Let's begin our service this
evening looking at Psalm 1. Lord willing, we'll preach from
the last psalm. I thought it would be good to
read the first one to open the service. Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. but his delight is
in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day
and night. He should be like a tree planted
by the rivers of water that bring forth his fruit in his season.
His leaf also should not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall
prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are
like the chaff which the wind drive with the way. Therefore
the ungodly should not stand in the judgment or centers in
the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way
of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. All right, so on. Okay, if you would turn to song number
17, Come Thou Fount. Come thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing,
call forth songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon
it, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither
by thy help I've come, and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to
arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger,
interposed His precious blood. O to grace, how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and
seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. OK. And if you would now turn
to song number 463, All That Thrills My Soul. Who can share the heart like
Jesus, by His presence all divine? True and tender, pure and precious,
Oh, how blessed to call him mine! All that thrills my soul is Jesus
He is more than life to me And the fairest of ten thousand In
my blessed Lord I see Love of Christ so freely given, Grace
of God beyond degree. Mercy higher than the heaven,
Deeper than the deepest sea. All that thrills my soul is Jesus,
He is more than life to me, And the fairest of ten thousand In
my blessed Lord I see. What a wonderful redemption Never
can a mortal know. How my sin, though red like crimson,
Can be whiter than the snow. All that thrills my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me. and the fairest of ten thousand
in my blessed Lord I see. Every need His hands supplying,
every good in Him I see. On His strength divine relying,
He is all in all to me. All that thrills my soul is Jesus,
He is more than life to me. and the fairest of ten thousand
in my blessed Lord I see by the crystal flowing river with the
ransomed I will sing and forever and forever. Praise and glorify the King. All that thrills my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me. And the fairest of 10,000 in
my blessed Lord I see. Go ahead and open your Bibles now
with me if you would. Psalm 150. Psalm 150. Praise ye the Lord. Praise God
in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of
his power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according
to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of
the trumpet. Praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise
him with the timbrel and dance. Praise him with stringed instruments
and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals.
Praise him upon the high-sounding symbols. Let everything that
hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Thank God
for his word. Let's bow together. Our Father, which art in heaven,
holy and reverent, is your matchless name. Lord, we only very carefully
take your name upon our lips We take your name upon our lips
to praise you, to praise your matchless name, to thank you,
to worship you. And Father, I pray that this
evening you would enable us to do that, to praise and worship
our king, our savior. Send your spirit upon us and
for the next few minutes, enable us to truly worship you from
the heart, to set our affection on things above, to be able to
forget about the cares of this life, which are so abundant,
and Father, hear a word from Thee, and to truly worship Your
precious name. Father, we thank You for this
place that You've provided us, a place of worship and peace
and unity. Father, I pray that You would
protect it by Your power, Your mercy, Your grace, and that You
would give each of us the wisdom and the grace and the humility
to also protect it. That this might be a place where
us, our children, our grandchildren, the people of this community
might come and hear the good news of the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Father, for those who cannot
be with us tonight, who are sick and hurting and in different
places, we pray for them. We pray that your hand of healing
and direction and comfort be upon your people. We pray for
our country. It seems in such a difficult
time, Father, we pray you give our leaders wisdom, which they
do not have, that you would use them to continue to preserve
and protect the peace that we have so long enjoyed, freedoms
we have so long enjoyed in this country. And Father, all these
things we ask, and we give thanks in that name which is above every
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. All right, now, Lord willing,
next Wednesday we're going to begin a study through the book
of Genesis. And we've finally come to the
last Psalm. It's taken us four and a half
years. I started Psalm 1, the first service, 2017. It's taken
us all this time to get here. We've come to the last Psalm,
and it seems To me, like all of the Psalms, have now culminated
on a mountain peak of praise to our God. We began the Psalms
in Psalm 1, looking at Christ, who's the blessed man. And we
end the Psalms on the mountaintop, praising his precious name. We
began in Psalm 2 with kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you
perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.
