[0:00] So our topic for today is the fruit that the blessed life bears. And the question we're trying to answer isn't so much what the fruit of the blessed life is, we've seen it's worship, but our question is what does the fruit look like?
[0:22] What does the harvest look like that comes out of the life that is marked by true and lasting happiness? The life that is experienced, the favor of God, not through the accumulation of toys, right?
[0:38] We can go out and we can buy our yachts and our cars and our toys that we love, but this is the happiness, the blessed life that's not come through the accumulation of toys or comfortable living, but through the constant meditation on God's Word and through the refuge that's been provided in His Son that allows this tree, this one, to live even while the world suffers from widespread spiritual drought.
[1:16] What is the harvest of these trees? What does it look like? Even before David begins, we read that this is a song of praise, a psalm of praise.
[1:33] We hear that what grows out of the life that has been touched by God, what is produced by the one who is drunk deeply from the spring of the Scriptures, the crop that is yielded by those who have looked into God's plan to take back what is rightfully His.
[1:53] We hear that the fruit this life bears is worship, a song of praise. And maybe you've seen this fruit in those around you or have had the privilege of seeing this fruit in one of your loved ones.
[2:15] I've gotten to see this in someone close to me. Just about three years ago, three and a half years ago now, we were finishing up a holiday over Christmas.
[2:28] We were at Catherine's parents. We were at Catherine's parents. And it was the last day we were supposed to be there. Emmett hadn't slept well the night before.
[2:40] He was a three-month-old baby at the time. And Catherine hadn't slept well either because of that. So what happened was it ended up being my turn.
[2:52] I had slept very well. I always sleep very well. And Catherine said, because you slept very well, get up, get up, get him, and bring him downstairs. We were upstairs.
[3:03] And I, if you ever get to know this personally, maybe I hope you don't, but I am very hard to wake up sometimes.
[3:13] And even when I wake up, I'm still not awake. And unfortunately, the night before this, somebody had left a game on the stairs, a board game. And so I was coming down the stairs with Emmett and slipped on this board game.
[3:29] And we fell together. And we both hit our heads. The problem is my head's a bit thicker than Emmett's is. And so when Emmett's head hit the ground, he suffered a fracture of his skull, a double fracture that actually left a piece of his skull dislodged from the rest of his skull.
[3:53] We were out in the country. We didn't have time to wait for an ambulance. His head had swelled up very significantly within a few minutes, like a mountain range.
[4:05] So we got in the car. Couldn't strap him into his seat. And Catherine's holding him in the front, unbuckled. He can't even buckle his seatbelt. And we're driving to the hospital.
[4:17] Oh, what do you expect in a time like that? And I'm sitting there, feeling like you're the one that just fell down the stairs. And here's your wife. And you just broke her baby.
[4:29] And Catherine's holding him with one hand and grasping my hand with her other hand. And she starts talking. And I'm expecting that she's just going to start talking through this with me.
[4:45] But instead, she starts talking. And what comes out of her mouth is, God, we don't know why you did this. We don't know why we're here. We don't know what you're doing with this.
[4:55] But we know that you're good. And we know that you're over this. And so do with it what you want. And if you take him, that's okay.
[5:06] And if you leave him, we're thankful for that as well. As long as in the end, you glorify yourself through it. I had the privilege to see, in the midst of heartache, a wife who worshipped God, even in the uncertainties of life.
[5:34] One who drank deeply from God's Word and who'd taken refuge in His Son so that when all else fails, her foundation is not shaken.
[5:49] Worship, acts of thankfulness and praise and absolute confidence in the Lord is the fruit that the blessed life bears.
[6:01] A song of praise, even when hard times come. But what does the fruit look like? How does it grow?
[6:13] What does it grow into? Worship is our topic for the evening, looking at this fruit that the blessed life bears. And as we look at Psalm 145, we're going to see the growth of worship, the progression of worship through three stages as it crescendos from the personal to the communal to the universal worship of God.
[6:39] Three stages. It begins with stage one, the personal worship of God for His character. David begins in verse one, I will exalt you, my God and King.
