Yahweh Reigns

Open your Bibles to Psalm 96. That's where we're going to spend the majority of our time today. A couple of notes to start. Everybody should have had in their bag that they got a flyer that is for a thing called the Builders Summit, which is a men's meeting that a friend of mine is putting on in northeastern Pennsylvania. and that is in November and I will be there and so if you don't have the flyer it's buildersummit.org to look at it I'm getting a little bit distracting feedback if you don't mind, thanks now if you want to say amen, that feedback is welcome but the speaker stuff isn't so I want to invite you to that and just for a little bit about me this is not about me but I have a podcast called Be a Berean so if you're a podcast person you can look that up And I write at a blog called Things Above Us.

The website is thingsabove.us, thingsaboveus. And so you can read about Christian things there. Speaking at a conference has its unique advantages and disadvantages. And one of the disadvantages is that you cannot possibly really know me very well like you could know your own pastor or somebody that's preaching in your church. and I can't really know you that well either in many ways and so I do want to communicate that I dearly love every one of you here and that's why I want to stand up here and try to tell you what God's word says and I may, I guess what I want to say is I think I tend to say things that are hard for people to hear I tend to hit nerves in people and my goal is to tell you what the word of God says and I believe like what we learned in the movie the other night that there is a real presence of Jesus Christ when a man is preaching God's word.

And so what I want to challenge you with is if I say something you don't like, at least think about it. You may already have thought it through and you disagree. That's okay. And I will say things that I'm going to call generalizations. And so I'm going to make some generalizations because I only have two hours to speak to you. and today I only have about 45 minutes probably to speak to you and I'm going to say some things that maybe you think well he didn't exactly prove that from the scripture and that's going to be true about probably half of what I say at least I'm not going to prove everything that I assert because some of these things are things that have been developed over years and they're not necessarily the point of today's message and so you need to understand that there will be things maybe you have a question about and I want you to feel free to come up and ask me afterwards.

You can even come up to me and I know there's some of the young men here who would be really willing to do this and just totally challenge me on it. That's okay. I love theological discussion. I love theological debate and I love if somebody listens to a man preach the word of God and that person goes to the scripture to see if the things that that man says are true and then if they don't think so, they will ask questions and try to understand.

And I think that's commendable. And I want you to know, as the preacher, that will not offend me at all. I'll be offended if you walk away and don't challenge me on something. So I'd love to talk about things. This is kind of a confession. I have so much fear and trembling standing here before you.

And I do not understand this at all. But there's something about preaching God's word to God's people that's extremely daunting. And just to make a comparison, And like less than four days ago, I was in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest preaching the gospel. And there was no fear at all. And I don't understand why. But with unbelievers, it's like it's like I'm not worried if I if I offend them or something with Christians.

I'm just I'm so concerned. So I just want you to know. And so if you're one of these people that that prays a lot, maybe even won't speak and just throw up little prayers for me once in a while. I'd appreciate that. And and one more thing. I do not assume that you're all born again.

In fact, I'll assume that some of you think you're born again and you are not. And I'm going to say things that some people will think, oh, that's crushing or that could hurt someone's assurance. And I'll tell you what, the Holy Spirit will give people assurance. And I will tell you what the Word says. And if you start to lack assurance, then you go ahead and you pray to God that He'll give you assurance of your salvation.

I heard a testimony last night of a dear woman here who was a Christian for a very, very long time before she became a Christian. And I think she's dearly glad that there were people that were willing to say the truth to her. And because I get to go nearly last, I have an advantage that you guys have already heard a lot of things that I actually wanted to say.

I mean, the stuff Tim was saying yesterday from the Psalms, and I totally agree with Dan's assertion that Jesus Christ is throughout the Psalms. And then Mike's whole thing on idolatry today is a very good setup for what I'm going to say. And I think, of course, God manages that. So without any more about personal things like that, let's get into the text.

Psalm 96. Now, if you're going to follow along, in the spirit of why we're here this weekend, And I'm going to try to recite it for you in the ESV. And then we're going to look at it. And we're going to have two goals regarding evangelism. The first one is going to be to show you that part of your worship, part of your proper worship to God is that you do evangelism.

Or, I'll modify that, or that you participate somehow in promoting evangelism. and the second part is going to be that part of how you worship God will actually lead to evangelization of the nations. So you must evangelize because that part of how you worship It be like omitting going to church or taking communion or singing to not be someone that participating in the Great Commission And then the second part will be that you being a constant worshiper is what is going to lead to evangelism opportunities. So here we go.

Be patient with me if I screw this up because this isn't my scriptorium psalm. Psalm 96. And I apologize if you're the Psalm 96 person and you're not doing ESV because I cannot hear scripture that I've memorized in the other versions. It totally screws me up. Oh, sing to Yahweh a new song. Sing to Yahweh all the earth.