And now we end the Psalms on tiptoe. looking for him to come,
praising his name. I've titled the message tonight,
Four Words on Worship. Now I know that you can get complicated. Worship could be hard to define,
especially in our day when there's so much going on in the name
of religion, which is far from worship. But I tell you this,
you know worship when you see it. You know true worship when
God's enabled you to do it from the heart. And the son of David
here speaks in this psalm, giving us four words of instruction
on worship and praise. Worshipping and praising him.
I believe he's the one ought to know how he's to be worshiped.
And you say, the four words are where, why, how, and who. The first word is where. Where
is God to be worshiped? Verse one, praise ye the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of
his power. At first, David tells us here, we're to praise God
in his sanctuary. And people commonly refer to
this building as the house of God. And that's fine. This is the house. This is the
building that's been set aside for the worship of God. It's
his house. The whole purpose of it is to worship and praise
him. A lot of people call this room that we meet in the sanctuary. And that's fine, too. It's the
room that's been set apart to preach the gospel, to worship
our God, isn't it? And this is nothing but an old
building. It certainly wasn't built for
this purpose, was it? Built by Jehovah's Witness. It
wasn't built for this purpose. But it makes it mighty special
right now. Makes it mighty special right now. This is the place
God has given us for the gospel to be preached. This is the place
almighty God has given that sinners can come and hear of the Lord
Jesus Christ, where God's people can come together and worship
him. And this is God's house. God certainly ought to be worshiped
in his own house. Don't you reckon the place has
been set aside for worship? God ought to be worshiped there.
And we worship God by praising him. The psalmist says, praise
ye the Lord. Worship Him. Praise Him. Exalt Him. Let it all be about
Him. The word praise that's used here
means to shine. And we worship God when we put
the spotlight, when we shine the spotlight on Him, not us. We worship God when we shine
the spotlight on His obedience, not ours. On His grace, not our
works. We cause the light of God's glory
to shine forth when we do one thing. Preach Christ. Preach Christ the light of the
world. It's preaching Him. It's shining the light on Him.
It's making the focus be on Him. This word praise also means to
boast about. Now you can, just like kind of
trying to overcomplicate worship, defining what it is and what
it is not, you can, You can overcomplicate preaching the same way, trying
to define what it is and what it is not. Let me tell you what
it is. It's simply boasting on the Savior. It's simply bragging
on the Savior. It's finding Christ in whatever
passage the Lord leads you to and brag on the Savior from that
passage. That's what preaching is. And that's what worship is.
We worship God when we brag about Him. We boast about Him. We boast
about His character. Who He is. His attributes, His
holiness, His mercy, His grace, His love, even His justice. Dear, the gospel that we preach
is the only gospel that declares a God who saves a people in justice. This gospel is the only gospel
that declares how God can save sinners and still be just. Every
other one has God ignoring sin or lowering the bar, you know,
of His holiness and His justice. The gospel we preach is the only
gospel that declares both mercy and justice. The only one. And we worship
God and we boast about that. We boast about the cross of Christ. And we talk about boasting about
the cross of Christ, you know we're not talking about a piece
of wood. Brother Ford used to call it
a plus sign. We're not bragging about a plus sign. We're bragging
about, we're boasting about what Christ accomplished on Calvary's
tree. That's what the Apostle Paul
said in Galatians 6, verse 14. God forbid, he said, that I should
glory save in one thing, in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we boast on the cross of
Christ when we tell the truth about what it is that happened
there. Everyone for whom Christ died is justified from all of
their sin. Their sin is being cleansed away
by his precious blood because the Lord Jesus Christ is the
successful Savior. In his death, he wasn't defeated,
he accomplished something. He accomplished the salvation
of his people. And that's all we have to boast
about. He's all we have to talk about. And it is my earnest,
fervent prayer that Christ be the theme of every service that
ever takes place in this room, ever. Charles Spurgeon said this,
to give the least particle of his honor to another is shameful
treason. Shameful treason. And I pray
the Lord never allow us to do that in this place. But there's a deeper meaning
that I see here to worshiping God in his sanctuary. God's sanctuary
is the Lord Jesus Christ who came and tabernacled among us.