[6:55] I will praise your name forever and ever. Every day I will praise you and I will extol your name forever and ever. How many different ways can he say it?
[7:08] I will exalt you and praise your name. I will praise you and extol your name forever and ever. forever. Here's David just bursting at the seams with worship.
[7:19] He can't even contain himself. He just, he keeps on repeating over and over, I've got to praise you. And it's continual and it's uncontainable and it's personal.
[7:32] Here's David, only David, who's put his delight in the Word of God and put his faith, we saw that in Psalm 110, he's put his faith in the one who made the promises and would bring one beyond David in whom he could take refuge to make his throne an everlasting throne.
[7:55] And it produces in him this pressure that's just going to explode if he doesn't find some way to express it. The snack in our house, the snack of choice, and this is maybe as ridiculous as it sounds because maybe we're on a diet.
[8:14] But the snack of choice in our house is popcorn. Popcorn. Now the problem with popcorn today is you buy these bags that are very convenient, throw them in the microwave, you go away, you usually burn them, you come back later, you don't experience anything, right?
[8:32] In our house, we're still at a point where we do the pot. Does anybody still do the pot with popcorn? Anybody know that still exists? They still sell the kernels. So we do this, and Emmett loves it, you know, you turn the heat up, the things like explode, you throw a couple in, and then you throw the rest in, and you wait, and by the end of it, you're trying to like hold the cover over it, and it's flying everywhere, shooting out of the thing, and it's just blowing up with this popcorn.
[9:01] This is David, right? The pressure's on. The pressure's on in many ways, and he's sitting there, and he's got this thing that's just going to explode out of him.
[9:12] Pop! It's just exploding in every direction. He can't help it, and you can't contain it. You can't do anything. This is the visual of worship. When God is at the center of our lives, we can't help but worship him.
[9:27] We're like David, these pots just bursting with praise as it shoots out of us uncontrollably. When the blessed life comes to bear on someone, when one becomes planted like this, the harvest of worship comes almost immediately.
[9:45] The blessed life bubbles over with blessing for God, blessed to bless. And what does David worship God for when he's there alone in the quiet of his heart?
[10:00] Where is his worship focus? Verse 3 fleshes it out. He says, Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. His greatness no one can fathom.
[10:12] When his worship begins, it is the praises of the greatness of the Lord that falls from his lips. He praises God for God's character.
[10:26] Perhaps we could say it like this. When David begins to worship, it is aimed at, called for, and inspired by God's character.
[10:37] It's aimed at his character when he comes face to face with God's magnitude and can't help but shout, Great is the Lord! It's called for when at the impasse of God's character, he comes face to face with God's worthiness.
[10:54] He is most worthy of praise. And it is inspired by God's character when he comes face to face with his sheer overwhelming awesomeness, his greatness, no one can fathom.
[11:12] It's unsearchable. Unsearchable. Who can investigate the character of God without being absolutely floored by his greatness? And isn't this where our praises usually begin?
[11:27] I love this city. I love this city, and I love it because it reminds me a bit of Chicago. We have the privilege here of living in a city that butts up against the sea.
[11:39] One of my favorite things to do in a city like this is to go down to the beaches at the blackest time of night. You can't do it now, right?
[11:49] It never gets black enough. But in the winter, when you don't want to go to the beach, you can go down to the beach at the blackest time of night and walk out to the water's edge and look out eastward into the endless abyss of darkness.
[12:03] And it's at times like those when my heart wanders back to these words, Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise and his greatness no one can fathom.
[12:18] But as much as I'm reminded of my finitude before the darkness of night, how much more next to the infinite God who made the night?
[12:31] Great is the Lord. Our praises usually begin here as a personal meditation on the character of God.
[12:44] But if they are to find full expression, they must move beyond who God is and take up the praise for what he's done. And when this happens, we find that we are no longer alone in our worship as we encounter his character in the solitude of our hearts but are part of a community.
[13:07] Stage two in the progress of worship is the communal worship of God for his covenant. David says in verse four, One generation will commend your works to another.