Sing to Yahweh. Bless his name. Tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations. His marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but Yahweh made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are in his court. Glory and strength are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to Yahweh, O families of the peoples, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name. come into bring an offering and come into his courts worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness tremble before him all the earth say among the nations Yahweh reigns yes the world is established it shall never be moved he will judge the peoples with equity let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice let the sea roar and all that fills it let the field exult and everything in it then shall the trees shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before Yahweh for he comes for he comes to judge the earth he will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness so may God bless the reading of his word or in that case recitation.

And let's dig in. So the first point we want to make is that you are to evangelize as part of your worship. Now we've already defined worship many times this weekend. I know some people weren't here for all the talks. But in general, we'll say worship is the devotion that you give to your God. Mike made a very, very good point, which is that we are all by nature worshipers.

The question is not whether you will worship. The question is who or what will you worship? And then how will you worship your God? And so when you are a Christian, what that means is that you have believed the gospel. So you have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Father's glorious Son. And that happened as a result of you being born again of the Holy Spirit.

So here's the story. Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden. And Adam and Eve are told they can eat of any tree of the garden except for one of them, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so here, they weren't restricted. This wasn't like they had all this food in front of them and God said, okay, you've got to be vegans. He said, all the trees of the garden are yours.

I think sometimes we overlook that when we focus on the tree that they sinned by eating from. they were given more than they could have handled and yet Adam and Eve being deceived by the serpent Eve was and Adam not leading his wife properly they go to the tree and they eat of the fruit of that tree I don't know if it was an apple that's the that's the common thing that people like to say but they eat of the fruit and they sin against God and they rebel against their creator with whom they were designed to have fellowship with in that garden and Adam was to obey God and inherit life actually at that point because of the covenant God made with them. And when Adam sinned, Adam is the federal head of all people who would ever live except for one of them. We'll talk about him in a second.

Brought sin and a curse into the world. And God out of his mercy and love for people pronounced a curse on the earth. A curse is a bad thing. But we couldn't be more cursed than being separated from God already. God's curse on the earth is actually designed to cause people in creation itself to cry out for salvation from God. If we weren't cursed, we might not be led to believe in Jesus Christ at all.

So the curse is mercy. It's punishment, but it was also mercy towards people. And God promised at that time in Genesis 3.15 that the seed of the woman would come and crush the head of the serpent and his heel would be bruised. And at that point, the Messiah is predicted and for all the rest of the Old Testament as you read it, that the Messiah is constantly looked for by believing Jews and is constantly typified and foreshadowed by everything that happens in the scriptures until the time that Jesus comes when he fulfills every single prophecy that he was coming to fulfill.

And he did it perfectly and he did it in ways that are absolutely miraculous that nobody could have concocted on their own to try to make themselves into Jesus. you can't control where you're born the fact that he was born in Bethlehem and that it was prophesied that alone should blow people's minds but like Mike said just an hour ago there's sufficient evidence that God is real and frankly that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and people don't believe it because they love their sin not because of a lack of evidence but so Jesus Christ eventually did come into the world he was born of the Virgin Mary who had other children later and so we'll just say by inference She wasn't a virgin after that. But Jesus Christ lived a perfectly sinless life that you and I could not live. But more importantly, in a sense, that Adam didn't live.

And Jesus Christ came to be a last Adam He came to be a federal head for a new group of people that would be included in a covenant of grace that God had preordained from all eternity past would occur so that Jesus Christ would carry on his back the people that needed the forgiveness that only he could offer. Because none of us would have done better than Adam. It's fun to get mad at Adam in a sense, but I'll tell you what, he's a better man than everybody here. we would have failed faster and we would have failed harder.

But Adam represented us and we inherited his sin nature and everybody in here is a sinner in the eyes of God. And everybody in here is on their way to hell unless they have trusted that the Messiah who came, the promised one, Jesus Christ, came into the world, lived a sinless life, and then died on the cross, suffering a death that God had ordained that he would suffer so that he might be crushed for our iniquities and pierced for our transgressions, so that Jesus Christ would take on the punishment that sinners deserve. And by a fancy theological term called imputation, Jesus Christ actually suffered in the place of sinners, even though he knew no sin at all.

And by imputation, he grants his righteousness to people that don't have any righteousness of their own. Do you get that? you are not pretty good and then Jesus made up the difference so that God would let you into heaven because God needed you so bad up there and he was just pining away for you. God doesn't need you. God doesn't need any of us. In fact, while we were yet sinners, there is a sense biblically that God hated you.

Because God hates all workers of iniquity and that's what every one of us is. But God demonstrated his love for us that while we were yet sinners, He sent Jesus Christ into the world to die for us. Okay, so that is the point. Jesus Christ died and he paid the penalty that sinners deserve so that when he rose again, he would declare that we were justified in God's sight.