God can only be worshiped in his sanctuary. He can only be
praised in his sanctuary, in Christ. God can only be worshipped
in the righteousness of Christ, in the blood of Christ. God can
only be praised by bragging on Christ. It's got to be all Him.
God cannot be worshipped with the works of our hands. He can
only be worshipped in Christ. He can't be worshipped by who
we are or what we do. He can only be worshipped in
who Christ is and what Christ has done for his people. God
can only be approached in Christ, in Christ our mediator. That's
the only way he can be worshiped. So that means that God's to be
worshiped everywhere. Yes, this building is a place
that's been set aside for his worship, but God's to be worshiped
everywhere outside this building too. Cause you notice what else
David says here? Praise him in the firmament of
his power. The firmament there means the
sky and the space above us I reckon as I understand it, it's the
space above us between us and heaven, as best I can understand
it. And the psalmist calls it the
firmament of his power. It's upheld by the power of God.
It's sustained by the power of God. It's held together by God
who rules in his power. So we're to praise the Lord everywhere
that's under his firmament. everywhere that's under his power.
We're to worship God here. Absolutely. Because people are
to worship him everywhere else we go too. We're to worship him
through our daily lives. As you go about your daily lives,
your daily responsibilities, do you know you can do that worshiping
God? You sure can. You do it simply by living, letting
your light, letting the light, Christ who's in you, the light
of Christ, let that shine forth. As you live, live depending on
Christ, in dependence upon Him, not on dependence upon your own
self. Just do that everywhere you go.
That's worshiping and praising God. Right, that's where we worship. The second word is why. Why do
we worship? Why do we praise the Lord? Well,
verse two tells us, praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him
according to his excellent greatness. Praise and worship the Lord for
his mighty acts. Now, almost every human being
will automatically quote unquote praise the Lord when they see
the Lord do something for them. When they see the Lord do something,
miraculous for them, when they see the Lord do something, give
them material blessings and so forth, they just automatically
will praise the Lord. And we should do that. I'm not
saying we shouldn't do that. We should do that, should we?
It's only right. Everything we have, God gave
us, we ought to praise him for it. But here is the Lord giving
us those things, giving us material things, fleshly things, healing
our bodies, those kinds of things. Are those things really the mighty
acts of God that the psalmist talks about here? Don't believe
so. The mighty acts of God. You know,
I think it's a small thing that the Lord who owns the cattle
on a thousand hills can feed his people. I mean, don't you
reckon that that seems like a smaller thing that the mighty things
that God has done are the things that he's done to save his people
from their sin. And that includes everything
God's ever done. You think about creation, Lord
willing, we'll begin studying creation next Wednesday. God
spoke and he created the world just by speaking. He didn't even
stand up. He just spoke and it was so,
and it was good. Everything God spoke and God
saw was good. You talk about power just to
speak and it's so, just to speak and it appear out of nowhere.
But the reason that God created the world, that's what makes
this such a mighty act. God created the world so that
there would be a fallen people in it that his son could come
to redeem. God's greatest glory is his sovereign
mercy to sinners. So God created the world as a
place that God could put his greatest glory on display in
saving his people out of it. then how God rules in providence.
And that's just how God has ordained every event of human history.
You think how God keeps this world spinning around and the
human race to date has not destroyed ourselves into distinction or
extinction. It's really amazing. I mean,
it's really, I mean, just We're so hateful and awful. I mean,
really? I mean, the Terminator movie.
Buddy, we could just hit a button and destroy all ourselves tomorrow
and not think a thing about it, you know? It's amazing. You know
why that happened? That's God's providence. That's
God's providence holding it back. And the reason God keeps this
world running the way that it does is so that he can accomplish
his purpose in displaying his glory and saving his people. He's not going to allow them
to be destroyed until he calls them out. God has a people that
he's going to say, and we can't see it. We can't connect all
the dots now, but every event in human history has happened
for this purpose, for God to save his people from their sin.