[13:21] They will tell of your mighty acts. He says they will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty. That's his character. And I will meditate on your wonderful works.
[13:32] That's his covenant. They will tell of the power of your awesome works. And I will proclaim your great deeds. They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing to your righteousness.
[13:47] Worship may begin when we encounter the character of God displayed in the majesty of his world or felt in the beauty of paintings or the harmony of songs or seen in his provisional grace in our lives.
[14:03] But worship doesn't get going if you know what I mean. It doesn't get going until we encounter God in his work of redemption. You see, we may bubble over from time to time with praise thinking we're getting to him with our words.
[14:19] But it isn't until God gets to us that we really know how to praise. And oh, what a wondrous thing it is that God has gotten to us.
[14:33] We call this the covenant side of God. He didn't just make the world, you see, and spin it like one of those jugglers with the plates where he just sets it spinning and looks at it and says, look, it's spinning.
[14:48] He didn't just spin it and step back. God created this world and the first thing we see him doing is walking around his garden, entering into relationship with his creatures, entering into covenant with them.
[15:05] And of those who have experienced the works of God, David says, one generation will commend your works to another. They will tell of your mighty acts.
[15:18] You can picture it, can't you? My dad and I, when I was younger, would work a lot side by side fixing things, doing stuff and using power tools and just put hair on your chest just to think about it, right?
[15:32] Power tools. I don't have power tools here. Power tools, real man time. But what I remember most about my childhood is not those times, but the conversations we would have about God and the things of God.
[15:51] Of how he saved my dad when he was 30 and ripped him out of a lifeless sin. And how he's saving a people for himself and building his church and how he'd chosen them from out of all the nations.
[16:07] One generation shall commend your works to another. This is how the faith is passed on down through the ages. But maybe David saw more.
[16:20] Maybe David saw more because when my dad and I talk every now and then and he asks me now, hey son, son, how's it going over there?
[16:32] How's the Lord growing you these days? I'm able to turn to him and say, it's going great dad, he's doing it. He's doing it for me too. He's doing it.
[16:44] Do you remember how you told me how he took you out of that life? Remember how you told me how he's building his church? Remember how you told me how he's saving a people for himself?
[16:57] He's still doing it. He's still doing it, dad. He hasn't stopped. He's not done, dad. He's not done. One generation will commend your works to another and one will declare back your mighty acts.
[17:15] I hope you realize how integral this is. That our worship must grow into a communal, intergenerational affair where socioeconomic and cultural and even linguistic barriers are broken down as we praise the works of our God.
[17:34] We need this. We need to see this. Where old and new are brought together and are valued together as a fuller expression of God's goodness to us.
[17:47] We need to maintain this. And I hope in your lives you demonstrate the importance of this. Not living on an island with only those who look and act just like you or with only yourself.
[18:02] Especially when it comes to the generational gap though. we have much to learn from, much to be edified from, those who have gone before us and from those who are coming after us.
[18:16] I know my dad would say to me, you are an encouragement back to me as I'm aging and past my prime.
[18:29] It is an encouragement to see my son go on and he still encourages me and I know that as I try and grow up Emmett in the faith that one day I will be going through something where Emmett will have to call back to me and say, dad, remember, don't forget whatever happens, remember what God has done and what he is doing.
[19:00] What do their praises sound like? Verse 8 says, the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all he has made.
[19:12] The Lord is gracious and compassionate. We could say gracious and merciful, grace and compassion, grace and mercy. I have a friend who is looking for a job.
[19:25] He's been looking for a while and is in the process of interviewing for a position and I ask him every once in a while. I send him an email or something.
[19:36] I ask him every once in a while whether he thinks he'll get this one. Will you get this job? Will you land it? And his answer is always to me, without fail, fail, I'll get it by grace and mercy, grace and compassion.
[19:52] This friend of mine, he knows what he's talking about too. He's not just throwing out these flippant words that we like to toss around. He's not just saying, well, grace and mercy, that's a good pair.