That God could look at sinners and he could say, you are washed clean, you are now a saint in the eyes of God. This is why Dan has his pamphlet about sinners or saints. Because it's important once we are born again that we identify with Christ and not with our sinfulness. Now, once you're born again, you believe that Jesus Christ raised from the dead.

You believe that He's Lord and Master of your life. And now you have a new heart, a new nature that God's granted you without which you wouldn't have even believed. Faith is a gift from God. And then we have all the things that Tim talked about yesterday. We have a promised inheritance, right? We have a promise of heaven.

We have a promise that we'll be resurrected one day? The whole creation actually groans inwardly with the pains of childbirth as it waits for the future resurrection. Even the creation itself is groaning. The trees of the forest we just talked about will sing for joy, right? So that's the gospel though. The gospel is that you must believe that Jesus died in your place and that the only righteousness that you have that can be pleasing to a holy God is the alien righteousness that Jesus Christ imputes to those who follow him.

And if you haven't believed that, most of the rest of what I say will be irrelevant, probably kind of kooky and weird. You need to believe that. And I want everyone here to believe it. And if you think you've believed it, if you've said a prayer a few times, whatever it is, make sure you believe it. Now, having been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his glorious son, now you have obligations.

Now you're a worshiper of God. And so we look at Psalm 96. Oh, sing to Yahweh a new song. Sing to Yahweh all the earth. This is a command. We sing to God.

And we've talked about singing already. And I think we have a group of people who like to sing to God. There was one point of introduction I forgot to mention. One of my fears when I preach is when I strike nerves. And one of my fears is I think personally being a part of evangelism may be one of the biggest failures of Christians today. And so when I stand here and I talk about it, I am afraid people are going to be personally hurt by it.

And so as you feel the excuses welling up in your heart and in your mind of why you don't do this or why you don't do that, I want you to think about the fact that Jesus Christ never made any excuses to always do what was right so that you could have eternal life. so in verse 2 though we'll just skip we're not going to talk too much about the singing part I think we know we need to sing but it says sing to Yahweh bless his name to bless God's name we want to say that we are happy to sing about God we are happy about God it's not good to give a guy like me no clock so I pulled out my little clock here but we are to tell of his salvation from day to day. We're in verse 2. Now I want you to look at the text when I say it, unless you've got it in your head or you're really good at the mental thing, because I want the text to be what transforms you.

You're supposed to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. You're going to be conformed to your God, whoever it is. You can either be conformed to Jesus Christ or you can be conformed to your idol. Psalm 115, we might look at it, but some of you might know it. Psalm 15 says you're going to become just like your idol. so if your idol is a dead piece of wood that you worship, you're going to become dead, like your idol.

But it says, tell of his salvation from day to day. Now, somebody might be sitting here thinking, well, Psalm 96 is actually just a portion of the song that Jesus, or that David, who is a type of Jesus, but that David presents to us in 1 Chronicles 16, after they bring the ark back to the house of the Lord. And David says, sing this song. and he tells Asaph and the choir guys to make this song and sing it.

And you might be thinking well this is about the salvation of some Israelites And you be right that in some sense and in a context it absolutely is But when the Bible says tell of God salvation it is never wrong to realize that at any point in time that it speaks of that, that God always has in mind the salvation of sinners, which is the most important salvation that any of us could ever experience. God does not necessarily, I think, care if we sing the praises of some temporary thing that ever happened to us that was a salvation experience, like being delivered from an enemy temporarily. We should, and we will remember those things.

But the salvation that all of those things typified and foreshadowed was the salvation of People who were slaves to sin, who were delivered from that sin, bought with a price, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and only by his blood. That's the salvation that we are to tell of. Nobody wants us to go around all the nations and remind them that 2,500 or 3,000 years ago, some Israelites were released from some bad people in the Middle East.

It doesn't help anyone that much either. We can tell the story. I'm not saying you can't teach the whole Bible. but if you teach the Old Testament and you teach it to people as if Jesus wasn't present the whole time and as if he wasn't the main point of the whole thing then you're not helping anyone we call them synagogue sermons if your sermon would have been good in a synagogue before Jesus came it's not a worthwhile sermon to tell because we have further revelation we have more light so we use that light and we shine that light on the words of the Old Testament to understand them so tell this salvation from day to day it doesn't say once in a while I'm going to challenge you when's the last time that you personally told somebody the gospel when's the last time you gave someone a tract supported a missionary that did that kind of work prayed for someone who was doing it maybe you're a person that's a helper maybe you help at home while somebody else does it so everybody participates in different ways as each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace, right?

Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God, and whoever serves is one who serves with the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. So you may not be the person standing on the street. I joke sometimes. People say, what do you do? I say, I shout Bible verses at strangers. But it's really just called preaching the word of God.

