All the Nations will Worship

Psalm 96.

That's where we're gonna be.

Now, as I kind of walk through this psalm, it's it's interesting as we've gone through this sermon series, the kind of heights and lows of the psalms that we've discovered, the purposes for them writing, even the purposes of where they kind of curated the psalm as they were gathering them together in the Psalter.

As we understand that these weren't just written as a book one for one.

This is a collection of poetry, songs, liturgical movements, and so forth.

And then at some time they curated them together in what we know is the Psalter.

And where we find ourselves today is in the fourth book.

Last week we actually kicked off the fourth book in Psalm 90, and now we're gonna be in Psalm 96, still in the fourth book, but we find ourselves uniquely in the middle of these psalms that are kind of messianic psalms or psalms about the Messiah.

And so there's unique aspects to these, this small section of about five Psalms that kind of separate themselves from all the others.

But one thing that we have to draw our attention to first and foremost in this psalm is that just a few psalms earlier, there was a song that the Israelites were commanded to sing.

Now, this song was the song to remember the covenant of which God had given them.

And so their worship was directed toward the promises of God for the people of God, and that they might glorify him in the way that they live covenantally or the way that they live in intimate relationship with God, that they might glorify him through their obedience and through their reflection of the relationship they have with them.

However, what we're hoping to discover this morning is that Israel is giving a new song.

Tell of his salvation from day to day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.

For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory to his name, bring an offering and come into his courts.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the earth.

Say among the nations, the Lord 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 in all that fills it, let the field exult in everything in it.

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord.

For he comes, he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

And so in this Psalm, like I said, we see that Israel has a new song.

Right out the gate it says, Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.

And so what we have to kind of start to ask our questions about and start to dive into the text and seek understanding is what is this new song?

Why is it new to Israel?

What aspects of it are new?

And what is it trying to communicate their song should be?

When we look through verses one and three, we see that the proclamation and praise of God's glory is to be made known to all people.

You see, this is kind of our first clue.

God's people are commanded to sing a new song unto the Lord and with the peoples of the earth.

This song is new in that it incorporates those outside of the people of faith.

It points to a true reality of the glory of God being declared by all people in joyous celebration.

The song is actually missional in nature.

It reminds God's people of God's desire to have the nations worship Him.

You see, before, just a few Psalms earlier, we saw is that the song was actually about the old covenant among the people of God and how they were seeking to honor it faithfully within themselves.

But this new song to Israel that this declaring to be sung is still about an old covenant, but they've forgotten an aspect of it.

It's that God's glory and the praise of his name was not to be kept solely to a small group of people.

No, it was actually to be all people in all of the earth, all nations were to declare the glory and praise of God.

So this song has a missional intent because what it's declaring for us is that there are those who are not yet singing rightfully the praises of God, and we as a church should be a universal call to worship Him rightly.

The content of the song is the salvation that God brings through his mighty works.

Continually, we should be a people who testify of his work and the goodness of his love for us among our culture.

When we look in verses four through six, we see that God rightly demands the proclamation of his glory because he alone is truly God.

You see, all other gods cannot compare to the God of the Scriptures.

They are worthless and they're void of both life and power, which is a very stark contradiction to the God of the Scriptures, who is both eternal and all-powerful.

You see, it's funny that, and it's both funny and foolish that we worship created things.

All idols are created things.

Whether it be uh tribal in nature, of some actual graven image of carved by the hands of man that reflects some type of beast or aspect of creation, or whether it's even our own families or our job or money.

You see, all these things are created things, yet we worship them as if they were gods.

And the funny thing is that none of them have true life, none of them have true power, and what we do in our foolishness is that we worship created things made by the creator God.

All false gods are made by the material of which the Lord our God created them.

And so, therefore, every idol is just a created substitute for the creator God.

Every idol.

And God is demanding right worship because God is alone, is the true God of all creation.

He says, for all the gods, verse 5, for all the gods of the people are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

That's what he's drawing our attention to.

You want to worship created things, you don't understand.

God is the creator of all things.

How weak of a substitute are the idols in our hearts and the idols of which we worship for the one who created them.

