(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I will welcome you to Drive Time Devotions,
our look at Psalm 96 today.
Many people think that this was a Psalm
that was first sung, surely portions of it were,
when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into Jerusalem
on a great day of celebration.
So listen to how it starts in verses one to three.
Sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing to the Lord all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name.
Proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among the peoples.
So you hear these words repeated again and again.
Sing, sing, sing, in verse one and two.
Martin Luther once said,
the devil takes flight at the sound of music,
just as he does at the words of theology.
And for this reason,
the prophets always combine theology and music,
the teaching of truth and the chanting of Psalms and hymns.
So we need to sing the truth.
But then also in these first verses,
he uses this phrase, day after day.
Proclaim his salvation day after day.
And that's what I'd like to focus on in Psalm 96.
The day after dayness of life.
What am I gonna do each day
that's gonna make a difference every day?
What am I gonna do each day
that's gonna make a difference in my whole year?
This chapter tells us exactly what to do.
It starts by saying each day,
proclaim the good news that he saved.
So you want to live your best life each day?
We're gonna talk about four things in this Psalm
you and I can do.
And number one, tell the good news.
Because without a shadow of a doubt,
I can guarantee you,
you're gonna face some bad news this year.
There is bad news in this world.
There's bad news in your life.
But that is not the story of your life.
The end story of your life.
The story of your life ends with good news in Jesus Christ.
The story of your life is a story
that he saves us from the bad news.
So whatever bad news comes into your life,
he came to save you from that bad news.
He came to save us from a bad world.
He came to save us from bad choices.
He came to save us from the bad that others do to us
and that we do to ourselves.
So to live your best life,
Psalm 96 encourages us to proclaim this good news.
First you have to know it in your own heart,
but then the Psalm says you also have to tell it.
Let other people know it.
Now I know, I know that word proclaim,
it's a scary word for many of us.
I've been a pastor long enough to know
that if you're doing a series on God's purposes,
when you get to the message on evangelism or proclaiming,
people tend to stay home that week.
Well, let me give you a very simple place to start.
Something any of us can do.
Could you just say God bless you and mean it?
Or some other phrase that simply proclaims who God is?
That expresses your faith?
People who do not know God use his name all of the time
in various different ways.
Why shouldn't we who do know God use his name?
I have to tell you, the days that I do this,
I don't remember to do it every day, I wish I did.
I just say a heartfelt God bless you to somebody.
It's amazing the looks that you get back.
It's amazing the responses
because you've interjected God into the conversation.
Through God's spirit,
he's saying something through a simple phrase.
Now God may have a lot more for you to say.
You need to be ready to say that,
but could you just start there?
God bless you.
Now later in this psalm,
we're gonna be reminded that we're to tell everywhere,
to have a worldwide heart for telling.
In verse 10, it says,
"Say among the nations the Lord reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.
He will judge the peoples with equity.
The challenge for every one of us
as a follower of Jesus Christ
is the challenge of the Great Commission,
that we go into all the world
and tell the good news of who Jesus is.
Verse 10 says, "All the nations."
And so every one of us needs to have
what I like to call a multifocal vision.
I wear contact lenses sometimes,
and my eye doctor told me that they're multifocal.
I asked him, what does that mean?
And he says, well,
that means they focus on the near, the medium, and the far,
all at the same time.
And your brain figures it out when you wear the contacts.
Well, God tells us to focus on near and medium and far,
all at the same time.
Jerusalem, Judea, the remotest part of the earth,
my home, my city, my country, my world,
near, medium, and far.
Have a heart for all of that.
Now, I can't go every place at once,
but I can have a heart for every place at once.
And I want to give you a simple place
to start with that one too.
When you watch the news,
watch with a spirit of prayer.
We watch all the disasters that are happening,
and sometimes we take them in
and we end up with just a heart of anxiety
at the end of watching the news.
But if you started to pray
for those who are being heard around the world,
you would have a different heart, I guarantee you.
That's how to live your best life.
That will make an everyday difference in your life.
So tell the good news.
Second thing you can do to live the best life every day
is choose what to focus on.
Verses four to seven,
"For great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise.
"He is to be feared above all gods.
"For all the gods of the nations are idols,
"but the Lord made the heavens.
"Splendor and majesty are before Him.
"Strength and glory are in His sanctuary.
"Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the nations,
"ascribe to the Lord glory and strength."
You want to live a great life?
The only way we're saying this Psalm tells us
to live a great life is one day at a time, day by day.
And the only way to live a great life one day at a time
is to focus on the one who is truly great,
the only one who is truly great.
I might think I have great ideas,
and you do have great ideas.
I might have had great experiences,
but the truth of the matter is,
all those great ideas and great experiences,
they begin with God who is great.
That's why the Bible says here,
"He is most worthy of praise."
Now verse four tells us,
"He is to be feared above all gods."
And that phrase bothers some people.
When they hear God is to be feared,
they think somehow that we cower in terror
of a God who's out to harm us.
The Bible very clearly tells us that God loves us,
that he's out to have a relationship of love with us.
So what does the Bible mean when it says we're to fear God?
Well, we've talked about this before looking through Psalms,
but once again, this has to do with a deep respect
for who God really is.
I don't take God for granted.
I don't take his directions for granted.
I don't take his presence for granted.
I realize that if I pretend God is not gonna be God,
not be who he truly is,
I'm only doing that on my own peril.
To fear God is to respect him
at the deepest level of my heart for who he is.
To respect him so greatly that I understand
that the things that he says to stay away from,
I'm gonna stay a million miles away from him
because I trust him.