That's what I do. You may not be one of those people. You may be a guy in here, and you'll never be a preacher, and that's okay. I'm not one of these people that thinks everybody should preach. I certainly don't think any woman ever should, but I don't even think every guy should. But you can go to a place where you can hand out gospel tracts, which are little cards that contain just enough information for a person to savingly believe on Jesus.

You can pray for people who do those things. You can financially give to people who do those things. You can just be a driver. I don't know how many times I wish I just had someone who could drive me somewhere, drop me off and then come pick us up when we're done so we don't have to worry about parking. So there's lots of ways to participate but there are some of you who probably should be opening your mouth more.

There's some of you who, you know people who if Jesus Christ returned right now you'd be taken up with him and those people would be bloodied and punished and spend the rest of their eternity in hell. And you all, I'm sure everybody here knows at least one person who you have not opened your mouth to tell them how to avoid that. And what you tell me and what you tell those people and what you tell God by keeping your mouth shut is that you don't really believe that he might come anytime.

And you don't really believe that that person is going to hell. And you don't really believe that the power of salvation is in God's word. You think it's going to be some other way that that person is going to get saved than you just telling them the truth. and so if you want to worship God you worship God in spirit and in truth you believe the promises that God has made in this word and God's promises are we'll go to Romans 1 I like this passage sometimes I get going and I think I should slow down and let you turn the pages a little bit in your Bible in Romans 1 Paul says something that I think is applicable to everybody here in verse 14.

He says, I am under obligation both to Jews and to Greeks, both to the foolish and to the wise. He's under obligation. He says, Jews and Greeks, the foolish and the wise. He's saying, I'm under obligation to everybody. He's not really picking out people groups. that these were phrases that meant I am under obligation to every other person who's alive right now because I don't deserve the salvation that I've been granted.

And I can't walk around and act like I was entitled to it or I earned it myself. I need to walk around and act like everybody else who needs it ought to hear it too. And then he follows it up with, So I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation. It's not your nice cookies you bake someone.

It's not your friendly smile. It's not helping them move. It's not any of your good works, many of which are authentic good works according to God. None of those things are the power to save someone. People will be saved if by the Spirit of God, the Word of God is used to turn their hearts to God and cause them to believe the Gospel. And the only way that can happen, the only way faith comes by hearing, is by the word of Christ.

How will they believe if no one preaches to them? Somebody has to go and tell people the gospel. There are people in your life that I will never preach to. People that you love who are headed for an eternal damnation right now with a holy God who's angry with the wicked every day. A God who's more creative with punishments than even the most cruel humans have ever concocted. unless we have any Seventh-day Adventists in the room, hell is eternal.

It is not annihilation. It is not temporary. There's no purgatory. When people die, they go to hell or they go to heaven. And so we open our mouths and we tell them. So in verse 3 of Psalm 96, we'll go back there, we say, He declared His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples.

For great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. One of the problems that we have in Christianity is we don't actually fear God. There's no fear of God before their eyes, Paul says in Romans 3. The fear of Yahweh throughout the Old Testament is, if you read the Old Testament and you see the fear of Yahweh, if you read that as basically believing, right?

To me, it's equivalent. When you fear Yahweh, when you fear the Lord, that's the same as believing Him. it's not about some kind of weird trepidation and fear of punishment there's no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear right and fear has to do with punishment and those who who fear have not been perfected in love so if you're loved by god you don't have this this kind of weird fear fear like we have of a tornado hurting us all right but there's a fear of yahweh that shows that we actually believe that he's powerful and that he's mighty and that He's strong. And we see this in Psalm 96 over and over.

Splendor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. But then we ascribe to the Lord glory and strength in verse 7. He's strong. He made the heavens. Right?

All the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but Yahweh made the heavens. So you are sitting here now, and you have to decide, am I going to obey God, or am I going to obey man, basically? Am I going to do what God has commanded that I do? And if you don't know, that's your fault. You know that? Ignorance of God's word is actually something you're responsible for.

Especially in this country. It's your sin. It's your corruption that is still in your flesh. If you're a Christian, that keeps you from wanting to know more about what God has said. But if you know what God has said, and you don't fear, Him. You may not do the things He said.

So if you know God has told you to obey. If you're a child, you're to obey your parents, right? That's the Ten Commandments, right? One of them, right? Was it five? I knew you'd know.

Good job. If you're a wife, you're supposed to obey your husband. Men in here, you have authorities to obey. We talked the other night about obeying authorities that God has given us. We all have certain authorities that we're to obey. And so when we disobey what God has told us, what we show is we don't really fear Him.

