Remembering God (Psalm 96)

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Good morning, Cityview Church. Turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 96. If you don’t have a Bible, you can have the pew Bible that’s in front, in front of you, and it’s page 483 in the pew Bible. Every year in the last Monday of May, Americans celebrate, yes, to the four people who said that Memorial Day is a day to remember and acknowledge the soldiers who willingly gave their lives for our freedom, but if you’re anything like me, doesn’t often cross your mind that freedom came at a cost, but Uncle Sam knows this, and so we have Memorial Day. We forgetful people need a day like this, but why are we so forgetful? I suppose it’s the busyness of our lives, whether that’s ours in meetings just rushed all the time, or kids’ sports, or maybe homeschooling, there just always seems like there’s more to do in the state of panic. We just forget important things, like the movie Home Alone. We have rushed and gone to the plane, but we forgot the person, the person we forgot is Jesus, or is God. God has become an afterthought, or if you’re being honest, not a thought at all. How do we change this reality? This brings us to Psalm 96 Psalm 96 is a song of praise that is originally taken out of a larger Thanksgiving psalm that David assigned to the priests, you can find the full song in the book of First Chronicles, chapter 16, which is a book in the Bible that accounts for the things that the kings of Israel did. We see that David brings the ark of the covenant, which represents God’s presence, into Jerusalem, and then he assigns these musicians to minister before the Lord’s presence, worshiping God with the words that we see in Psalm 96 Let’s all rise as we read the word of God together and Psalm 96 Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to Lord and praise His name. Proclaim His salvation day after day, declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise, he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of 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 all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory 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. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound in all that is in it, let the fields be jubilant and everything in them, let all the trees of the forest sing for joy, let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for He comes, He comes to judge the earth, He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. Please be seated. We’re in a series called Above All Gods, looking at Psalms 93 to 100 where we see the Lord represented as this king who reigns above all gods. As we look through Psalm 96 we’ll see specifically different reasons as to why we should worship this king always, and remember him, starting with we should worship Yahweh, because he is the king who is God. Look at verses one to six. 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 as marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord, and most worthy of phrase. 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.
The other day we were in our preaching huddle, which we do weekly, and Brandon had mentioned to Lucas, our intern, that my lived experience as an Indian born and raised in Dubai matters to him and he does sermon prep, and it really touched me. Yeah, it was just a quick pass away statement, but it made me feel special. I don’t usually compliment Brandon, so take that. It might be something small to say, but in that moment I realized that my culture’s expression of Christianity is beautiful. But why does a small statement like that matter? If you’ve ever been a new person in a friend group, you kind of understand this for the first time when somebody actually sees and remembers you, remembers the things you said and brings it into conversation, you suddenly feel like you belong. That is such a unique feeling, and this is what we see in Psalm 96 We see God inviting the nations to sing to him and worship him. He’s not just welcoming them, he’s offering them a place to belong. We often think of this God of the Old Testament as this stern, angry God, focused on Israel, never inviting that couldn’t be far from the truth. Here, and in many other parts of the Old Testament, we see clearly that God is inviting all peoples from everywhere to come and worship Him. Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. a new song, because in the previous weeks we saw that the psalms were to the individual, or maybe to the nation of Israel, but this is for all the nations, for everybody, everybody come and worship Yahweh, He is the real mr. Warwad, and this invitation to worship the Lord isn’t just broad and abstract. There’s a call to acknowledge what He’s done and who He is. What He’s done matters in understanding who He is. Like you wouldn’t let somebody drive your car who’s never driven a car before, or at least at least has license. In the same way the psalmist reveals that God is trustworthy because He has proven Himself, His glory is to be declared among the nations, His marvelous deed among all peoples, as verse three indicates. But what are these deeds? What did the Lord do to invoke the worship of the nations for Israel. God brought them out of Egypt, took them through the wilderness, walked with them, was present for them, and then established them as a nation. For David, as an individual, he like blessed him by bringing the ark back to Jerusalem, and then established his kingdom as well, but what about the nations? What about them? Why should they proclaim his salvation? Why should they sing of his glories? What do the nations even say? The answer is clear in verse five. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens, idol, idol, idol. We keep hearing this word in the Old Testament, idol. What really is an idol? I love the way Psalm 115 verses 48 defines it. You’ll be up there. Idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell, they have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and they don’t make a sound in their throat. Don’t miss this. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. Interesting. Why would anybody make or trust an idol? This is the recurring thought that goes through my mind when I do my devotions. What role does Arsenal Football Club are the Mets play in my life? Are these avenues I go out of genuine admiration to or obsession. Have I made a good thing a god thing? Maybe for you it might not be Arsenal or the Mets, it might be the Cubs or the Bears, or if you’re in the wrong state of mind. I mean, state packers, even. What about music? What does the music you listen to reveal? The statistics show that Gen Zers are obsessed with artists who make really depressive songs. Oh, it’s not funny, that’s something to be really sad about.
