Rejoice

It's seen in a prescriptive command of the scripture.

So what that means is that God says we should do this.

The most fundamental way we understand prescriptive commands would be the Ten Commandments.

Thou shalt, thou shalt not.

Now, while all of the Word of God is true, and all of the Word of God is inerrant and profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and so forth, we see two forms of main communication within the scriptures.

There's prescriptive text and there's descriptive text.

Now both are authoritative, but at the same time, the descriptive text has to stay in submission to the prescriptive text.

Here's an example of that.

If you read the story of King David, who wrote most of the Psalms, you'll see this little part in his story where he sees a woman on a balcony and then he has adultery with her and they have a child out of wedlock and then he has to get the man she was married to murdered.

So that's descriptive text.

Profitable for rebuking, teaching, correcting, but we don't say we should live like that, because it's in the Bible.

Because we have prescriptive commands of what marriage covenant should look like, that thou shalt not commit adultery, that kind of whole thing, right?

So we have these prescriptive commands that trump the descriptive and bring clarity and understanding to how we should live.

So descriptive text, another one would be that nowhere in the Bible does it say that you should have a plurality of elders in a local church.

That is not a prescriptive command.

However, we have descriptive information that shows that there was no local church in the New Testament without a plurality of elders that ruled and governed and shepherd the church.

So in the midst of silence from prescriptive, we can use the descriptive as authoritative for how we should live our lives.

Now, if that's confusing or so forth, all I'm trying to communicate is that in this text, in Psalm 33, we're gonna see prescriptive commands of how we should actually respond in our emotions to who God is and what he's done for us.

So let's read Psalm 33 together.

It's gonna be a little bit of a long one, so let's see what it has to say.

Psalm 33, the steadfast love of the Lord is the title of the psalm.

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of ten strings, sing to him a new song, play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.

For the Lord, for the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.

He loves righteousness and justice.

The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap.

He puts the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord.

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

For he spoke and it came to be.

He commanded and it stood firm.

The Lord brings the council of the nations to nothing.

He frustrates the plans of the peoples.

The council of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

The Lord looks down from heaven.

He sees all the children of man.

From where he sits in throne, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.

He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.

The king is not saved by his great army.

A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the Lord.

He is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

This is the word of the Lord.

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

So, one thing that we're going to see as a theme in this psalm is what we'll call as God's word and work.

So constantly throughout this, you'll see this kind of back and forth rhythm of the psalmist declaring God's word and God's work.

And these two things fundamentally comprise a reason for us to praise the name of God.

And so we should be a people who give praise to God first for who he is, but not absent for what he has done.

And the word and work of God demands a response of praise from his people.

So if we look at verses one through five and we kind of group them together as one section, what we're going to see there is that God's word and work demand our praise.

We who have been made righteous have a prescriptive command, like we talked about just a few minutes ago, to declare lavish praise.

It starts right in the beginning.

Shout for joy.

Shout for joy.

This means to sing aloud, or even some interpretations might mean to dance before the Lord.

It's an awareness of God's word and work that demands an overflow of praise-filled declaration.

And so right at the beginning, we have this command shout for joy.

And so that should be a response from us to God's word and God's work.

That we should sing aloud his praises.

And then it says that praise befits the upright.

Praise is a garment that the righteous adorn themselves with.

Expressive praise.

Expressive praise is both a proper posture and character attribute that the righteous should hold.

You see, we should be people who are expressive in our praise to God.

This is what this first part of the Psalm talks about.

And it kind of navigates through all these different ways that we can express praise to Him.

But we should be a people who are tangibly seen as praising the God whose word and work never fails.

You see, it gives us this command of shouting for joy and playing these instruments.

And this is how we should express our praise to him.

And a lot of us will have issues with this.

And we'll talk about this further down in this sermon.

But what we're going to see is that there's a lot of people who have issues expressing praise.

And we'll navigate why that is.