And when we are more afraid of the reactions that we think we might get from somebody when we present to them Jesus Christ as their only hope for salvation, what we show is that we're actually more afraid of man than God. And that's a terrible place to be. I'm not saying it's uncommon but it's a terrible place to live you don't want to be there the people you read about in history books most of you guys are the homeschool crowd here we read about Christian missionaries and people that did all these amazing things for God and we read about them and you know what, when you cut them they bled the same color you do and they needed a savior just like you do And you know, the same exact Holy Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the one that indwelled them and gave them the strength to do these great things that we praise him for.

When really all the praise and glory belongs to God alone, who's the one that enabled them? And so don't fear man. Fear God. God's the one that fed, what, 20,000 people with five pieces of bread and two fish? God, that is nothing for God. And it's nothing for God to save your friend.

It's nothing for God to save your cousin, your aunt, your grandpa, whoever it is in your life that you feel like you should reach out to, that you know maybe has never even heard the gospel. I'll tell a story real quick. I'm not a big story guy, but I met a sister the other day. I have two sisters and two brothers that I never met until two months ago.

I'm 44 years old, and I found out I have all these half-siblings because of a long story situation with my biological dad. and my sister comes to meet me and I tell my sister the gospel and we go through the Bible and we go through a lot of things in the scriptures we had five days together and you know what was amazing to me in the United States in 2020 she was so completely ignorant of what everyone in this room takes for granted it was amazing it wasn't like she knew the story of Jesus a little bit and she just rejected it. She didn't know anything. It amazed me.

Because she was almost 40 years old, and I thought people my age, at least we learned it in school growing up. But there are... Look at me. The United States is an unreached people group, okay? Do you understand that? This isn't a Christian country.

We may have some Christian heritages. We may have a rule of law that's based on Christianity, even in the Christian scripture. But there are people all around here that don't know these things that you guys do. And I was one of them. I'll tell you what, I was the exact guy that I would tell my kids, stay away from that guy. That's how I was.

And I was 30 years old before somebody reached me and actually explained the gospel to me so that I could believe it. And so there are people around you who you probably should stay away from for purposes of separation we say who you still should try to find ways to reach out to so that you might bring them into the family of God So you have an obligation to evangelize as part of your worship. And if you think of it as a duty, like doing the dishes or sweeping the floor or fixing something, then if you think of it as some duty, some job you have to do, because God's a taskmaster and he likes when we do things, then you're probably going to be less motivated to do it.

And lest anybody misunderstood, I'm not saying that's how God is. I'm saying that's a misconception we have. But if you think about going out and telling people of his marvelous works, if you think about telling of his salvation from day to day, If you think about ascribing to him glory and strength and the glory due his name and worshiping him in the splendor of holiness.

If you think about those things as part of your worship, then you may evangelize all the time. You will look for opportunities to do so. You'll pray for opportunities to do so. You'll pray for the strength to do it. You'll pray for the faith to do it. You'll pray that you won't be afraid. you'll pray that you won't be so selfish that you'll hold on to the gift God gave you and not share it with other people.

And I'll warn you, unless there's a little kid here that's being really moved by this message, you do need to do what your parents say. You don't just march into a Black Lives Matter protest and start preaching. But parents, I'll tell you what, don't throw a wet blanket on your kid's fire. if your kid gets on fire to be a missionary to serve the Lord and maybe even die for Jesus Christ that's by his ordination God doesn't have grandkids remember you take care of them you protect them but when they want to serve the Lord don't discourage that find a way to cultivate it find people who will help them and yes there is wisdom we don't recommend everybody go into every situation either so obligation number one you worship God and you like singing, you like praying you listen to sermons, some of you are going to go back and read the Psalms again and think about the stuff Dan taught and some of you are going to read through the Bible and you're going to go do these things and I want to encourage you that one of the things that you do as part of worship is that you evangelize and evangelization is actually presenting the truth of the gospel to people so maybe I'll step on some toes here Let me give you an example of what's not evangelism.

Telling someone God loves you. That's not evangelism. That gives the person no more information than they've already assumed in their heart. When you tell someone God loves them, you've just confirmed for them what they already believed. It's the fear of the Lord that's the beginning of wisdom for people. people need to know of God's severe judgment that's coming that is how you start evangelism you present to people the law of God so that they may tremble before him what does it say in Psalm 96 verse 9 worship Yahweh and when I say Yahweh that's because in the Hebrew it says Yahweh and there were some superstitious people that wouldn't pronounce the word and long story short, they translate it the Lord with all caps and it totally destroys the translation because there's another word for Lord that's not Yahweh which we learned about yesterday, Kyrios in Greek, or Adonai in Hebrew.

So we want to I say Yahweh, just that's the name that God referred to himself as in the Old Testament. And so I just pronounce it. It says this, worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the earth. It does not say, bask in my love. In fact, nowhere in the scripture, go ahead, some of you read fast, some of you have half the Bible memorized, find a spot where any prophet of God ever says, hey, God loves you to anyone.