[20:03] Like, by that I'll get this job. No, he's saying it intentionally. He's doing it for a reason. This friend of mine, these aren't just flippant words. And I know that because I've asked him. It is only by the grace of God that we receive anything because we deserve nothing.
[20:24] And it's only by the mercy or compassion of God that we are even around to receive it because more than deserving nothing, each of us, by our own right, ought to be struck down where we stand.
[20:39] Much more than a job, though, it is by grace and mercy, grace and compassion that the Lord has entered into relationship with us, that he has covenanted with us to save us from ourselves.
[20:55] Do you know the first time that God is described as a gracious and compassionate God, a gracious and merciful God? It was when he had brought the people out of slavery and made them his own people, and yet they immediately, at Mount Sinai, walked away from him.
[21:15] And he said to Moses, I have every right to destroy this people. And Moses begged him, no, don't. Not for them, but for your name's sake.
[21:28] Don't do it. For your reputation. God says to God says to Moses, very well, if I don't destroy them, what if you go with the people on your own to the land that I will give them, and I remain here.
[21:46] I do not go with them because I will destroy them. They deserve to be destroyed, do you understand? And Moses said, no, we can't go if you don't go with us.
[22:00] And God knows this and puts Moses in a cleft in the mountain and passes by him to show him his glory. And as the train of his glory sweeps past, God proclaims to Moses, yes, I will go with you.
[22:17] The Lord, the Lord, I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, thank God, and abounding in steadfast love.
[22:38] That covenant aspect of God's character in which the blessed life is rooted. But as important as it is to reach this second stage of worship's crescendo, the communal worship for his covenant, we shouldn't be too hasty to stop and think of what we do here in services like this as worship's ultimate expression.
[23:08] David talks of one final level, when there will be a move from the communal to the universal. And I don't think David ever experienced what he writes about here.
[23:19] I don't think he ever saw it, except from a faint distance. And what a sight it was, though, even from that distance. Verse 10 says, All you have made will praise you, O Lord.
[23:34] Your saints will extol you. They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, so that all men may know your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
[23:48] Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, kingdom. And your dominion endures through all generations. When worship reaches its destination and it finally culminates in the universal praise of God, the focus of worship is no longer a blank understanding of God's character or even a relational experience of his covenant, but will be the definitive establishment of his kingdom.
[24:17] kingdom. God's rule realized in creation like it was only known before we all messed it up. They will tell, he says, his creatures of the glory of your kingdom, that all men may know the glorious splendor of your kingdom, your kingdom, which is an everlasting kingdom.
[24:42] We like this word. We talk about God's kingdom now with kingdom ethics for today and kingdom living in the present and the expansion of God's kingdom as our mission.
[24:53] But remember that we also pray, your kingdom come. What we experience now, what we have in the present, are only faint whispers of what one day will be.
[25:08] The day is coming when all will be made right and God's rule over creation will be fulfilled. But that day is not here yet.
[25:21] It is yet to come and our worship will one day be consumed by it. When God sets up his rule, it will so much consume our thoughts and words and actions that everything we do will be colored by it.
[25:40] I can't wait for the day because I know that my thoughts and my actions and my words now are not colored by it enough. God's kingdom will take center stage at last.
[25:56] And these are some of what the worship will sound like. Verse 13, the Lord is faithful in all his promises and loving towards all he has made. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.
[26:10] See, this kingdom is for those who are in need, falling and bowed down. Verse 15, the eyes of all who look to you and you give them their food at the proper time.
[26:22] You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving towards all he has made. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
[26:36] He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and saves them. The Lord watches over all who love him. But all the wicked he will destroy.
[26:49] We will worship this God who has made all right and established his rule on earth, setting up his kingdom among us. And that day will be a day to remember.
[27:02] A day on which I'm sure we will experience great joy and great surprise. When I think of the progression of worship David talks about, I can't help but recall that final, that first book of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.
[27:21] In that book, there is a little girl, Lucy, who discovers by chance a secret world in which there lives a great lion who is king over all the land, Aslan.
[27:35] But for so long she tries in vain to convince her three siblings of the world she has come to know and the lion she has come to love until one day, by chance again, they come into that strange world themselves.