But what we have to fundamentally come to is that there is a command here that the way we respond to who God is and his word and work is through expressive praise.

The way in which we praise God should be diverse, skillful, and fresh.

So as we look through how this command is given to us and the way it works, I think that there's three different ways that the psalmist is declaring this should be.

Number one is that it should be diverse.

We should be a people who protect the object of our praise while making space for diverse means of praise.

So we should be a people who protect the object of our praise while making space for diverse expressions of praise.

It talks about playing the harp, the lyre, to sing aloud.

In other parts of the Bible, we see commands of clapping our hands and dancing before the Lord to beat the drum and praise and glory to him.

We see this diverse expression of what praise should look like.

It is not up to us to determine what someone's praise should look like.

In fact, God gives an insane amount of freedom of how we express our praise to him as long as the object of our praise, that being himself, is protected and guarded deeply.

You see, at Mystio, what we want to look at when we look at the object of our praise, we want to worship and praise from a theocentric perspective rather than an anthrocentric perspective.

What that means is that we want God-centered worship.

We do not want man-centered worship.

And there's an issue in modern church culture to sing songs that are more about us and how we feel and how we experience life and the things that we go through.

We are overcomers.

And these things are true statements, but often, at best, they're ambiguously written about a God who does that for us.

And so a lot of times our worship can be anthrocentric, our worship can be centered around us and what we are experiencing in life.

And that's not what the Bible declares.

That our worship, our praise to God should be theocentric, that it should have God at the middle.

His word and his work should be the object and substance of our praise.

And as a church, we have to protect that.

As we're looking at what we're going to preach, as we're looking at the songs we're going to sing, as we look at the liturgy readings that we're going to have here at Missio, we fight and contend to do our best to make sure that those elements of our church-gathered worship are theocentric.

And we want to be a church who worships the fullness of the Godhead.

We don't want to just be Christo-centric and be two-thirds atheist in our worship.

We want to be father-centric.

We want to be Holy Spirit-centric.

We want to have the fullness of Godhead in the scope and range of what we are called to praise.

So while the object is defined and protected, the method or the expression of it has freedom and diversity.

I got saved in a Pentecostal church.

You want to talk about diverse expression of praise.

There's some diversity there.

I once saw a grown man wield a sword in the middle of a worship service.

And somebody let him do it.

Somebody's just like, that's cool.

That's it, you know what?

That's diverse expression.

If you come in carrying a katana, I might ask you to put it in your car and then you can come back in.

However, I have seen such diverse expression of praise.

But here's, and it was so beautiful.

And this is what happens in the church that I was raised in.

We got caught up in the expression, in the diversity of it, and we lost sight of the object of it.

And so the diversity was celebrated more than the object of which we were supposed to worship was.

And so the crazier you got in your praise, the more deep and the more uh affectionate and the more uh zealous that it became.

In fact, but we lost really clear sight of the object of our praise.

And so at Mystio, I want to cultivate a space here where diversity of worship can happen.

I say it all the time, and we're kind of joke about like waiting for the day when it'll happen, when somebody will just take off on a lap, you know, the old Pentecostal lap, and you just the stairs are there.

I just want to make you aware, there's stairs here, there's stairs here.

If you're gonna take a lap, I probably would just stay in this vicinity.

Um, but uh you know what?

If we had a little tambourine lady here that just went ham on a tambourine, that's fine with me.

Just keep it on beat.

That's all that I'm gonna ask.

Uh, because you don't want to tambourine a lady who has also no rhythm.

That's uh nightmare.

Uh but we should have expression, diverse expression of praise, as long as we protect the object of which we are giving adoration to.

So not only should our praise be diverse, our praise should be skillful.

And that should be a pursuit to cultivate excellence in the offering of praise we bring to God.

Our praise should actually be skillful.

And this is not just an obligation and role for the worship team.

This should be an obligation and role for us.

That we seek to bring our best and not just say, well, my best is very horrible, right?

We should seek to better ourselves in the way that we express praise to God.