In verses 7 through 9, we see that all people are invited in to worship God.

The people of the earth are not called in to merely give lip service to the Lord, but to give completely of themselves in right worship to Him.

This is a reminder to the covenant people of God.

This is an invitation for the world to become the covenant people of God also.

What is true about God is to be realized and proclaimed by all people.

Because people who are outside are brought near by the worship of the one true God.

You see, all people, when we look through the aspect of God's will for his glory and for his people, we see that this very promise to Abraham, and he made that initial covenant that through Abraham the seed would be born, who was the Messiah, the one to come, that we know as Jesus the Christ.

It was through him would he be the father of many nations, not one nation, but many nations, and that they would be the people of God and that they would worship him.

But Israel lost sight of that.

They held tightly their call to worship, and it only impacted themselves.

It only held true, it only held obligatory to themselves.

In some ways, they were greedy with who God was.

They wanted to keep them for themselves, and God is reminding him, us through his spirit and through this psalm that his glory is greater than Israel.

His glory is greater than the church.

He desires for all people of all nations to declare rightfully the worship of his name.

We also see in 7 through 9 that the worship of God is transformative.

Look at this description where it says that we will worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

We will tremble before him all of the earth.

Where sin had made filthy, we are now able to worship in splendor of holiness.

Our posture becomes a reverent, joyous dance before him, and worship goes beyond the temple into all the earth.

Verse 10, we see that God's people are to call the nations to worship him.

You see, in verse 10, it starts out, say among the nations, so declare this obligatory proclamation of God's people should be the Lord reigns.

If the statement the Lord reigns is true, then it demands a response from those of whom he reigns over.

You see, if we're going to declare that there is one true God, and he is the only God, and that Lord, that God reigns over all people, then it demands a response from the people of whom he reigns over.

The only way that there can be a universal call to worship God among all people is for him to be truly universally reigning as Lord over all people.

This call that we find from the scriptures, we have to ask ourselves, is it a justifiable call?

Is God truly worthy of all people to worship him?

Or is there plurality?

Is there multiple gods?

Is there other ways and other truths?

Is there other salvations and other hopes?

Because if that's the truth, if God isn't truly Lord of all, reigning and ruling over all of creation as creator, sole creator of that creation, then our demand or our call to worship him rightly doesn't hold weight.

Why not give ourselves to other gods?

Why not give ourselves to other hopes?

No, the Bible declares that the Lord reigns.

The Lord in him alone reigns.

And as Lord of all, he will bring judgment to those who do not respond in worship to his reigning rule.

Verses 11 through 13, it says that God of creation brings joy to all of his creation through his rule and reign.

Look at how the psalmist declares that the cosmos will respond in worship to him.

The trees, the seas roar, the earth rejoice, the field exalts.

All of this created order responds in worship, in declaration of the glory of God.

Again, draw our attention to how foolish we are to worship created things when even they will respond in worshiping Him in the realization of His righteous rule.

All the things that we hold as idols, all the things that we hold as false gods, even they will turn at the end of time and look to him and say, Worthy are you of all glory, all power.

Why do we give ourselves away to such weak things?

Things so lifeless and powerless.

When God returns to judge in his righteousness, we will join in creation to worship him.

And the resolve of our song of worship is found in the truth of God being righteous judge over all creation.

There is nothing we hold dear.

There is nothing that we love.

That when God comes back, and if it be his will and sovereign act, condemns and damns it, we won't be heartbroken.

We'll look to him and say, Worthy are you, and rightful are you to do this.

Because he alone judges in righteousness.

He alone is worthy of our worship, he alone deserves glory.

So our main idea this morning is this that all people, all people are called to worship the one true God who rules and reigns over all the earth.

All people are called to worship the one true God who rules and reigns over all the earth.

This was a new song for Israel.

I want us to remember that.

When it says sing a new song unto the Lord, this was a new song for Israel.

They had forgotten that the glory of God was to expand beyond the temple, beyond Israel themselves, and into all the nations.

And they had to be reminded by the Spirit that God's worship would not be confined to just the people of Israel, but it would be expanded to all the peoples of the earth.

