Ain't No Rock

Psalm 96:1-13

Ain’t No Rock

Woodlawn Baptist Church

August 12, 2007

I want to thank all of you for allowing me to be gone this past week while I was preaching a revival meeting for the Pleasant Hill church family. I know some of you were praying as I was preaching. I am grateful to you for that.

One of the messages I preached was the sermon I preached here last Sunday from Psalm 95. There is a great need among God’s people to draw near to God and have our hearts softened in His presence by His Spirit through His Word so we might give our lives as joyful expressions of worship. That’s not just true of the people down there, but here too! You and I ought to be the happiest people on earth because of the great God we serve! And because of that we ought to shout it out for the glory of God!

I hope you’ve thought about that message some since last Sunday. In fact, I hope God has written it on your hearts so you and I might demonstrate our love for God and our great satisfaction with Him. That love and joy and adoration for Him ought to be evident in the way we worship week in and week out. This week as we were singing in the evening services each night I found myself considering what I had preached. And as I sang and as we prayed I did my best to humble myself before the Lord, recognizing His great worth so I might sing for joy. It was actually pretty easy once I began to concentrate on it. But I tell you what was more difficult, and that was being a person of great joy and adoration of God during the day when it was hot outside and people were mean and I was going about my daily duties.

I bet you do much the same. With some practice and concentration, our worship to God will become more expressive and joyful. As we realize who God is as our rock of salvation, the Lord our Great King and Shepherd, we’re going to celebrate when we come into His house, but Monday through Saturday it is more difficult.

I’m betting you find it difficult or you just outright forget to praise God and celebrate His goodness and offer your adoration to Him when your money gets thin or your tempers run high. Do you get to the end of your days and remember that you forgot to spend time with God? Or that you just never thought about God? Some of you are busy getting things ready for school: buying clothes, school supplies, sports gear, wondering how you’re going to make ends meet. Praising God isn’t high on your list. Probably, like I said a couple of weeks ago, it’s not even on the radar. With all the funerals and illnesses and hot weather and families falling apart and job stress and everything else, you and I don’t give much thought to worship; not Sunday worship and especially not weekday worship.

But don’t forget that worship is why we are here. It’s why you and I were created. Each moment of our lives is to be a joyful expression of worship. Our time in front of the television is to be an act of worship. The way we eat and what we eat is to be an act of worship. The way we raise our children and grandchildren is to be offered to God as an act of worship. Sex is to be an act of worship. Our conversations, our relationships, our driving, our walks in the park, our time in the gym, the way we care for our bodies, the way we dress ourselves are all intended by God to be offerings to Him of worship!

That’s what Paul had in mind when he wrote, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God!” How radically different our lives would be, and how much more pleasing to God our lives would be if we saw each moment, each word, each attitude, each conversation, each bite, each act an offering of worship to God! Let me ask you something: is God deserving of your daily worship? Is He deserving of you living for His glory? Does He deserve for you to declare that glory each day?

That’s what Psalm 96 is really all about. If Psalm 95 was about teaching us to offer our lives as joyful expressions of worship, Psalm 96 is about you and me being faithful to declare the glory of God each day of our lives wherever we go to whomever we speak whenever we have opportunity to declare it. As you look at Psalm 96, you and I are given fourteen commands related to declaring God’s glory.