Whether that be theolog the theologically, better ourselves so that we have a deeper and truer understanding of the object of our worship, or if it's not even just, man, get get online and download some type of singing track that you can play in your car to get yourself on pitch a little bit.

That would help a lot of people, especially the people who are in front of you while you're praising God.

No, but we should cultivate excellence in the offering which we give.

The Bible clearly states that we should bring our best, and that best isn't supposed to be stagnant.

That best should be developed and cultivated to be better and better as we bring it before the Lord.

And so he talks about bringing forth skillful praise.

Third, it should be fresh.

It says, sing a new song to the Lord.

We as a people of God should bring new declarations of praise before him.

And I see this in two distinct ways.

The first way I sing this, uh see this is to actually sing and create new songs.

Praise of God's word and work cannot be exhausted by man's efforts to declare it.

There's a hymn called The Love of God is Greater Far, penned by Frederick M.

Lehman in 1917, and a part of that hymn says this could we with ink the ocean fill?

And were the skies of parchment made?

Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man ascribed by trade to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry?

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

We should be a people who are continually inspired by the unending beauty of God, that we create new song after new song after new song.

We could not exhaust singing about who He is in new and fresh ways.

Man's effort will fail.

When it talks about the works of Jesus and the gospel, it says that the earth could not contain them if they were all written down.

Think about the uh expansive nature of who God is.

It is eternal, it is cosmic, it is transcendent, and man can only grasp to try and communicate it through our words.

So praise of God's word and work cannot be exhausted by man's efforts to declare it.

We should sing and create new songs.

But I'll tell you something, church.

Some of us create an idol out of songs that were written from the 16 to 1800s.

They're not infallible.

They're not inspired.

In fact, if we want to go to inspired, infallible writing, then we would be a church of the Psalter and only sing the Psalter.

But some of us really create some type of idol out of hymns.

Let me tell you something.

There is a lot of hymns written between the 1600 and 1800s that we should throw out.

That are garbage hymns, that have bad theology.

We should contend for deep, robust, theocentric theology.

And I think at the heart of a lot of people who just love the hymns and praise the hymns and praise God, I love hymns too.

I want to sing hymns here, but I don't want to act as if hymns are the only way that we can actually faithfully worship God because there were hundreds of years, thousands of years, of which uh songs were written, poems were written about who God is.

We don't even go to and sing.

We act as if they were infallible or inspired in very nature.

And what we want to do is we want to contend for deep, robust, theocentric theology in our worship.

But the word and work of God should inspire unending new declarations of it.

And what we see in the modern culture, we see anemic worship, we see anthrocentric worship, we see shallow worship, and I understand that.

And there and we we're trying to correct.

We're trying to correct by saying, back then they got it right.

Back then they had more depth and robustness, and it was theocentric, and it was easier to sing for congregations, and so forth.

And those statements are true in measure.

But if we discount all modern worship and act like the hymns from the 1600 and 1800s were somehow infallible or inspired, we're missing the point of what God declares and demands for us to do, and that's sing new songs.

Sing new songs.

Number two, the way I see being fresh in our praise is sing old songs from new fresh illumination of the word and work of God.

Sing old songs from new fresh illumination of the word and work of God.

Here's where I see this.

In Revelation 4.8, it declares this.

And the four living creatures, each of them with the six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

God's created beings never cease day and night to that refrain.

And as they study this out, what some think is happening is that every time one of those creatures is coming around the throne of God, that they see an aspect of his glory that they were never able to gaze upon before, and their only faithful response to this new illumination of who God is is holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Holy, holy, holy.

Sometimes robust theology is declared in simplistic, repetitive, uh, repetitive refrain.

Listen, some of y'all don't like to sing Chris Tomlin songs because the chorus just doesn't stop.

I'm gonna make an argument here.

You're not gonna like heaven very much.

If our robust theology cannot be distilled down to a simple repetitive refrain where in eternity we're caught in the awe of who God is as God Himself, then we declare holy, holy, holy.