It had to happen that way. I can't explain it. It's just
so that's how God's ordained it to bring his people to faith
in Christ. And that's such an intricate
work. on such a grand scale, I just
don't think we'll ever be able to comprehend it. But that's
what the Lord's doing. He even allowed Adam to fall
in the garden. Now God's God. He can do anything. He has all power. Nothing can
happen that he doesn't want to happen. Everybody agrees with
that, right? Well, he did. He could have stopped Adam, couldn't
he? He could have stopped Adam from eating that tree, the knowledge
of good and evil, but he didn't. He didn't. You know why he didn't? There had to be a fall before
there could be redemption. There had to be a people fallen
in sin in the first Adam so that Christ the second Adam could
come and redeem. Somehow, we see that event, don't
we? Somehow that applies to every
event in human history. Here's another mighty act, I
mean a mighty act. The death of Christ. Now you
think of that. What a mighty act that life itself
could give up the ghost and die. He actually died. He's the prince
of life. He's the life giver. He's life
itself and he died. Now that's a miracle, but this
is what makes it a mighty act. Who did he die for? He died for
sinners. He died for the worst of sinners.
He died for all the sin of his people. And every last one of
them will tell you they're a great sinner, a great sinner. And his
death put away all of the sin of those people by his one sacrifice
that need be known. I mean, you talk about a mighty
act. I try to think about how mighty this is. Each one of us
has an infinite sin debt, a mountain of sin that's just infinite.
We just can't even imagine it. Now that's each one of us. And
Christ died for a number that no man can number. You can't
even count that high. And every single one of them
has an infinite sin death. Now how big was that load of
sin put on the Savior? Infinity times a number no man
can count. That's a mighty big number. And
by one sacrifice, by one death, Christ satisfied justice for
all that sin. and put it all away so that God
says it doesn't exist anymore. Now that's such a mighty act.
That's such a glorious act of God. Why would we ever want to
preach on anything else? Why would we ever want to preach
about anybody else but him? And notice the psalmist here
says, praise him for his excellent greatness. That means for his
character, just for his attributes, for who he is. Worship the Lord
because God is the only one with the character that would enable
him to do such mighty acts of grace for such a sinful people.
Only God would save sinners that way. Only God would pay their
sin debt. Idols don't do that, do they?
Idols only save good people. Idols only save people that do
enough for them or that change enough, that do, you know, You've
got to do something to get the idol of the Savior. God saves
sinners just because He will. In His power, in His holiness,
in His grace, in His mercy, in His truth, in His wisdom. I can't
think of a better reason to fall at His feet and worship Him than
that, can you? Simply for who He is. That He be the Savior
of sinners. I can't think of a better reason
to worship Him because that's the only way you and I can be
saved. It's by His character. Not our character, God's character.
Salvation is based upon how well God does things, not on how well
we do things. And God's people who know him,
they praise him for it. All right, here's the third thing.
The third word is how. How are we to worship and praise
the Lord? Verse three, praising with the
sound of the trumpet, praising with the psaltery in heart. Praise
him with the timbrel and dance. Praise him with stringed instruments
and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals.
Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Now I don't think that
you could read those verses without getting the understanding that
we are to worship God in a song service. Could you read that
and come away with any other conclusion that we play instruments
and we sing as part of the song service? You wouldn't believe
the things I read on these verses this week. I mean, buddy, some
of these old writers, I mean, I love them. I just, you know,
I would hardly think about preaching from passage without reading
them. But much to my surprise, many of them just so strongly
felt like it was sinful to play an instrument in the worship
service. And they spent pages explaining
away these verses, saying you shouldn't use musical instruments
in the worship of God. They kind of just want to like
a chant or a dirge or something. I don't know. False religion
takes it and takes that to mean all you do is sing and play every
instrument in the world all at one time. God's to be worshipped
in our psalm service. I mean, let's not overcomplicate
that. I know preaching the gospel is
the most important part of worship. God cannot be worshipped without
the preaching of the gospel. God saves and he feeds his people.