There's some epistles where Paul mentions God's love in the context of his people and how God's love for his people demonstrated by the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection and imputed righteousness to sinners actually motivates us to good works. But never, never does someone look at a sinner in Scripture and say, God loves you. That doesn't help the person.

What helps the person is to know that God will judge you. But he's made a way. So you have to practice. This wasn't meant to be a practical lesson, so if people are sitting here saying, well, I want to evangelize but I don't know how, well, there's people that train that. We We have people all over the country who train people. So wherever you live, we can find people who would help you and do that with you.

So the second point I wanted to make, the worship. So actually, this was the first point I wanted to make, but in order, it's the second point I'm going to make. What I wanted to make the point of is that you're a worshiper, and the way that you worship will lend itself to evangelism. so it's one thing to wake up in the morning and say you know what one of the ways i want to worship god is i want to do evangelism so you find somebody to go with and you go and you give the gospel to people at a park or at a festival or you go to a sporting event where there's a large crowd or you go to the mall or you know any number of ways you know go to the hotel there shouldn't be a hotel worker that doesn't understand the gospel by the time we leave that hotel how selfish if we go and use that hotel and then those people perish you know but the second thing I want you to think about is that your attitude of being a worshiper on a regular basis will actually promote conversation with other people to proclaim Jesus Christ to them and so one of them I just simple example Michelle mentioned it the other day If you just going to the store bring your gospel tracts and hand them out.

But what if you and your family, what if you worshipped outside and you sang songs? Maybe a neighbor will hear and say, well, what was that all about? You know? And I think it was Ron that just said, They went to a restaurant and they sang gospel songs. And he said the phrase something like, it was saturated, like deep, deep doctrinal songs that proclaimed the gospel.

You sing in Christ alone in public, you just gave the gospel to everyone who heard you. Most of the good hymns that we all really like actually will give people enough information to be saved if they listened. If you're sitting on an airplane and you're listening to music on your earbuds or whatever, and somebody says, what are you listening to? Well, you could be saying, I'm listening to a sermon by a pastor.

You could say, I'm listening to Behold Our God by Sovereign Grace Music. There's any number of things you could answer with. They may say, oh, well, what's that? Or, oh, I'm a Christian too, and then you can have that conversation maybe. but if your answer is yeah I'm listening to some regular garbage that everybody else in the world listens to it's not going to go anywhere I'm not saying you can never listen to a secular song but if your thought is I'm worshipping right now I'm not just sitting on a plane I'm not just sitting in a waiting room I'm not just going to get milk I'm actually worshipping God right now and while I'm worshipping God I'm going to go get milk and eggs and butter and whatever else is on the list and I'm going to do that to the glory of God and I'm going to be worshipping Him in my heart and while I'm worshipping Him in my heart a song might come out my mouth or maybe I'll hum it and when I talk to people it's going to be natural for me to talk about worshipping God when somebody says to you, what are you doing this weekend I'll just confess this too this sermon has destroyed me I have been failing in so many areas that preparing this sermon has caused me to be repentant.

And so lest you sit there and think, this guy thinks he's holier than us, and that's just how people preach. You preach to the people, all right? But you're preaching to yourself too. The difference is I've already had time to repent of all the things that I've discovered in the past few weeks preparing, okay? But if you... Where was I going?

I don't remember what the story was now. Oh, somebody asked you what you're doing this weekend or what did you do last weekend? How often do you lead with or include, yeah, you know, I got together with a group of saints and worshipped the one holy God, a real privilege. Or, yeah, this weekend we're going to go to church and we're going to actually get to sing to the God of the universe who is so transcendent we don't even know him other than he's made himself known to us.

The God who's so separate from me that for me to even be in his presence would have destroyed me except for Jesus Christ covering me by His blood. Has anyone ever led with that? Or do you say, yeah, we're going through the Buckeyes game and then the restaurant, you know? Do you think of your worship, your corporate worship, as like the highlight of your week, the thing you look forward to all week long?

Or is it just the thing you do on Sunday? Because your attitude about it is going to come out in your answers when people talk to you about these things. And when you're sitting there with a non-believer, And for some of you, some of you are a little sheltered from the world in very good ways at times. But as you start to get out into interacting with people in the world more, and some of you have jobs, like some of the adults, some of the children even, as you start interacting with people more, your proclamation of your worship is impactful.

Let me just put it that way. you might not get to talk to the person for a long time but that you may be just one of the what did Paul say he said some I planted Apollo's water but God gave the increase maybe somebody's already preached the gospel to their friend and you're going to water it by just reminding that person who Jesus Christ is you know it might sound silly but like wearing a cross necklace or cross earrings I don't know if a cross nose ring would look good but But, you know, whatever, if you adorn yourself with a Christian t-shirt, I'm not going to call that evangelism, but it might open doors. It might lead people to think about things. Having scripture verses, like, on your back, people are standing in line behind you, and they're going to read it.

