Something To Sing About

Psalm 98:1-9

Something to Sing About

Woodlawn Baptist Church

August 26, 2007

Read Psalm 98:1-9

What an amazing psalm of worship! From beginning to end this is a psalm of praise and adoration! It is a psalm of joy…a psalm of gladness and excitement for the great God we serve!

Today I’ll be concluding this month’s series of sermons about worship, but I pray that what we’ve learned about worship will forever be etched on our hearts. And what have we learned? We learned last week that God is on the throne! He is the sovereign King! The Lord reigns! He is Lord of all the earth! We learned two weeks ago that you and I are to be declaring the glory of God. We are to give to the Lord the glory due His name! And we learned the week before that that our lives are to be joyful expressions of worship: not just our words, our songs, our prayers…not just what we do here, but every part of our lives are to be joyful expressions of worship!

I have enjoyed immensely preparing and preaching these messages. I have enjoyed seeing God the way I have through this time in His Word and meditating on these psalms. I have enjoyed God’s work in my life as I’ve tried to apply what I’m preaching to you to my own life. It’s made me ask some hard questions of my life.

Do we serve a great God or what? Is God worthy of our praise or not? Has He done anything for you to celebrate? God certainly is a God to be praised! And not just in here! He’s worthy of our praise and adoration on Monday! On Tuesday! On Wednesday! On Thursday! On Friday! And on Saturday!

He’s a God to celebrate at school tomorrow. He’s worthy of your worship at work this week. He wants to be praised at your dinner table, in your living room, in your bedroom and on your front porch! God wants to be recognized when you write your checks, when you pick your boyfriends and girlfriends, when you make moral decisions, when you get behind the wheel or when you’re pushing the shopping cart, when you take a job and when you work that job. God wants every part of your life to honor and exalt His presence in your life – He wants the world to know you have a God and His name is not dollar. His name is not Kathy or George or Trevor. His name is not whatever feels good or right. He wants the world to know you have a God, and that He is the Lord of hosts! The Lord God Almighty! The Maker of heaven and earth! He wants the world to know through your life…through your affections that He alone is God.

He is a great God, but the reality is that you and I still have trouble recognizing that. We come together and get excited. In fact, I know that when I am excited up here you get excited and leave here excited, but before you know it things are back to normal. Then you start looking forward to coming back to church so the preacher can pump you up, so he can jump start you and hopefully give you something else to be excited about. I hope that’s not the kind of faith you have. I hope and pray that you’re not using me that way. That’s a selfish reason to come to church. We’re here to celebrate God! You have just as much reason to be excited on Monday as you do today and it has everything to do with you and me learning to get up and see God for who He is, for all He is, and to rejoice and magnify Him each day for that goodness.

The psalmist has said so in Psalm 98. Of all the psalms we’ve studied this month, this one is the noisiest. You thought Psalm 95 was loud with all the joyful singing and shouting, but it pales in comparison to this one! Psalm 98 is one of the loudest, most joyful, happy psalms in the Bible.

He says in verses 1-3 that we’re to “Sing to the Lord a new song.” This is the singing that means to take a stroll. Remember, the idea here is to have a song in our hearts while we go about our daily business, and not the same old song. God doesn’t want you singing my song or his song or her song, but a fresh, new song from your heart! Each day we ought to be discovering or recognizing something new and fresh about God. We could spend every day from now till death praising God for all He is and does and find something new every day! He is…