And the things that he says to run towards,
I'm gonna run after those with all my heart
because I trust him.
Now in verse five, we're reminded that he is
above all the gods of all the other nations,
that they're just idols, they're fake, they're phony,
but our God, he made it all.
He made the heavens.
And when you look up, when you see the stars,
you see great is our God.
I mean, look at the words in these verses
we just looked at about God's greatness.
Worthy, feared, splendor, majesty, strength, glory.
Where's your focus gonna be?
Focus on the greatness of God.
When your focus becomes on what he has done,
your life becomes greater and greater.
When your focus is on what you have done,
your own selfishness, your life gets smaller and smaller.
Great is the Lord.
That's our focus for a great life.
A third thing this Psalm talks about
in order to live the best day of your life
is to consider what you give.
Verses eight and nine, ascribe to the Lord
the glory that's due his name.
Bring an offering and come into his courts.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.
Tremble before him all the earth.
Now, verse eight starts very broadly.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory that's due his name.
You give him glory.
Well, how could I even get close to that?
I'm just a small human being.
How can I give God the glory that's due his name?
He has an immeasurable, an eternal amount of glory.
Well, you can't make God more glorious,
but you can ascribe to him the glory that is due his name.
And verse eight tells us one practical way we can do this.
And this is gonna be a surprise to some of us.
He says, you bring your offering and come into his courts.
Many people do not connect giving an offering
with giving glory to God.
Somehow for many of us,
an offering has become just what we do at church.
It's just a tradition.
It's just rote.
Or for some people,
because of their attitudes towards money,
they think giving an offering
is just somebody taking something from them.
They don't see that by giving an offering,
people are ministered to.
Hurting people are helped.
Hungry people are fed.
Jesus's body ministers in a community in his name.
People grow in Christ.
People sometimes don't connect the two, giving and glory.
And I understand why.
One of the things I love about God's word
is that it helps us to see these connections
that we might not naturally see.
And verse eight and nine remind us there is a connection
between our giving and God's glory.
There's a connection between bringing awesome
and great glory to God
and giving a simple offering to God.
And when you make that connection in your heart,
God, I'm not just giving some money right now,
not just doing the right thing.
I'm giving you glory by doing this.
It does something for your life.
It causes you to become left selfish
and it causes the world to be ministered to.
And the New Testament tells us again and again,
it causes thanksgiving to go not to you,
but to God, glory to God.
A fourth thing in this psalm.
It's filled with how to live the life God has meant us to live.
Number four, you want to live your best life every day.
Every day you have to think about
what are you looking forward to?
What are you looking forward to?
Verses 11 down to 13.
Let the heavens rejoice.
Let the earth be glad.
Let the sea resound and all that's in it.
Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy.
They will sing before the Lord for he comes.
He comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in truth.
Now there is something that happens in these verses
that is surprising to many people.
And if you catch the surprise,
if you understand the surprise,
it can flip your world upside down.
It can cause you to live in a new way every day
because there's this buildup in these verses.
Let the heavens be glad.
Let the earth rejoice.
Let the sea, everything in it shout its praise.
The fields, the crops burst with joy.
He's building up towards something.
And what is he building up to?
Here is he is.
He's coming to judge.
He's coming to judge.
A lot of people think that's bad news.
That's something to be afraid of.
But the buildup of joy here is the judgment.
God is the judge.
That is a place where you and I can rejoice.
Now I understand we have these pictures of a courtroom
when we think of a judge.
And you stand before a judge
and for many of us that's a scary place.
But think instead of a family courtroom
where you stand before a judge and it's a beautiful place.
If you've ever been in one of those courtrooms,
a family's being born because an adoption is happening.
It's being settled.
These verses remind us that for those of us
who are followers of Jesus, judgment is good news.
Judgment means that God is gonna change everything someday.
He is a God of justice.
And so justice is going to reign someday.
He's a God of truth.
So truth is going to reign someday.
That's why the heavens should be glad.
That's why the earth should rejoice.
The heavens and the earth are under the curse of sin.
The sea and everything in it is under the curse of sin.
But someday that's gonna be lifted.
The fields and the crops under that curse,
the curse is gonna be lifted.
He's coming to judge and that is a cause for joy.
You want to live a different kind of life?
Start looking forward to God's judgment
rather than living in fear of God's judgment.
And as a follower of Christ,
I want to tell you that without a shadow of a doubt,
you can look forward to God's judgment.
The Bible tells us John chapter five is one of the places
that we've already passed out of judgment
into the eternal life that he's given to us.
So instead of being afraid of God as the judge,
in a new way, every day,
embrace the truth of God's judgment.
He is coming to judge the earth
and he will judge the world with justice
and the nations with his truth.
So this is a song about how to live your best day every day.
As we end this look, I want to take some time
talking to the Lord about it.
Lord Jesus, as we talk to you,
we do want to live this kind of life,
but we need your spirit within us
to bring this life about.
And so we pray that we would live this day,
telling the good news, receiving it into our hearts
and letting other people know about it,
that we'd live this day, giving before you,
letting our hearts be generous.
We'd live this day knowing about your greatness,
bringing that into our hearts
and recognizing there's nothing as great as your greatness.
We'd live this day looking forward to your judgment
because we know that you're a God
who judges with justice and with grace.
And so Jesus, let us live this day in you, in faith.
We pray it in your name.
Amen.
Well, join us tomorrow.
We're gonna look at Psalm 97, "How to Hate Evil."
(upbeat music)