These angels don't tire, they don't grow weary, they don't seem absent of declaring the same thing over and over and over again because every time that they come face to face with their creator, they see a new aspect of the depth of who he is, and that is their only response.

We want to get so nitpicky about praise, and here's the issue: some of us contend for theocentric praise while we fight for anthrocentric preference.

Did you hear that?

We contend for a God-centered worship, but we make fights in the church about man-centered preference.

The type of song you want to sing, how you want to sing it, what instruments are used, how many times do you repeat that chorus, how many verses are there?

Was it congregational enough?

So forth, so forth, so forth, so forth.

Listen, you nitpick all day long, and some of us are gonna fight and act like we're so holy and like we're so uh uh standing firm on the word of God, and we'll fight for these God-centered worship, but we make fights in the church over man-centered preference.

That's trash.

And what you're doing at the end of the day is you're making the worship about you and not about him.

Could we be content as a congregation to sing holy, holy, holy?

Because we are diving deeper and deeper to seeing the depths of the riches of the beauty of the gospel.

Why do we worship?

This first stanza of one through five declares very simply, because God's word and work is never failing.

That's why we worship.

There is not one promise or declaration of God that is not just and righteous.

His word produces a work that will sovereignly be accomplished.

God does not speak with emptiness or vanity.

What he declares in righteousness, he accomplishes in sovereign power.

Praise his name.

You see, God is the object of his own word.

To speak in vanity or to act in unfaithfulness would cause him to no longer be.

God cannot contradict his word.

Every promise that he's made, every declaration of that he has made of his will, if it failed, if his work was unfaithful, if it didn't produce righteousness, if it didn't come to completion, every dot, every aspect, he would cease to be God.

You see, we don't live in that world.

We live in a world of empty promises.

We live in a world of people who say things and then don't follow through.

I've been talking about this a lot with my wife and our children.

We make a lot of empty promises about how we're gonna discipline them.

I'm gonna beat your rear end if you right, and then they do it like three times over, and I've I've never once just started beating my kid.

Um, however, we make these empty promises.

Promises, right?

And we and we and our words are vanity.

And here's the issue: my children are recognizing the vanity of my words, and they're pushing the boundaries of their rebellion.

Because they know I won't follow through with it.

You see, God's not like me, God's not like you.

His promises aren't vanity.

His word is not vanity.

Everything that he declares that he will do, he will see faithfully accomplished through his sovereign power.

And praise God for the righteous.

He never makes threats of beating our rear ends.

For the righteous, he promises life.

For the righteous, he promises that they would overcome.

For the righteous, he promises that they would be brought into glory.

For the righteous, he promises himself.

God's word is not vain, and his work is not unfaithful.

I love what uh Charles Spurgeon says.

And and and his treasury of David stuff is so good.

So this whole sermon series, you're just gonna hear at least one or two quotes from Charles Spurgeon every week.

So just deal with it.

However, he says this about God's faithfulness.

God writes with a pen that never blots, speaks with a tongue that never slips, and acts with a hand which never fails.

This is the God of whom we serve.

This is the God of whom deserves our praise.

Verses 6 through 9, we start to see that the word and work of God are seen and known by all, but not in a way that produces praise.

You see, we can clearly see the sovereign power and might of God in creation.

While some suppress the truth, in the end, all will be unable to deny it.

You see, that's what we see in Romans.

Paul lays out for us that we can see the glory and majesty of God in creation, but we suppress the truth.

We push it down, we act as if it's not real.

But what the Bible declares for us is that in the end, all of his image-bearers will be unable to deny his glory and power.

Every single person, though even some sleep now, will be resurrected, to be awakened, to even out of their own mouth declare, you alone are God.

We cannot escape a demand to declare his power.

So the word and work of God are seen by all.

And this is a both a kind of a plea and a prophecy.