[27:52] And it's at that point that they learn of Aslan for themselves and want after a while to meet him. But when these four arrive where Aslan is camped, they find that it is not only they who have come to see this lion, but members of all races joining by his side.
[28:14] Reminds me of a little of so many of our own journeys. Well, we begin and think that we've been the first to discover this whole new world, encountering God personally.
[28:29] We call for our family and our friends to come and see this God we have found, only to find out that he was actually the one who found us. And when we finally arrive at his camp, we realize that this wasn't just about us or our journey after all, but the journey of all creation coming back to its creator to worship him eternally for the kingdom he has established.
[28:59] Our worship grows from personal to communal to someday universal. And it is the fruit of the life blessed by God when true happiness is experienced and culminates in a harvest of praise.
[29:17] Let me finish here. A couple weeks ago, we stepped back from the Psalms and we saw that they tell the story of David, a man who it was hoped would fulfill all that was expected of God's chosen ruler, a ruler who would both reign over creation and redeem it from its demise.
[29:43] The story of this ruler, this David, as we saw last week and the week before, had a very rough start, but ultimately found its expression in Solomon, David's son and heir, the hope of his line, the king who we were told was renamed Jedidiah, beloved of the Lord, and in whom a lot of stock was riding to be this long-awaited ruler.
[30:12] But Solomon didn't live up to the ideal as much as was hoped. In fact, Solomon basically destroyed all hope in the ideal. He had too many wives and more women besides that, and he had too many horses on which he put all of the sons of the people that he was supposed to be leading into peace and sent them off to war, and he had too many barns which he filled with their grain, and we saw that after Psalm 72, Solomon had botched up so badly that the role he was supposed to fill was barely, after that there was barely mention of David and his sons.
[30:57] The low point of the Psalms in Psalm 79 showed us nothing but God's rejection of the whole family tree. But that was not the last we would hear of David.
[31:11] At first he appears only now and again, only here and then there and in this Psalm, and after a while maybe in another Psalm, and then again.
[31:22] But the more and more we read, the more and more we find him, and now, just at the end, now, just back there, and not just then, now he's here again, right up front, at the center of what God is doing.
[31:38] But when he comes back, when David comes back into the Psalms, in the fifth book, in the climax, something's different. There's been a shift along the way.
[31:50] When David comes back, the hope in these latter Psalms is no longer rooted in the chosen seed of David, but is rooted in the God who did the choosing in the first place.
[32:03] When David re-enters the stage, the spotlight is no longer focused on his rule, but is now focused on the God who rules through him.
[32:14] The shift is fundamental. It's at the center of everything. So often we get caught up in life with our gaze directed at the puppet when we should be looking at the puppeteer.
[32:28] My wife, Catherine, does a little ventriloquism. She's got a puppet named Word. And the object of ventriloquism is to direct as much of the audience's focus to the puppet so that when she gets to one of those really hard words that you have to open your mouth for, the audience is so enthralled and caught up with the puppet that they don't see her move her lips even.
[32:59] But at the end of every act, without fail, without fail, Word ends up back in his bag and Catherine gets all the applause.
[33:13] God, much more so than Catherine, deserves all the applause. And if for a time he has put away his puppet to make sure our gaze is redirected to the puppeteer, he doesn't hesitate to do so.
[33:33] And that's what God did with David here in the Psalms. He put him away so that when he comes back, we no longer put our hope in the promised one, but in the one who gave the promise in the first place.
[33:51] When David reappears on the scene, everybody knows the show isn't really about him, but the God who chose him in the first place. This is why when David returns, we get Psalms like Psalm 103, the only Psalm of Book 4 attributed to David where he says, the Lord establishes His throne in the heavens.
[34:13] And His kingdom rules over all. The Lord is king. The Lord is the one who rules. When David returns to the Psalms, attention is directed back at the one deserving of it, who is king with a capital K, for whom there is no substitute, without whom there is no kingdom.