by the foolishness of preaching, not the foolishness of singing,
not excess singing. Cause you know, like I said,
that's what false religion does. All they have is singing. You're
almost all they have is singing and trying to appeal to people's
emotions, you know, and they have very little, I hate to call
it preaching because it's not preaching. I mean, none of it
speaks to the heart, you know, they, they, you know, so some
of our, our brethren in the past, you know, they've, They've taken
it too far, saying, well, you don't have any instruments, you
know, and others, that's all they do. All that being true,
you know, whatever. Singing praises to our God is
a special part of worship, and it's so important. Everybody
can't sing, or everybody can't preach. Everybody can't, but
everybody can sing. You might think, well, I can't
sing very well, but you can sing. You can make a joyful noise.
Everybody can't preach. Other than Eric, who here would
preach Sunday if I said I need to be out of town? Eric's the
only one. But everybody can sing. Everybody can sing. And the point
of all these instruments that David mentions here is to make
our worship, both our preaching and our singing, beautiful. What
can be more beautiful than preaching the glories of Christ? What could
be more beautiful than declaring this truth, someone as glorious
and wonderful as the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would
suffer and die to pay the sin debt of a sinner like me. What
can be more glorious than that? What can be more beautiful than
showing a poor, needy sinner, look to Christ. He's everything
you need. Whatever it is, he fits the bill.
What's more beautiful than that? What's more beautiful than having
the opportunity to sing about the glory of our Savior? With
one voice to lift up and sing His glory, sing His praises.
And if you can play an instrument when folks sing, play it. Play it to God's glory. It'll
make the song a little easier to sing. It will. One thing I'm
sure of tonight, I haven't talked to him about this, Shawn's awful
thankful for his sister tonight. Played that piano. Made it easier
to sing, did it? Now, we could sing a cappella. Shawn's got
a great voice. We could sing a cappella. But
sure made it nice to have the piano, didn't it? If you can
play an instrument, play it. If not, we'll still sing, won't
we? Sing a cappella. David says, praise the Lord with
the trumpet. And first thing I thought of when I read that
is Brother Rich Bird. If you've ever been at Todd's
Road Grace Church, you've heard Rich. Occasionally, he'll do
this. I don't know if it's a trumpet or a cornet or what it is, but
he'll open the surface with the note of that trumpet. Oh my goodness. I mean, it's
something. I mean, it gets your attention.
It just, every time just prepares my heart to worship. And that's
what we're to do. If we don't have a trumpet, we're
to do it when we preach. We're to sound the clear note
of the gospel trumpet so that sinners will know, come to Christ. Sound a clear note so that God's
people will know Christ is here. Here he is. Now run to him. Sound
a clear note so everybody will know that salvation is by grace
through faith, not our works. Now sound that note and sound
it clear. Sound it clear. Look at first
Corinthians chapter 14. Then what that is, is referring
to that in that day, You know, they used, the armies used a
trumpet. And they would sound that trumpet
and blast that horn, you know, and one sound would tell the
soldiers to charge. One would tell them to retreat.
One would tell them to go right or left, you know. Sound a clear
note so the army knows what to do. So they know, come to Christ. Maybe they would use a trumpet
to sound an alarm to the city, you know. Sound a clear note
so everybody knows what's going on. When we preach, sound a clear
note of the gospel so everybody knows It's Christ, now come to
Him. Look what Paul says here in 1
Corinthians 14, he's talking about speaking in tongues. He
said, now brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues,
what shall I profit you? Except I shall speak to you either
by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine. And even things without life
giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give distinction
in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped?