As we look at this, we see that let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

There's this aspect of a plea, but it's also prophetic in nature because the adoration of God will be universal in scope.

When Jesus comes back and cracks the sky in half, the aspect of his coming will be cosmic.

There will not be one eye that will be unable to see his return in glory.

And so, in a prophetic nature, all the earth will fear the Lord, and all the inhabitants of the world will stand in awe of who he is.

While all are not equipped to offer him praise, all are called to stand in fearful awe of who he is.

But we who are his righteous, we see the work of his hand and have been equipped by his spirit to offer him praise in response.

You see, we're not lumped in to that world.

We're not lumped in to the people who should fear him in a sense of removal of relationship and reconciliation with him.

No, we are set apart.

We are the righteous who have been consecrated by God, and through that we've been equipped by his spirit to offer him praise in response to his word and work.

Verses 10 through 12, what we're gonna see here in this kind of lumping of passage, we're gonna see that the cause of God is never threatened.

His sovereign throne is never in jeopardy.

The nations of the earth are set in the shadow of the nation which God has established and is establishing.

While we may look upon the culture and see her spiraling in wickedness, we should not fear, because the righteousness of God will be the nation that stands forever.

The nation of God is not established by earthly borders, it's established through his sovereign will.

And we can get this way.

I know if you're looking at your like Facebook feed this week, it is full of fear.

It is full of fear.

And it's full of Christians who are cowering because of culture.

I see it like crazy.

Look at what's happening.

I kind of play this joke, but when my grandmother was alive, God bless her, she called when I called to tell her the news, uh, uh we were pregnant with our fourth child, she just responded with, oh, Justin, why?

I say, yay.

Because the world to her was so overpowering.

It was so spiraling into wickedness.

But this is not what this psalm declares.

The psalm declares that God's plans cannot be overthrown, his purposes cannot be thwarted.

God will accomplish all that he has determined to do, and that he has created for himself, he has chosen for himself a people who will be his nation.

And in the Old Testament, we understand this as a geopolitical group of people, but in the New Testament we see it that it expands to all image bearers of whom he died for, that they would be brought into the nation of God because of his good choosing, of the power of his sovereign will, he has developed a nation, not established by earthly borders, but established by his spirit.

And you see, that nation will overcome.

That nation cannot be destroyed.

There is no power on earth that could ever thwart it.

God has established it, God has ransomed it through the blood of his son, and God has brought its victory to be through the resurrection of Jesus.

There is nothing that can stand in the way of God's sovereign throne.

Verses 13 through 19 declare that the Lord sees all, and he's either going to extend judgment or blessing.

The scope of God's seeing is universal.

There's nothing that can be hidden from God.

He sees all and he knows all.

It says that he has fashioned every heart with the workmanship of his hand.

He observes all of our deeds.

To the wicked, he extends a judgment that no earthly power can thwart.

To his righteous, he extends to them a blessing of life and provision.

You see, he says this that there is nothing that can stand in his way.

The king is not saved by a great army.

A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.

God is saying, I see all things.

Are you terrified by the culture?

Don't be, because I see it.

Culture can't win.

Culture can't win.

There is no power on earth that can stand against God and his purposes.

And to the wicked, we can rest assured, church, what he sees, he will extend judgment.

But to us, whom he also sees, whose his eye is upon, he gives us blessing and life and provision.

To all of whom he has chosen to be a people of his nation, he gives his son Jesus to be their life and provision.

Praise him.

Praise him.

Verses 20 through 22 kind of resolves this psalm in a prayer and in another declaration of praise.

In the midst of unrighteousness and wickedness, we set our eyes not on the culture, not onto wickedness, but onto the unfailing righteous love of God.

While this psalm begins with a prescriptive command, it ends with a humble supplication.

Trusting that God is who he says he is, our only hope.

The culmination of this is found in the confession of who Jesus is.

You see, when we have to trust that God is who he says he is, he is our only hope, we have to take God's word at face value.

We have to believe in his promises.

