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.
1. Sing – all three times sing is used in this psalm it is not the joyful singing of Psalm 95. This is a different word and it means to take a stroll. In other words, it has to do with you having a song in your heart or a praise in your heart in the day in and day out goings on of your life. And what are you to sing? A new song! A fresh song! It’s not a call for us to compose a new song each day so others can hear what we’ve composed, but for us to have in our hearts a praise for some new thing we’ve learned or recognized or seen in God each day!
2. Sing – who are we to sing that fresh, new song to? To God! If I went around telling everyone how great Kathy is but I never took time to tell her, I’d be robbing her of praise she is due. There’s a reason we have trouble offering praises when I ask for them. There’s a reason we have trouble singing with joy and singing those fresh, new songs to the Lord. It’s because we’ve grown so gospel and hard hearted that we don’t have anything to say!
3. Sing – all the earth! Everyone!
4. Bless his name! Means to bow down and recognize God’s great worth!
5. Show forth His salvation! We have great news! Let’s share it every now and then. Is that what we’re told? No! Show it day to day! Listen, do you and I have great news to share? You better believe we do! “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see!” I once was lost in my sins and under the wrath of God and was guilty before Him and was condemned to a devil’s hell. But God so loved me that He gave His one and only Son to die for me! He justified me from my sins! He forgave me of all my sins! He washed my sins away and now there’s no condemnation for me since I’m in Christ Jesus!
6. Declare His glory! Where? Among the heathen! Not just here in church, but out there where they most need to hear it! He’s glorious in His holiness! He’s glorious in His majesty! And we’re to declare His wonders among all people.
7. Give – assign, ascribe, attribute to the Lord glory and strength. We don’t give God glory in the sense that He needs what we have, but we’re to recognize that glory and strength and offer our praise and adoration of it! God alone is strong. He really does hold the whole world in His hands!
8. Give to the Lord the glory due His name! Who else but God could part the Red Sea? Who else but God could cause the blind to see? Who else but God could preserve a man in a whale’s belly? Who else but God can raise the dead? None! He alone is worthy of all our praise!
9. Give!
10. Bring an offering – why? Because you’ve been commanded to? No! Not at all! This is an appeal to bring an offering, a token of your love and adoration of God. You see how awesome and amazing He is? Then show Him that adoration with an offering! And your willingness to offer is going to be directly related to your adoration of Him. You chew on that a while.
11. Come into His courts – is simply an invitation to bring yourself into God’s presence. All of this is about you giving something to God instead of coming to church to see what you can get from God – major shift in thinking!
12. Worship the Lord! Not by coming to church and singing three songs and listening to a sermon. God certainly wants you to worship corporately, but that’s not the kind of worship He’s looking for here. What does it say? How are you to worship? In the beauty of holiness! In other words, dressed up with, adorned with, decorated with purity and holiness. All our corporate worship is in vain if our lives are filled with sin and disgrace. What difference does it make to you if your husband sings your praises, but all the while sleeps in the arms of another woman? What difference does it make to God if you come to church and look good to all of us, but your life is filled with sin?
13. Fear before Him! Get on your knees, bow down and pay homage to the great God and King He is!
14. Say that the Lord reigns! Do you know what the world needs to hear? That God is on the throne! Jehovah God, the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth is alive and well and one day He will judge the earth.
So sing, bless, show, declare, give, bring, come, worship and say – all the while the idea is that you and I are to be declaring the glory of God! He is great. His salvation is great. His glory is great. His wonders are great. His strength and beauty and majesty and creation and righteousness are all great!
But now listen: whether we do or not takes us right back to Psalm 95. Have our hearts become so hardened that we don’t or can’t or won’t declare the glory of God each day? Have we become so hardened that we can’t see the greatness of God’s salvation? Have we heard the message so many times until it doesn’t move us any more? Have we become so desensitized by sin that we can’t see the glory of God? Have we become so wrapped up in our own lives and problems and worries that we fail to see the majesty of God each day?
God’s glory is everywhere! Look around you! Open your eyes and ears and hearts! Notice verses 11-12.
“Let the heaven’s rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice!”
Do you see that? The heaven rejoices. The earth rejoices. The sea rejoices. The fields rejoice. The trees rejoice. The Pharisees wanted Jesus to shut His disciples up. They didn’t want to hear them declare God’s salvation, but Jesus said that if they held their peace even the rocks would cry out! But while God’s creation may be crying out His glory, that’s why He created you and me! It’s our job to declare the glory of God! It’s all about a shift in our thinking. It’s about you and me changing our minds about some things. It’s about us practicing giving praise to God. It’s about you and me refusing to let the rocks and trees do our job for us!
The kids learned a song at camp this year I want to teach you this morning. I know you’re going to feel a little funny doing it, but I want you to stand up and do it today. You’ll feel better if you do. The words are going to be on the screen, but I want you to do the motions too.
Ain’t no rock, gonna stand in my place
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name!
Ain’t no rock, gonna stand in my place
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name!
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
Ain’t no tree, gonna lift it’s branches
I’ll lift my hands to glorify His Holy Name
Ain’t no tree, gonna lift it’s branches
I’ll lift my hands to glorify His Holy Name
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His holy Name
Ain’t no bird, gonna sing in my place
I lift my voice to glorify His Holy Name
Ain’t no bird, gonna sing in my place
I’ll lift my voice to glorify His Holy Name
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
Everybody sing praise to His Holy Name,
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His Holy Name
Can you see yet what a great God we serve? Every day you ought to make it your aim to find at least one new thing to praise God for: one new thing from His Word, from your experience of Him, from His creation, from a song or a book or His dealings in your life, but God commands us, expects us to be so enthralled by Him that there’s something new to praise every day.
Not only that, but declare it to someone else. Tell somebody about the great salvation you have. Tell somebody about the wonders of God. Tell somebody about His strength. Tell somebody about His majesty. You want to give an offering to God? How about giving props to Him around your friends and family?
You want to give God a real offering? Offer Him that sin you’re wrestling with. Offer to Him your tongue, your pill, your worry, your stress, your work, your sleepless nights, your anger, your hatred, your prejudice and see how He’s glorified in that!
I believe that everything we do ought to be an act of worship. I’m not there yet, but I want to be. God wants me to declare His glory in everything I do and to everyone I meet. I know God wants that, and I want it too. I don’t want to be content letting you or anyone else declare it for me. I want to do it. What about you?
Do you think our lives might be different if we spent more time declaring God’s glory? Do you think our church would look different if that what our aim? Our focus? I believe so. But maybe today you’re still not sure how to go about it. If that’s the case, then let me offer this: why don’t you simply offer yourself to God this morning? Why don’t you just pray to God and confess to Him your heart’s desire and ask Him to fill you with His presence, with His Spirit, that He might open your eyes and ears so you might first begin to recognize His glory.