Honest confession, I am a Gen Zer. I often get caught in this trap of listening to music about romanticizing life, about sadness and unknown future hope, but then my wife pointed out that I am literally becoming like this music, it is. Sad, there was a sense of hopelessness that isn’t true of the Christian life that kept overcoming me because I chose to tune myself to the lies of this world than rather believe in the truth of the scriptures. Maybe your idol isn’t a sports team, maybe it’s not music, maybe it’s a person, kids, maybe it’s the popular group in your school, or singles, maybe it’s the dream spouse, parents, maybe it’s the perfect child, and so you start shaping your personality to fit a certain mold, you start thinking a certain way, acting a certain way, you compromise on the truth to accommodate your obsessions, but don’t be dismayed. This is not meant to be a mellow sermon, although will be in many points. David was rejoicing because the truth still stands, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but there is a Lord who made the heavens. Worship Him. We just sang, “This is my Father’s world. Here’s how the last verse goes: “This is my Father’s world. Why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King. Let the heavens ring, God reigns. Let the earth be glad. It is a unique invitation to just look around and see, look at the heavens, look at the skies, and know that there is a God. The idols that exist hope to be what God is, but the truth is, there is only one God, Yahweh. He is the great God and Lord, who has done marvelous deeds and is worthy of all praise in all nations. The psalmist uses a fourfold, fourfold praise: splendor, majesty, strength, and glory are before Him in His sanctuary. Imagine entering into the royal chambers of a king, gazing upon him as he is fully clothed in royal linen, surrounded by his ministers. How awesome is that sight? We read last week in Psalm 95 Come, bow down and worship, and kneel before the Lord our maker, the intention of passages like this is to lift you up to the heavens. Picture the divine sanctuary and honor Yahweh as the king who is God. If we’re so easily willing to give our hearts to these idols that are here today and gone tomorrow, how truly, and how much more should we be giving our hearts to the King, who is God of all the earth? Worship the King, who is God. The second reason we worship Yahweh is that He is the King who is holy. Look at verses seven to nine. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory 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. To ascribe literally means to write down or to engrave. Think of like a tombstone engraving. You see this tombstone with this inscription that says Jerry was a great guy, loved the Lord. Now that I think of it, it kind of sounds like somebody who’s not getting a second date, but you get the point. If the Jerrys of the world, mere men, get the title of great, how much more the King of the universe, who made the skies and all that is in it. In the first verses, we see the psalmist say three times, “Sing to the Lord, and now we see three times, “Ascribe to the Lord, and more specifically, “Ascribe glory to the Lord. And verse eight gives us clarity as to why we ascribe glory to the Lord. It is simply because He deserves it. It is the glory that is due His name. It is remarkable that God has done marvelous things for Israel, even more marvelous things for us in Jesus Christ, but we don’t remember that we don’t acknowledge him or give him the glory that is due. But for a second, let’s just pretend like God didn’t do any of those things, and let’s ignore that for a second. Does God not deserve glory for being God, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, is that not a glorious God?