[34:34] But as he looks at the Lord as His king, we also see that God is not done with the kingship established on earth, even though it is no longer David enthroned but another.
[34:51] This has been the thrust of the entire series that we would see here the precursor of Jesus Christ. That yes, there was hope in a kingship.
[35:03] And this kingship failed because man left to himself cannot save the world, cannot fill the shoes. They are too big. And yet David looks still, as we saw in Psalm 110, to God's time when He will fulfill His promise.
[35:23] And yet when the king comes back, it cannot be anything less than God Himself. And so when in the New Testament, you get all these Messianic Psalms being hearkened back to, you know where they all come from?
[35:42] Most of the Messianic Psalms we get are Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 23, even, 22. It's all from that first book.
[35:53] This was the height of the Davidic line. And it circles back over the Psalms and reworks them in a way that says everything you hope for, yes, I will fulfill it.
[36:05] But it will be in one who is my own. God on earth. Because nothing else will do. Because we need a cosmic king who's bigger than life.
[36:20] who will reign on God's behalf, for God's behalf. It's only in King Jesus that the kingdom David saw here in Psalm 145, the kingdom we will ultimately praise God for throughout all eternity.
[36:37] It's only in King Jesus that this kingdom is established. This was the Father's plan to enthrone His only Son, that through Him we might have life in His name.
[36:50] That as verse 18 says, the Lord is near to all who call on Him. Again, if you were here this morning, who call on the name of the Lord, to all who call on Him in truth.
[37:04] He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him and hears their cry and saves them. And this is why we can say with David in verse 21, my mouth will speak in praise of the Lord.
[37:17] Let every creature praise His holy name forever and ever. His name and the name of Jesus. This is the end of our trek through the Psalms.
[37:28] From beginning to end, Psalm 1045 is the beginning of the end, introducing us to the Hallel Psalms, the Praise the Lord Psalms.
[37:40] And again, what we've been doing is looking at how our worship of God thrusts us into and culminates in our joining God in His work. And we've seen how it shapes us, how He shapes how we do that along the way.
[37:54] But what I need, what I want us to see here at the end of this whole thing is more than that. Worship progresses towards a cosmic end where all of creation is enveloped in praise of God.
[38:17] For us, many of us, all of us perhaps, we can look around us in here and say, this is my worship.
[38:30] This is when I worship. I go to gather to worship. And the problem with the picture is if our worship is confined to this building with these people, it is ultimately worthless.
[38:52] And I'll explain why. Worship, consistently through the Psalms, is done before the watching world.
[39:06] And except for maybe a few heads in here, the world is not watching us. And if we think this is how we worship God, what we need to understand is God doesn't need us to sing to Him.
[39:22] If all we're doing is sing to Him, yes, there is an element where He's glorified by that. But what God wants is for the nations to look, everyone who has walked away from Him, and see people who are walking back with Him.
[39:43] And we cannot do that from inside our walls. Our worship is meant to be taken out from here.
[39:54] And so what I want to do is just suggest something. We've been progressing over the weeks on how to practically apply this.
[40:05] And we started with pick three relationships. You don't have to pick three. That's not really the point. The point is that usually we don't pick any, and we lose all intentionality, and we never have any relationships, and we don't do anything for God's kingdom.
[40:21] So if we pick three, at least we're on the road. You don't have to pick three. You want four, or you want two. I don't care. Do what's right, and follow God, and He'll lead you, and you'll break my nice pray for three kind of thing.
[40:33] And that's okay. Pick three relationships, though. Somebody ahead of you who can pour into you. Somebody behind you coming up in the road of faith who doesn't know Jesus as well, doesn't know His Word, who you can speak into them, and somebody who's not on the journey, who doesn't know this King, who is not going to bow the knee until Jesus returns.
[40:53] That's the track that they're on. Pick them, and devote yourself to saying, as far as I can, I will be God's instrument to letting this person know there is a God who can solve the brokenness of even their own life.
[41:09] So pick three. We said, what do you do with those three? The second week we said, well, what do you do in the times of that? Focus on the story. Focus on the story. Recount the story. Do it as you pray, as you praise, as you look at your Bibles together, as you talk over coffee.