And what we see in the Gospels is that there's a time where Jesus is asking his disciples, who does this world say that I am?

Who does this world declare me to be?

And some say, well, maybe Moses or maybe Elijah or maybe another prophet.

And Peter says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus says, Blessed are you, Simon, Peter, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven revealed this to you, and upon this rock I will build my church.

You see, the very identity of who Jesus says that He is is the foundation of which this church is built on.

It's unbreakable, it's unshakable, and it's founded firm on the fact that He is our hope, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

The culmination of our hope is found in the confession of who Jesus is.

And there remains a waiting for the righteous.

Living in the midst of what we call the already not yet, we plead to be comforted by the unfailing covenantal love of God.

Listen, the beauty of the church is that God loves us no matter what we do.

God determined through his word that he would love us in spite of us.

We're gonna jump next uh sermon series into the book of Hosea, but to give a kind of image of this, God told his prophet to marry this prostitute.

And God said, She will not be faithful to you.

She will run out on you, she will keep living the life that she's living, she will remain in wickedness, but you will never cease to pursue her and chase her down with your unending love.

That's my love for the church.

God knew how unfaithful we would be.

God knew our heart would be prone to wander.

God knew that we would wake up every morning and eat the fruit that Adam ate.

We would try to put our hope and our love and our joy in things that would fail us.

God knew we wouldn't trust him.

God knew that we would waver in our faith.

And God said, There's nothing that's going to stop me.

Our success, our victory has nothing to do with us.

Everything is accomplished through God's just and righteous word and through his unfailing work.

We are the fruit of the word and work of God.

And he's his name.

His name will not be put to shame.

He'll see it through.

That's that's the confidence that we should have, church.

When we look at this culture, when we look at this world, do we believe in a God who is bigger than what we see on Facebook?

Do we believe in a God who is bigger than what we see in our culture?

Do we believe in a God who will not permit his word and work to fail?

And do we believe enough that we are a part of that word and work for the sake of his name and the glory of who he is?

Do we believe in that?

And it's okay for us as a church to plead, God, help my unbelief.

That's okay.

That's okay.

God, comfort me.

Help my unbelief.

Let me not set my gaze on this culture, this world, or my circumstances, but let me set my gaze on your unfailing covenantal love.

So, what's the main idea of this psalm?

I think it's this that those whom God has made righteous become the people of his praise.

Those whom God has made righteous become the people of his praise.

It is through his just word and faithful work that he creates a nation of people for his praise.

That's what he's doing.

He's creating a people for his praise.

And that's how we are called to respond.

That's how we're commanded to respond, but it should not be in this obligation, this weary and heavy burden that we carry.

Oh, I guess I gotta go praise God again.

No, we should actually be joyfully responding from the relationship that we already have established with him through the finished work of Christ Jesus.

That we praise him because we've experienced and felt and lived in the sanctifying, uh, reconciling work of Christ.

It should be a natural response.

All of God's commands, all of the ways in which he calls us to live, should not be a heavy burden for those who have been reconciled to God through Christ.

All of God's commands should be this life-giving power that we work from our relationship in joyful obedience to who he is.

And the call to praise him should be in that.

But some of us fail to do this in one of two ways.

Some of us look to our circumstances and produce sorrow rather than to God and produce praise.

We allow the culture to dictate our joy and our praise because we don't fully believe the word and work of God.

As we encounter a culture full of injustices, let us look to the cross where perfect justice is.

The cross of Jesus is our guarantee that righteousness will reign.

Jesus entrusted himself to him who always judges righteously.

Jesus did this in order that all of our injustice might be put to death and we might live to true justice in him.

The great exchange and the establishment of a kingdom happened at the cross.

We should be a people who praise because we see that rather than our culture.

Look, if you're gonna set your gaze on what's happening around you in your culture, you're gonna be filled with misery.

You're gonna be filled with defeat, you're gonna be filled with sorrow.

