We're sinful and God's law is holy. We just can't do it. We can't be holy. We can't produce one thing God requires. We can't satisfy one thing where we failed in. But the Lord Jesus Christ alone did. That's why all outside of Christ have to suffer this way forever. And Jesus said in Matthew 11 and verse 28, All you who labor, you exhaust yourself with your own labors trying to do what you can never do to gain approval and acceptance with God by your own efforts. And Jesus says, come unto me all you who so wear yourselves out trying to achieve a goal that you would spend eternity trying to achieve and can never achieve.

Come to me and you shall find rest for your souls. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. You shall find rest for your souls. My burden is light. My yoke is easy, my burden is light, because He's done it all. Christ has done it all. It's so light, like those serpent-bitten people in the wilderness.

Look, behold Him. So the first thing this looks like to a believer is beholding Christ, just looking. and depending by faith on the Spirit of God to give me this grace to look to Christ in faith for everything. rather than trying to generate worship. We should never think we can initiate or start worship by our intellect or our passions or emotions or anything. God has to give it to us, and he does so through the preaching of his word from the gospel, revealing Christ to us by his goodwill, by his spirit, and convincing us that we're sinners and nothing at all, but Jesus Christ is my all in all, and finding perfect rest in his complete work and not needing anything but what he is, finding satisfaction in him.

Satisfaction. You know what God sees when he sees Christ? Satisfaction. That's satisfying, he says. And you know what God gives us when he gives us faith? Satisfaction with Christ alone. That's worshiping God. It's done. And I don't dare try to add one thing to it.

And then standing in awe, that's what we do. We stand in awe, reverence, and joy, and thankfulness, and trust, and admiration at God's goodness, that he would be so great to us. And so we sing that song, oh Lord my God, how great thou art. We sing it all the time, don't we? In our hearts.

And that's what verse one of this song is saying. Oh sing unto the Lord a new song, a new song. Not a song of what I need to do in order to become something, a threshold I can never cross, a bar I can never quite reach up to, something I'm always striving, always falling short, every day falling further behind. and having more added to the requirements. And it seemed like a just terrible, endless burden, subconscious grief and anxiety, not knowing where to turn, finding satisfaction in nothing, finally learning that what God requires and everything that pleases God, He doesn't find in you.

He found it, He provided it, and found it in His Son. Now worship that God in Christ. That's what he's saying here. That's what it looks like to a believer. And when we do this, you know, the strange thing is we don't expect this. But when you just behold Christ and depend upon him and you stand in awe of him, you know what happens? God says he changes you into the same image from glory to glory.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, he says it this way, I'll read that to you, you're probably familiar with this, but it's worth referring to in the context of this psalm. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, he says in verse 18, he says in verse 17, Now the Lord is that Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord is that Spirit who is in us, our life. Liberty, he says, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Liberty from condemnation. Liberty from fear of judgment. Liberty from the fear of standing before God without an answer for one thing, and having to answer everything, and having no answer to give. and the shame of it all, and the nakedness of it all, and the failure of it all, free from that, liberty from that, liberty from unbelief, given grace to see Christ is all. He's all for his people in everything, even for the faith I need to look to him. I say, Lord, give me this faith, and I can rest on Him. You have to be my all, or I'm nothing. In fact, you are all, and I am nothing. But I'll not have anything unless you're my all, because you're everything.

But anyway, he says in verse 18 of 2 Corinthians 3, we all with open face, not with this veil, because the Spirit of God removes the veil to show us Christ, beholding as in a glass, a mirror where you normally look for your own face, beholding as in that glass the glory of the Lord. Not ourselves, not looking to ourselves, but the glory of Christ.

We're changed into the same image. Seeing Christ and him crucified, we see his love, we see his mercy, his grace, his humility. We see his love for his people. And what happens? He changes us. He causes us to have a different attitude towards life, doesn't he?

We don't have to produce what's needed to find favor with God. All of our favor is in Christ. He goes on, he says, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. You see, it's the spirit of God that does it. He gives it to us. We can't offer something to God. He offered his son, Christ offered himself. Well, we can recognize his offering, can't we? By his grace, our heart can be made new, our eyes can be opened, we can see that's the offering that God accepts, and that's the offering by which God accepts me.

That's the only way. I don't have any other plea. And God has told us, the Lord Jesus said, look unto me, all the ends of the earth be ye saved. I'm God, there's none else. What a glorious thing this is. Well, this is just the very first part of this psalm. We'll undoubtedly get to more of it next time. Let's pray.