[41:25] Whatever you do, don't get away from the story. And the third week we said, on top of that, don't forget when you're recounting the story that it's not about us, it's about God. Don't leave Him out and what He's done in Jesus.
[41:41] To wrap that all up tonight with this theme of worship, what I want to tell you and just encourage you to do and encourage myself to do as we go out and we establish relationships with the world and we go out with the church and out there in the world and at work or in our kids' schools or wherever we are with our neighbors across the street who we're inviting over for barbecues or whatever we're going to do to challenge ourselves to get outside ourselves, do all of that within the framework of worship.
[42:10] Because we can do all that rather begrudgingly. We can try and light a fire underneath us and go out and find whoever we can and just botch it up because we don't really believe or just challenge ourselves.
[42:23] If you have a relationship with the living God, there is no reason to do anything but worship Him and it can envelop all of life and it recontextualizes everything so that when you're telling the story, it's not, let me get through these points for you.
[42:44] It's bubbling out of you. The popcorn is just shooting across the room. You can't help it. Worship God before the watching world so that they can't help but see it.
[43:01] And if you're not doing that at the moment, recheck why you're all in this in the first place. Because you've got to ask questions then, is God worthy of worship?
[43:18] Is this about me? My little world where I'm scared and I don't want to go out and I don't want to talk. I mean, that's me. I don't want to talk to anybody. Like, just give me my cubicle and just let me go.
[43:29] Like, don't come and find me. I just, I'll find you, right? And I never find you. That's what I am. And I bet that's what you feel a lot unless you're crazy.
[43:40] Some of you are crazy and you can do this without thinking. But that's where I am and I imagine that's a lot where you are. But you have to check yourself. Is God worthy of worship?
[43:51] And if he is, why aren't we worshiping him everywhere? Why isn't it coloring everything we do? Why is it that we can contain our worship?
[44:05] Because David couldn't contain it. So if you do that in the context of everything, find a way to bubble over. Focus more on God and find this.
[44:18] We're going to sing from this, the psalm that follows this, Psalm 46. The first of the Halal Psalms or Hallelujah Psalms, it's in, Sing Psalms on page 191 in the Blue Book.
[44:33] And we'll sing verses 1 to 6 to the tune of of Blan Wern. This is Welsh, I'm told, so I'm not supposed to be able to pronounce it. Blan Wern. Psalm 146, verses 1 to 6.
[44:47] Would you stand and sing? Amen. Praise the Lord, my soul, O praise him, I've been stolen for all my days, While I live to call on my Savior, From my heart I will sing praise.
[45:27] Do not lose your trust in princes, For so many, For so many, Who cannot sing, All their paths will bow to nothing, When they perish in the rain.
[46:00] Blessed is the one who truly Looks for help to Jacob's throne.
[46:18] Blessed is the one who places All his hope upon the Lord.
[46:35] He who made the earth and heaven And the sea is with all their star.
[46:53] He who gives his every promise, Who is faithful evermore.
[47:11] I hope you heard in that, How the Psalms have now been redirected From the princes of men To God Almighty.
[47:22] Listen to how the Psalm goes on, And remember, if you can, The words of Solomon from Psalm 72, And his vision of the king That deemed all mere men Who tried to fill its shoes Unfit and unable to live up To its expectations.
[47:42] Remember Psalm 72, And listen as the Psalmist sings. He delivers from oppression And relieves the hungry's plight.
[47:53] He releases those in prison To the blind the Lord gives sight. Those who are bowed down he raises. God delights in righteousness.
[48:04] He protects and cares for strangers, Widows and the fatherless. He frustrates the wicked's purpose, So the Lord, through endless days, Reigns to every generation.
[48:19] Praise your God, O Zion. Praise. May you go this week. May our lives be changed once again.
[48:30] May we find our God Who is so worthy of worship That we cannot help But be colored by his kingdom At every point of our days.
[48:48] May you worship him In the world That they may know him And join us in our praise. Amen. Amen. Amen.