It's a beautiful thing. So, let's skip to verse 10. Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns. yes the world is established it shall never be moved he will judge the peoples with equity say among the nations Yahweh reigns it does not say again it doesn't say say among the nations God is love it says say among the nations Yahweh reigns one of the things that we are to be is salt and light in this world and we part of our worship is to recognize the fact that Jesus Christ reigns it's present tense he is coming again and some important things are going to happen then.

But Jesus Christ is the ruler right now. He's the ruler of the entire world. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns. So when we say Yahweh reigns, it's R-E-I-G-N-S.

It means he's sovereign. He's the king. He's the ruler of all. Everything is under his rule and dominion. And so you're really either living according to His will or not. And what I want you to consider is that when it says Say Yahweh reigns it not telling you to run outside and just shout Yahweh reigns Alright It's not saying next time you go to the store and somebody says, hey, how you doing?

Yahweh reigns. It's not telling you that. Although I would have no problem with it. Although in the New Testament time, I would say Jesus Christ reigns, is what I would say, and people should understand that now. but it's about what the meaning of the phrase is. Do you believe that God reigns? Do you believe Jesus Christ is the Lord of all, that He's the ruler?

Do you believe that your entire life is owned by Him? Is everybody own something in here? You name it, you do what you want with it, you destroy it when you're done with it, you fix it if you want to keep it, right? You paint it if you want to paint it. When you own something, it's yours. and you are His if you were bought with His blood. You're His if you weren't, but in a different way.

So I hope everybody here will turn to Him. But the idea is this, you tell people with your words and your actions that you really believe God is the ruler of all. You tell people that you think that He is worthy to be praised. You tell people you think He's worthy to be obeyed. I'll open a can of worms now, okay? So if you were enjoying things, it's about to go downhill for some of you.

But so when you tell God, or when you tell the world that they can shut down your church because they said that there's a disease people might get if you go to church, you tell them that the world reigns and not Yahweh. When you have a drinking problem or someone you know has a drinking problem and you send them to an AA meeting, you tell them that the world reigns and not God. There's any number of worthless idols that our society has created.

And I wanted to say one other thing. I had no person in mind when I came up with some of my examples here, but I actually know people in the room that some of these examples might hit their nerve. But there's some things that we get into as Christians that show that we don't actually believe that the Word of God is sufficient. That we don't actually believe that God has given us all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that we need in Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God made flesh and who tabernacled among us.

And so the Word of God is how we know Jesus Christ. The Word of God is where we get doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work. There is nothing that Christian needs beyond the Word of God when it comes to spiritual growth, when it comes to dealing with our sin and our sin nature in the process of sanctification that we're going to be in until the day that we're glorified and made perfect.

And we'll see Jesus face to face. And so we get into different things. We get into AA. And we get into these non-Christian programs that actually promote another God to us. There's these things called the temperaments and the Enneagram and there's different personality tests and there's spiritual gift tests that people take online. I took one that says I'm a prophet.

I don't even believe in modern day prophecy. Like, how could that be my spiritual gift, right? These things are supposed to be cultivated and understood in the context of the local church under pastoral oversight and with other believers working with you through the word of God to help you to understand how to grow as a Christian. There's this woke social justice ideology right now.

If you don't know what all those terms mean, God bless you. You are blessed. Because there is something going on in the world right now that is frankly the worst thing that any of us has probably ever witnessed happening since the Roman Catholic Church created the Dark Ages. And there are people who are promoting things in the name of goodness and in the name of righteousness that are anti-God ideologies.

And they're deceiving possibly even the elect with it. But it's another religion. It's another God that's being worshipped. It is, as Psalm 96 tells us in verse 5, a worthless idol. Why would we follow anything but the God who made the heavens? the God who is able to speak into existence everything that you see you don't think he can handle your problems let's see there's being republican could be an idol I'll say this being democrat is not even an option if you're a Christian in this country you cannot justify that but being republican can be something that people see as an idol you could get so involved in political issues which are very good things that Christians should get involved in.

Part of saying Yahweh reigns is speaking into political arenas and trying to affect legislation and trying to affect decisions that courts will make and things like that and voting for good people. But you can get so into those things that they become the end of themselves instead of righteousness from God being the end that you're really looking for. feminism there's a lot of things that feminism says that are they sound good there's things that feminism says they're against that sound like things we should be against also that these are boats that Christians can't get on because they come with other cargo that we don't want to be accompanied with there's pro-lifeism people might not know what I mean when I say that But if you study pro-lifism, as opposed to abortion abolition, what you'll find is that pro-lifism is basically Roman Catholic in nature. And it's its own anti-Christian religion.