They had become so insular that they had forgotten the vision that God had given him for his glory, that it was to fill the earth like the waters fill the sea.

They needed a reminder.

More than that, they needed a new song.

A new song of an old faithful covenant.

And God was going to push forth beyond his people to get the worship he rightfully deserves.

And we're a lot like Israel.

The modern-day church is so much like them.

We love our worship, we love our churches, we love our gatherings, we love our Bible studies, we love all of our things.

And let me tell you something the propensity of the Christian life is not to become more missional, the propensity of the Christian life is to become more insular.

We have to fight for mission.

We have to fight for the realization that this group of worshipers, including myself, is not big enough for the glory of God.

We steal from his glory.

We seek to steal from the worship of which he rightly deserves when we want to fight for a small church culture.

To be so greedy of God's presence, to be so greedy of his goodness, of the benefits of his people of covenant, that we want to keep it small to not jeopardize our comfort.

But God's saying, I need more worshipers.

I demand more worshipers.

Because I am the true and living God, the one who rules and reigns over all of creation, this is insufficient for my glory.

And I think we have two ways that we live this out.

The first way is this that our engagement with the culture is absent of a call to worship.

Some of us have no issue building relationships with people outside of the church or even engaging culture.

You kind of get this really easy.

You have friends who would say that they are unbelievers, or you can hang out in different spheres of the culture and engage it well.

However, our relationships don't ever communicate a true call to worship.

We are in the world, and the world cannot tell us apart from itself.

Our faith is just a personal experience that we fail to ever let burst forth in public song.

We keep our faith, we keep the testimony of what God has done in our lives, so private and so secret.

And I get it, I get it a lot, especially in certain cultures.

If you grew up in church or if you grew up in certain church worlds, then that's what it was.

Faith and life were very separate things, and they were very compartmentalized, and you just kind of had your faith on Sunday, and then you lived your life, which looks starkly contradictive to what you lived on Sunday, Monday through Saturday.

Maybe you grew up in a church world where you learned the language, you learned how to dress, you learn how to act, you learned when to say amen, but you never learned how to make Jesus all of your life.

We fool ourselves to believe that we can ever separate church life and personal life.

Jesus doesn't ask just for part of our lives, he asks for all of it.

And let me ask you this, church, which life do you think will honor Christ more?

Which life do you think at the end of time, as he comes to judge, would bring him the more glory?

The one who took Christ too seriously or the one who didn't take Christ seriously enough?

Will we ever be condemned for taking Jesus and his gospel too seriously?

But some of us we also fool ourselves to believe that missional living can be gospel absent.

Here's what I mean by this.

The missional movement in the church has brought to light certain liberties of Christians that have always been in the Bible but have been covered through legalism and extra-doctrinal language.

But too many of us use missional movement liberties to rebel against our formal legalism rather than to use it to meet the culture on their turf and on their terms to bring them the hope of the gospel.

And this is a big movement.

This is a big movement within the church because for the last God knows how many years we have had churches filled with legalism, extra biblical rules and regulations and standards that are never seen in the text.

And so you weren't allowed to do A, B, C, or D.

You couldn't dress X, Y, and Z way.

You had to burn all your in sync CDs, or if you had a Metallica poster in your room, you had to strip it to shreds, right?

There's all that you couldn't watch this movie, or the only thing you ever got to watch was like the Left Behind series.

And you're wondering why are people flying around naked in the air?

Their clothes are still laying on the ground and they just zoom up to God in their birthday suit.

That doesn't make sense in my brain, but I understand the dramatic effect the filmmakers are trying to create.

But however, we've lived lives of legalism, and then we see this new thing called the missional movement.

It's like, wait a second, they drink beer.

Wait a second, they do A, B, or C.

All the things that my legalist background said I couldn't do, now they do it.

And you think that you're moving in some missional movement where you're trying to reach people with the gospel, but all you're really doing is rebelling against your formal legalism.

You're not bringing the gospel into the culture and engaging them on their turf and on their terms.

You are living a hyper-grace life where you think that grace gives you a license to sin, where Romans 3 and other aspects of the scriptures declare clearly that grace is not a license to sin, grace is the power to stop sinning.