It's not that we as Christians should be blind to what's happening in our culture, of how we engage it with the truth of the gospel.

I'm not talking about retreatism and pull away and blind yourself and go hide in some bunker somewhere.

That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about be honest with what's happening in culture, be honest where it seems like wickedness and unrighteousness is prevailing, but be more honest about the truth of what God has done through his word and work and that his plans and purposes cannot fail.

Christ wins.

And so we can either let our circumstances produce sorrow, or we can allow our gaze to be set in God and produce praise.

And it might not even be about culture, it might just be something you're going through.

Maybe something's happening in your life, whether it be a trial, a sickness, a circumstance, there's something personal, and maybe it's been hidden, and maybe you're just uh uh kind of making it an idol of what's being dictated in your life and heart, of how you respond to who God is.

I know I can get in these situations where I get full of different anxiety or fear, and I keep it hidden, I push it down, and it doesn't really go anywhere, right?

It just keeps popping its ugly head back up, and I never deal with it honestly.

And the way that it affects me, the way that it affects my ability to be in relationship with God and be in relationship with his people is so detrimental.

And it produces more sorrow than it does praise.

So we have to be honest.

We have to bring that which is in darkness into light, that the glory and promises of Christ can put it to death.

Blessed is the man whose darkness has God's light shined upon it.

Some of us, though, some of us look to our personhood as a reason to not express praise.

We may love robust theology, but we don't permit it to foster expressive doxology.

Here's what I mean.

Some of us love to brag about all the things we know about the Bible, right?

Or some of us just love to get heady and we love to study a systematic theology or biblical theology or covenant theology or you name it, I'm gonna do it.

Look, I get it, I understand it.

But too many of us, especially in the Reformed Church, we don't really know our theology.

We don't know our theology in a way that actually transforms our lives, because that's good theology.

You wanna know good theology?

Let me look at the way you live.

Let me look at the way that you obey God.

Let me look at the way you praise Him.

If your theology does not produce a deep expressive doxology or worship of who he is, then your theology is wasted.

The scripture is full of commands for what praise unto God should look like.

We don't get the opportunity to disobey it because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

Look, some of us are gonna look at our personality, our person, and we're gonna say, I'm just not that type of guy, or I'm not that type of woman, or I don't really get expressive, or it's hard for me to sing out loud, or it's hard for me to lift my hands, or I might get embarrassed, or I might, I'm just a person that wants to be kind of left alone, or so forth like that.

Let me tell you something.

A life of godliness is tempered and formed by obedience to things we once and still might find uncomfortable.

We didn't come out of the womb trying to obey and love God.

We came out of the womb trying to obey and love sin and Satan and self.

Every aspect of godliness and obedience to some measure is uncomfortable for you.

To live a life where your eyes are only for your wife, where you fight the temptation of lusts, to live a life where you walk in integrity and you don't speak lies, to live a life where you're generous and not hoarding, trying to keep to yourself.

All these aspects of trying to live this life in some measure and way is uncomfortable.

That's how our life is tempered, that's how our life is formed in godliness, and so is this command to praise God with a shout of joy, with loud proclamation, with the dancing of self, with clapping of hands, with raising of hands.

This is what the commands of Scripture declare.

Of course it's uncomfortable.

You used to not love God.

I don't care about your personhood, your personality.

I don't care what Myers-Briggs score you have.

Let me tell you something.

To worship God in an expressive, passionate adoration is not a suggestion and it is not up for a possibility.

We don't get to disobey it because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

Men, we should lead in this.

I'm telling you right now, we should lead in this as expressive, passionate worship of who God is.

Our wives and our children should see us humble ourselves in our personality and personhood before a God because here's what heaven will be: heaven will be you won't be able to stand up straight before his throne.

You will fall prostrate before him, you will weep in his glory and awe of who he is.

You will cast all your riches of jewels and crowns before him, everything that you have accomplished and he has given you as a gift.

You will give back to him in worship.