For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who should prepare himself
for the battle? If there's not a clear note,
how are people supposed to know what to do? And this is what
he talked about by his speaking of tongues. So likewise ye, except
ye utter by tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it
be known what is spoken? For you shall speak it into the
air. You know, it's just like if someone was up here speaking
in Spanish, I don't think hardly any of us would know what's being
said, would they? It could be the greatest message ever was,
but it wouldn't be any blessing to us because we couldn't understand.
The same thing when we preach the gospel, sound a clear note,
make it simple and plain so that sinners will know, come to Christ. That's what the trumpet means.
Then David talks about other stringed instruments. He talks
about a psaltery, which is a guitar and a harp and other instruments,
you know. And there is no question those instruments could make
beautiful sounds in the hands of somebody that knows how to
play them. Isaac and Sidney play the guitar. It has six strings. Is that right? Six strings? Some
can have more, maybe. Six strings. That's a normal
six string. It utterly, now I have no musical
understanding, no musical gift whatsoever. So maybe this doesn't
blow your mind, it blows my mind. How in this world can you play
so many notes on just six strings? I mean you just play every note
that there is on six strings. How's that even possible? I don't
know, I couldn't do it. But I sure enjoy hearing it,
don't you? Then on the other end of the spectrum is a heart.
And I look this up, 47 strings on a heart. How in this world
can you learn to play 47 strings? I can't keep three things straight
in my mind at once. How can 47 strings? Boy, it's
beautiful in the hands of somebody who knows how to play it, isn't
it? Well, this is our preaching. In our preaching, let's hit every
string of the gospel. Don't just harp on one doctrine.
Don't just harp on one facet of Christ. Preach the whole counsel
of God. Hit every string. That makes
the gospel beautiful to hear, to preach the whole gospel. Then
David mentions a tambourine and dancing. We dealt with this matter
of dancing last week. I think kind of a tambourine
is kind of the same thing. I think people that normally
play a tambourine kind of want to see them do it, you know.
Same thing with dancing. And I'll say about that same thing
I said last week. If you can do that without making yourself
the issue, without drawing all the attention to yourself, and
you can do it to draw the attention to Christ, then have at it. I
don't know how anybody can do that, but if you can do it, have
at it. Otherwise, do it in your heart.
The thing about dancing and playing the tambourines, it's not the
physical dancing, it's not the physical tambourine. There was a, Grace Church was buying a new
building. They bought this building from this group, and apparently
they spoke in tongues and had all this stuff, you know. They
had tambourines laying around on the pews. One of the little
boys said, can we play these tambourines? He thought we were
going to start playing tambourines in service, you know. And his mother
told him, yes, you can take that home and play it all you want.
Not play it here, you can take it home and play it. And he was
just, that was just the happiest thing he could think of, play
that tambourine. The dance, people who can dance tell me that it
expresses joy. It's a way they can express joy.
Well, that's true of worship. Worship is the way to express
joy in the heart. If we're preaching the gospel
right, we're hearing the gospel right. There's joy there. There's
joy in Christ. But it can't be heart joy anymore
if we're making a show of the flesh by playing a tambourine,
dancing around the room, you know. It's in the heart. It's
in the heart. Then David talks about the symbols.