And so all of us, our engagement with the culture, is often absent of a call to worship.

Christian, do not let me see you drinking for drinking's sake.

If you're drinking of alcohol and your consumption and partaking of it is not for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor, then you are losing sight of why you should be drinking.

If the way you dress, the way you spend money, the things that you do in your life are not equally for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor, then you're missing the point.

So some of us are really good at engaging culture.

We go and participate and do all the things that our culture does, however, it is consistently absent of a true call to.

Worship our God.

But some of us, some of us, we don't call the culture to worship God because we fail to engage it altogether.

We don't call the culture to worship God because we fail to engage it.

Some of us here in this church haven't had an unbelieving friend in over a decade.

You become so insular with church culture, and I understand it, right?

When you had to do Sunday morning, what do they call that thing?

Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday school, then you had to go to worship service, and then you had to go to something else, then you had a Sunday evening service, then you had a Monday night prayer thing, you had to do a Wednesday service, Bible saying they had to do this.

When do you even have time to have an unbelieving friend?

Like I said, the propensity of Christian life is to become more insular.

It's not to become more missional.

Even us at Missio, we have to fight that we don't just load you up with program after program after thing after thing that you do to where you don't have time to live lives engaging the culture around us.

We've become so insular that engaging with culture has become foreign and even terrifying.

We stand behind our four walls and we just chuck bombs at culture.

We don't even really understand it.

We don't intimately know it.

We haven't befriended them.

We are carriers of the Holy Spirit, servants of the one true God who rules and reigns, and we must faithfully engage the culture around us to call them to worship Him.

This can be so foreign and so terrifying, and I get it.

My question to you is one, do you have an unbelieving friend?

Like, do you literally have a friend who just doesn't believe in Jesus?

If you don't, you got a goal this week.

Try to make one.

Try to make it a coworker, a neighbor, some family on your kids' sports team.

Leverage where God has you to create relationships with unbelieving people.

Just start there.

Love them, share meals with them, open your home to them.

This is what missional living is all about.

Engaging the culture is not so much seen as street preachers with a megaphone and a giant offensive sign.

Engaging the culture is just befriending people who don't love Jesus.

And I would ask us, do we truly love God so much that we desire to bring him more worshipers because we believe that he deserves it?

Do we truly love God enough that we're not self-serving in our relationship with him, but we're self-sacrificing.

And we desire to bring him more worshipers.

And then number two, do we really love our neighbor enough to just be their friend?

Listen, the church says love, love, love, love, love.

And there's aspects of the church that are destroying what love means.

They're opening it up to this cultural understanding and self-defining aspect of what love is, and it's the farthest thing from it.

But there's also a lot of Christians who throw around the word love and they just use it to cover up their own failures to truly love people who don't love Jesus.

Those are the two greatest commands, right?

Do you love God and do you love other people?

You see, God deserves more praise than we can give him, church.

And we must fervently invite others into worship to add to the singing of his praise.

But this is our hope of the gospel.

Where we have failed, Christ hasn't.

Jesus is the perfect offering of worship that all people might declare the glory of God.

Jesus is the perfect offering of worship that all people might declare the glory of God.

Where the people of God have failed to worship Him rightly and to call others into the worship of Him.

Jesus has laid down all of His life as an offering of worship that satisfies God fully.

He being lifted up to be presented as the perfect offering of worship draws all the people of all the earth to truly worship God.

John 12, 32 declares this, and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.

You see, Jesus is the fulfillment of this call to worship, this new song for Israel, that all the people of the earth might worship God.

Jesus is the fulfillment of that call.

He is the perfect sacrifice of worship.

He is the perfect offering to God to appease his righteous judgment.

And he alone draws all people to worship God.

Christ our Lord placed himself under the rule and reign of God, bearing righteous judgment as one who was unrighteous.

You see, Jesus stood in our place, and he offered himself up, placing himself under God's rule and God's reign.

And though he was sinless and perfect, he bore it as a man who was unrighteous.

In fulfilling the judgment necessary for sin, he became the fully pleasing, atoning offering of worship.

What does that mean?

That without Jesus, we can never worship God rightly.