It will not follow what Jesus Christ has commanded us to do in combating evils of our day. So here's the test for you. When you see an evil that you think you need to combat, whether it's in your heart, whether it's in society, if you really think something's wrong and evil, if your first thought is, I need to join up with non-Christians to fight it, I think you're starting on the wrong page. if your thought is, okay, when I'm doing this, I need to keep my mouth shut about Jesus Christ and the gospel because it might detract from this goal, you're on the wrong page.

I was active with, I never got to see her down there, but I was active with Tara at the State of Ohio protest we were having during the lockdown. And we both felt kind of strongly that what was happening was wrong. And we wanted to say, God reigns. God says we shouldn't take away a man's ability to feed his family and things like that. And so we were part of the protest.

And I went to the protest. And you know what I did is I got my speaker and I preached the gospel. Because I believe that if people there get saved, that's the best thing for them. And I believe Jesus Christ is Lord and King. And it didn't matter to me if the political thing that we wanted was compromised because I proclaimed Jesus Christ. Because I was more afraid of God than of men. and there were people there that told me they were Christian who when we started preaching the gospel told us to shut up we're proclaiming God's word and Christians said shut up they said you're going to divide people I said oh yeah just like Jesus did doesn't bother me at all because he more important and we might be able to affect some legislation that will make it so that the next governor can do something in your state or whatever That fine but you know if Jesus comes tonight those people had a chance to hear the gospel that maybe had never heard it.

Some of those Christians should have been challenged too. So I want you to have an attitude that Yahweh reigns in your life. And if Yahweh reigns, you're going to be a worshipper everywhere you go, and I think that will lead to evangelism. I think you'll have opportunities where you'll get to talk to people because you open your mouth. And people who God's working on their heart, they're going to know you're the kind of person they can come to and say, Hey, what did you mean the other day when you said, praise the Lord?

That phrase is not meaningful to anyone. I'm telling you, I was a non-Christian for 30 years. Those are just three words people said. I would probably have followed it up with some kind of blasphemy just to even things out. but I knew the people I could go talk to when I decided that you know what I want to know more about this when God started changing my heart I knew the people who I could talk to and they were the ones who opened their mouths those were the people I could actually talk to and ask questions of so you are stuck in the corruption of your flesh if you're a Christian and you hate it and you're going to battle with your flesh just give me a high five.

Thanks, buddy. You can just say amen next time. But you're stuck in the corruption of your flesh and you're going to battle it until the day that God gives you a new body. Okay? So don't beat yourself up over the fact that you're in the same battle that the rest of us are in. But you need constant repentance, constant faith constant encouragement Thessalonians says admonish the idle encourage the faint hearted and help the weak I don know which one of those you are It hard to preach and think okay I hope I admonish some idols I hope I encourage people who are faint-hearted, and I hope I help some of the weak, you know.

But you need those things if you're a Christian. You need those things to help you in this battle with your flesh. But one day you're going to be released from all these things. And that's why at the end of Psalm 96, creation itself that's groaning the pains of childbirth let the heavens be glad let the earth rejoice let the sea roar and all that fills it let the field exult and everything in it and all the trees of the forest shall sing for joy before Yahweh why? because he comes he comes to judge the world he's going to judge the world in righteousness by a man he has appointed Acts 17 and of that he has given us assurance that it's going to happen because he raised him from the dead no one will stand before God without the righteousness of Christ and be seen as holy so come to him today turn to Jesus Christ for all your needs not just your salvation needs one final thought I mean it one more Acts 17 I want you to look at this though in Psalm 96 I wish I had six weeks to preach on Psalm 96 13 I do a verse a week maybe 13 weeks but in Psalm 96 in verse 10 the verse I was keying in on he says the world is established it shall never be moved but then look at Acts 17 When the men of God who Jesus had appointed these frankly worthless fishermen who were uneducated right Most of you have like more education right now than these guys might have had.

When these guys walked around the Middle East, and they just proclaimed Jesus Christ is Lord, and Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, and Jesus Christ as the one who had come to forgive sins. Look at what they said about these men in verse 6. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, and they were shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

Oh, he's established the world, and it shall never be moved, but when he wants to move it, it'll be moved. Because God has the power to move the world, and he has the power to move the world through feeble means like you and me. Let me pray. Father, we praise you today because you are glorious. Glory and strength are yours. Splendor and beauty and majesty.

There are not enough words in our language to praise you for all eternity. And we thank you that you have condescended to make yourself known to us. And we pray, Lord, today that if there is anyone among us who has not yet been born again, And that your Holy Spirit would do his perfect will in their life. And he would bring them to new life. Quicken them by your power.

And I pray for the Christians here today. That they would be motivated to greater holiness. That they would be motivated to live lives that proclaim to people the gospel of Jesus Christ. Both with their mouth and that their actions would show that their faith is truly in your word. I thank you. In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.