We see in verse nine that we ought to tremble before Him, literally shake. He is the sovereign God of the world, and we are not. We can. And become like God, nor can we enter into His glorious presence, because we don’t honor Him as God, and this might be hard to hear, but not acknowledging God for who He is is sin, and we all fall short of giving Him the glory that He deserves, and then we wonder why there is this God-shaped void in our hearts. Maybe it’s because the idols that we’ve placed there instead, but what is separating us from experiencing God fully? It is God’s holiness. After ascribing glory to the Lord, the glory due His name, we see the statement: bring an offering and come into his courts, worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Why an offering in the Old Testament? This points to temple language, the it’s emphasizing the need for a sacrifice, so that our sins are cleansed before God. It emphasizes God’s great holiness and our lack thereof, and so it’s only right that we respond with fear, tremble before Him all the earth. We have so many people who claim to be great in the past. There’s the self-proclamation of 2024 Brandon, when he won the church fantasy football league, he lost the next year. Alexander the Great, who conquered all these nations till he died of illness at the age of 32 Herod the Great, who built all these awesome buildings, only to be only to watch it be destroyed in war. Fleeting greatness is not true greatness. It’s like catching air. There’s just nothing there, and we all, whether we like it or not, live our lives worshiping and ascribing greatness to ourselves or to other fleeting things, instead of worshiping the truly great and holy God. If God is perfect, which He is, and we are wretched sinners, so caught up in engraving our own tombstones with titles we don’t deserve, then there is a need for a sacrifice before we enter into His glorious presence. We always seem good until we stand in the presence of the truly glorious King. Picture Isaiah, when he saw the Lord enthroned with the proclamation of seraphim again three times holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Isaiah didn’t jump up and celebrate, he trembled before God and said, Woe to me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. When we are confronted by the holy God, King of all the earth, robed in majesty, worthy of all praise, only then do we understand how underdressed we are, how unworthy we are to stand in the presence of utter perfection. But that has not been the tone of this passage, that’s just been me in Psalm 96 What strikes me is that the psalmist is not grim or fearful, but rather he worships out of jubilation. David is excited to tremble before God. What a weird thing to say. The holiness of God is not causing him to be afraid, rather he worships with confidence. How do you do that? How does a sinful person get to the point of worshiping God joyfully? And that takes us to our final point: worship the King who is judge. Let’s look at verses 10 to 13. Say, among the nations the Lord reigns. The world is firmly established. It cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound in all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for He comes. He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness. Back in 2010 man traded 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. 10,000 bitcoins was valued at $41 at that time, so that. Kind of. I think he still got robbed, but 10,000 bitcoins is currently valued at $2 billion. The man says he doesn’t regret it. You and I both know he, he regrets it. What was the problem?
It wasn’t that he wasn’t patient, that’s such an easy sort of thing to say, but none of us would have ever been able to know that Bitcoin was going to go off like that. The real problem was that he didn’t have the knowledge of everything. Guess what, he’s human, his judgment was errant because his knowledge was limited, but that’s not the case of our God. When the psalmist says the Lord reigns, he’s not just talking about a merely physical reality, he’s talking about everything, the Lord reigns over everything. God is sovereign. The world and everything is established because the sovereign God established it. But again, the psalmist is not scared of it. He is rejoicing, not just him. By the way, when you see this portion, it’s all of nature, the heavens, the seas, the fields, and trees all sing for joy. Paul in Romans 8:20-21 helps us understand this joy, for the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. It’s not just us looking for freedom, it’s also the skies, the seas, the fields, and the trees. The soldiers that we acknowledge on Memorial Day understand this firsthand. They participate in a war that doesn’t just destroy human lives, destroys everything – bombs destroying trees, animals being tarnished, everything touched by war just shattered. It’s a painful sight. And this is what sin does to our souls and to this world, to some of us, God coming to judge the world is scary, and it should be, but that just was not how David saw it. Why did David feel different? If anything, he should know that being in the presence of God is scary. One of his men in this, the prelude to the story, had touched the ark of the covenant, perished, gone. He was frightened. David was frightened for a long time to lift this from the previous place and bring it to Jerusalem, but now David is joyful. Why is that? When David is coming to Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant, he understands something so profound for those who ascribe glory to themselves and negate the glory that should be given to God. Those of other nations who worship idols rather than worship the true Lord and King, who reigns, the judgment of God should be scary. Their faith is as strong as a paper boat in an ocean. Light wave will just tumble it over and it’ll sink, but for