Without his death, burial, and resurrection, we would never have hope of fulfilling the commands we see in this psalm.

Because we ourselves would be a people who would never worship God.

Now all the nations receive a call to worship and are enabled to faithfully respond because Christ has made the way for them.

In his resurrection, he demonstrates himself as Lord of all, sovereign in reign and rule, and the one who is worthy of the nations to worship.

Church, let us declare his praise.

Let us ascribe glory to his name and let us invite the world to participate in it.

You see, through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we can be made true worshipers of God, and we can joyfully invite others into that same worship.

So what does this look like?

If we were to live this out and this was to be a true aspect of our culture and our way that we live the Christian life, I believe that a gospel vision would look like this: that it would be adding to the church through people faithfully responding to the call to worship God.

Adding to the church through people faithfully responding to the call to worship God.

The worship of God demands more worshipers.

It does.

He is too big for us to worship alone.

He is too majestic.

He has too much glory.

He is too powerful for us to try and hoard and greedily keep the worship of him to ourselves.

The worship of God demands for more worshipers.

And we cannot rightly see the glory and majesty of God and resolve content to keep it to ourselves.

You see, intimacy and worship with God will demand inviting others into that same worship.

Because what we worship, we actually talk about.

Think about it, church.

One way that we have to look at this and ask ourselves is what does our worship with God look like?

If we're going to be inviting others into worshiping God and we're going to be this call to worship for all the nations to come and glorify him, we have to ask ourselves, what does our worship look like?

And the things we worship, the things we talk about.

It's that simple.

Judge the content of your conversations.

How much of your week is talking about everything else but God?

How good he is, the mighty works that he has done, the salvation that he offers in Christ, his glory, his majesty, his word given to us by the Holy Spirit.

I bet you if you took a hard look at your life in your week, or if you just asked the people closest to you, man, what do we talk about most of the time?

You're gonna find where your worship is.

You're gonna find where you really have comfort.

You're gonna find where you really have joy.

You're gonna discover a false God and a weak and pathetic idol.

What we worship, we talk about.

Imagine, church.

Imagine people being saved, responding toward the gospel, declaring the worship of God, and transforming culture.

Imagine what that would look like if this place was filled to the brim with people and we had to go to multiple gatherings or we had to go and find another building.

Imagine people standing in the back to hear the word of God proclaimed, to sing his glory and praises among his people.

Imagine what it would look like if we lived life on mission, where we actually worked tirelessly to see the culture transformed and redemptively renewed through the power of the Holy Spirit of which was in us.

Imagine people who used to proclaim the profanities of God's name, now proclaiming the glory of God's name.

Imagine what that would look like.

Do you not want to see every seat in this place filled?

Not so that we can make a name for ourselves, not so that we can have some type of marker of greatness, or that we can start walking with the other big churches in the city, but because we know that the gospel is faithfully declared, that there's a people who faithfully proclaim his praise, and that we are inviting them in to see the redemption of which God has graciously and sovereignly extended to yourself.

Will you be selfish continually in your life of Christian worship?

Or will you be unable to contain the beauty and power of what He's done to you?

I pray that I'd get a new zeal, a new song, where I would be unable to keep it to myself.

Look, Missio wants to grow.

I don't know if you knew that.

And this isn't some kind of spanking to the church, like we're not verbal spanking, not physical.

Verbal spanking, that we're not growing and that you guys are doing a bad thing.

That's not it at all.

Look, we're seven months old now, like eight months old.

This is amazing what God has done in this church in eight months.

There are church planners who've been gone for three to five years that would die to have what God has done here at Missio.

I am so thankful.

And I would give God all the glory.

But, church, this isn't it.

This isn't it.

We want to see people saved.

We want to baptize more people.

We want to live life on a mission for his glory.

We want to see the culture transformed.

We want to be such a presence for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor in this city that if we ever cease to exist as a church, the city would hurt from our absence.

That's what we want to be.

But I'm telling you, like Israel, we have to fight to not be insular.

We have to fight to be on mission.

We should be a people who resolve to bring others into the worship of our God.

Because two reasons.

He deserves it, and they desperately need it.

He deserves it, and they desperately need it.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word.