Now bands use cymbals to keep time. Sometimes they just barely
tap them, you know, just keeping time. Sometimes they hit them
with these big sounds, make a dramatic sound. You're just banging on
a cymbal, banging on a gong or something. That might seem like
a low-skill job, but you know, I couldn't even do that. If you
expected me to hit that cymbal and beat with the music, I couldn't
do it. I can't hear the beat of the
music. For Ohio State fans here, you'll appreciate this. We loved
Hang On, Sleepy. When I was a freshman in college,
you know, we'd stand there and they'd play this song and everybody'd
clap to it. When everybody's hands was like this, mine was
like this. And when everybody's hands, mine was like, I couldn't
do it. My roommate was trying. He was
a drummer, and he knew the beat. And he finally just said, you're
a lost cause. I couldn't do it. But tell you,
by God's grace, what I can do. I can keep hitting this one message. This one message. When we talk
about the strings instruments, we talk about hitting all the
strings of the gospel. We talk about the cymbal, we
talk about this. There's one message. Keep banging it. Keep hitting it. Keep hitting
it. I don't think anybody ever has
wore out a cymbal. We're not going to wear out the
gospel. Keep hitting this one message. It's Christ and him
crucified. Then David mentions the organ. He can't have meant an organ
like what we have. Maybe it was some sort of pipe
instrument or something. But I thought about a pipe organ. I've seen those things. And that
looks to me like a very complicated instrument to play. Well, we
all can't learn to play that pipe organ, can we? We don't
have one that wouldn't even fit in this room, but I tell you
what you can do. You can use your pipes to sing
out. To sing out in praises to our
God. In this congregation, our visitors tell me this, I've always
known this, but it's interesting to me, and our visitors point
this out, this congregation sings out. And you know, that's what
we ought to do. I don't care if you think you
can carry a tune or not. I don't think if you think you've got
a good voice or not. Use the pipes that God gave you and sing
out. Sing out. That praises the Lord. First and foremost, most importantly,
that praises the Lord. Just sing out. But I tell you
what, it helps Sean too. So sing out. Sing out. Help him.
Don't make him sing a solo. Sing out. Just use the pipes
that God gave you and enjoy this opportunity. Singing is everybody's
opportunity to verbally praise the Lord. The rest of the service
is just me, isn't it? Do we talk afterwards? Do with
all you got. Do with all you got. See, that's
how. Okay, here's the fourth word,
the last word. It's who. Who is to worship? Who is to
praise the Lord? Well, David tells us very simply,
verse six, let everything to half breath praise the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord. Now that means you and me. That
means you and me. And in case you're wondering,
everything that hath breath, that's us. And then he says,
just to make sure I'm clear, praise ye the Lord. That's all
of us. Every human being should praise
the Lord. And he says everything with breath,
does that mean animals too? Animals don't have a voice, you
know, like what we have, but you know, by their very existence,
they praise the creator. The variety of animals. There's
a ant and there's a giraffe. God created them both. Their
very existence praises the creator. The songbird praises the Lord. But men who have a brain that
can form thought a vocal cord that can, a voice box that can
form words and communicate, don't do it. Isn't that a shame? A
bird praises the Lord in song. Fallen man, this is how fallen,
how dead sinful man is. We don't use the faculties that
God gave us to praise his name. But I tell everyone who's been
given spiritual life and breath by the Holy Spirit, they'll find
it a joy to praise the Lord. God gave us life and breath. God gave it to us, didn't he?
May God help us to use it in his praise, to use it in his
worship for his glory. Praise ye the Lord. All right,
let's bow together in prayer. Our father, how we thank you
for this opportunity that you've given us to look into your word.
worship you. Father, I pray you'd apply your
word to our hearts that we would not just be hearers of the word
but doers. That we leave here this evening
believing in Christ our Savior. Father, we thank you for this
time that you've given us over these past years to look into
these precious Psalms and learn more of our Savior. Terry, maybe
you'll give us another opportunity to go through them again. Continue
learning more and more of Christ our Savior, learning to lean
on him and depend on him more and more and more. It's in his
precious name we pray and give thanks. Amen. All right, Sean. After that message, by the way,
y'all better sing out. Help Sean out here, okay? Okay, turn to song number 39. This is My Father's World. This is my father's world And
to my listening ears All nature sings and round me rings The
music of the spheres This is my father's world I rest me in
the thought Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, His hand the
wonders wrought. This is my Father's world, The
birds their carols raise, I declare the Maker's praise. He shines in all that's fair. In the rustling grass, I hear
Him pass. He speaks to me everywhere. This is my Father's world. Oh, let me ne'er forget. Though the wrong seems oh so
strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my father's world, the
battle is not done. Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
and earth and heaven be one.