the people of God who place their trust in the Lord, who comes to judge the world in righteousness and faithfulness, the coming judgment is a cause of joy, like Brandon said earlier, David is joyful because he understands that our worship is received by the same person who grants us forgiveness. Our worship is received by the same person who grants us forgiveness. In Luke 1941 we see the presence of God entering Jerusalem in the person of Jesus as the king who is going to judge, he sees the city and he weeps over it out of compassion and sorrow for the people, knowing that they are going to reject him as the king. Yet he does not shy away. He goes into Jerusalem and his coronation ceremony did have a crown, not of gold and diamonds, but of thorns. Instead of being robed in majesty, he was stripped naked, instead of being honored on a throne. Own, he was hung on a cross out of love. Jesus bore the sins of all who place their faith in him. The king of the world did not count equality with God, something to be grasped. Rather, he was made nothing, taking the nature of a servant, became obedient to death, even death on a cross. The punishment that we deserve, all of us who sinned against the most holy God, was placed on him on the cross at Calvary. In that moment, God did judge the world. Isaiah 53 five, referring to Jesus, states, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Quite often we read this passage, and the words that stick us, stick out to us, are pierced and crushed and punished. Can I encourage you today in light of knowing this faithful God, can we fix our eyes on the peace that He bought for us and the healing that He gives us. This psalm doesn’t call us to be somber. Sorry that I’m crying. It doesn’t help that let all the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, why? Because the curse that was ours is ours no more. Israel was jubilant because they could enter God’s presence annually with a yearly sacrifice. How much more joyful should we be that in Jesus the all-sufficient sacrifice was made on behalf of all those who believe forever. Memorial Day is a day remembering and celebrating the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom on earth. How much more must we remember the sacrifice of Christ that brought our freedom from sin, making us able to stand before the presence of the Almighty God. What a truly unforgettable event. When we forget this truly unforgettable event, guess what, the world forgets it with us. So, here’s the big idea: worship God always, remembering his faithful judgment in Christ Jesus, worship God. Always remembering his faithful judgment in Christ Jesus. It is so easy to forget God, especially in our busy lives, but it shouldn’t be. Everywhere you look, you get reminders of God. In the book Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren, she talks about all these everyday ways that we can think about God. When she opens her eyes, she’s reminded of our baptism, where she is raised from death back to life. When she makes her bed, she is remembering God ordering the chaos in Genesis. What an awesome thing to partake in by just doing your bed. When she brushes her teeth or does ordinary personal hygiene things, she’s reminded that Jesus came in the flesh and dwelt among us, such an awesome way to think about God. There are so many mundane things that we do in our lives that just help us remember the Almighty God. So, let’s try to do them. Parents and grandparents, the Beatles are awesome, and I think it is so cool that parents want to educate their kids with songs from their youth, but obla dee obla da, life goes on without them. It does not go on without Jesus. So, if this generation is burdened with all these lies that they’re hearing, how about we teach them some truth? How about we sing songs that are rich in the truth of scripture. Here’s a message to the church. It might be out of the ordinary, but it is so beautiful when we are jumping, clapping, and singing together with hands raised up, ascribing to God the glory He deserves. Jake mentioned last week about Michal, David’s wife, who was frustrated with David worshiping before the Ark of the Covenant, and David’s response is so cool. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. You know what that means. It means jubilant worship might make less of us, but it certainly makes much of God. So, let’s embody our worship. And for those who may not have a relationship with Jesus, just know that on the cross Jesus’ great desire was for you to know Him, not just as a king, but as a friend, as someone who, at great expense to himself, was giving his life for all those who believe in him. So sing with us, sing, be free. Let this be your first step of faith. May the truth of the lyrics that we are going to sing be the truth of your lives today, and to all of us, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to Lord all the earth, sing to the Lord, and praise His name. Proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. And indeed He did a marvelous deed. Christ died for us with a passion and love that is truly unforgettable. So let’s remember that and worship Him. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, you are so kind because you gave us your son, you gave us your son to unite this broken world to you.
We are now able to stand in your presence because of what Jesus has done. All those who believe in you, let us not forget, Lord, in our busyness, in our weakness, in our desire to experience the world apart from you. May you change our hearts and help us run to you, Lord. Help us run to you, knowing that you are the way, the truth, and the life, and that is all we need, and that is all we will ever need, now and forever. We lay it all, Lord, before you and the throne of grace, that we can approach in confidence, come have your way in us, in your holy and matchless name, we pray. Amen.