You won't be able to not express your praise of who he is in heaven.

Practice it now.

Let your children see you humble yourself before God.

Let them see you cry as you discover the beauty and richness of his gospel.

Let them see you become beside yourself that his name might be praised.

So, what's the gospel conviction here?

I think it's this that Jesus' shouts of agony established for his people shouts of praise.

Jesus' shouts of agony established for his people shouts of praise.

We would not Have shouts of praise apart from the shouts of agony from our Savior.

There would be for us no victory, there would be for us no righteousness, there would be for us no nation to belong to.

We would be left with sorrow and hopelessness.

But in Christ, our sorrow is exchanged for joy, our tears for laughter, our apathy for dancing, our wailing for rejoicing, and our unrighteousness for his righteousness.

Children of God's holy nation, radically express your praise unto his glorious name.

How do we live this out?

Three ways I've got.

Number one, rejoice obediently.

Obey.

Rejoice obediently.

Not because you feel like it necessarily.

Sometimes we have to praise and shouts of joy and singing and clapping of hands in spite of how we feel.

That's okay.

There's a lot of days that my wife probably wakes up and doesn't really feel like loving me that day.

Praise God she has to.

That's covenant.

Rejoice obediently.

Practice obedience to have a life more rightly conformed to God's revealed will.

To participate in expressive praise is to have a taste of heaven now.

That's what I'm saying.

Sometimes we get so anthrocentric in the way that we express our adoration and worship of God.

I'm telling you, you're gonna hate heaven.

And I know that's so hypothetical and it so falls short because you'll be a glorified person and sin will no longer reign in your body, and all these other things, and all of you theological nerds out there are trumping me in your brain right now.

I get it.

You're gonna love heaven because God has made you holy and perfect, and you will perfectly worship him in heaven over and ever.

Blah blah blah.

Get it, I understand.

Conform yourself to that now then.

Conform yourself to that now, then.

Get a taste of heaven now.

So rejoice obediently.

Number two, remember his word.

To be able to remember means we must first have knowledge of it.

In the face of temptation and unrighteousness, God's word is a weapon for us to wield.

When we look at Jesus' temptation in the desert, he was able to fight off the temptation of Satan by remembering God's word.

The promises of God sustain Christ in the midst of agony and turmoil that he might remain faithful in praise of his glorious name.

You see, we have to know God's word.

We have to remember God's word because again, if we allow our gaze to be set on culture and circumstances, we will have no hope.

If we remember God's word, that it is just and that it is unfailing, then we will have our hearts and souls filled with joy and with hope and with confidence that God will see through what He has promised He would.

I love uh this picture of Revelation where the martyrs are standing around the throne of God, and it declares that they overcame, even in the face of death, they overcame by the word of their testimony and the blood of the Lamb.

It reminds me reading a story of these South Korean Christians who were exposed in their underground church, and they were brought out and laid down, shoulder to shoulder on the ground in front of a steamroller.

And as that steamroller took off to roll over dozens of faithful Christians, they sang hymns to the praise of his name because their eyes weren't set on their immediate circumstance.

Their eyes were set to glory, the victory of Christ, his overcoming power, and even in the face of death, they could declare expressive praise.

Sometimes I fail to give praise when the gas station's out of a Reese's fast break.

Right?

I mean, our circumstances are so goofy that we allow to affect us and rob us of our joy.

Thirdly, reflect on his works.

Allow the story of God's work in your life, woo your affections for him.

Some of you who are married might know this, right?

When you have that time of pillow talk, and maybe you start talking about how things used to be, or the things that you used to do, remember when we did this, or remember when that happened, or remember when, and doesn't that start stirring and stoking the embers of the affection of your partner, of your spouse?

Oh, do you remember?

Do you remember?

Do that with God.

God, I remember when you did this.

I remember when I didn't have hope and you came through.

I remember when I didn't have provision and you provided.

I remember when I didn't know how I was gonna make it through tomorrow and yet you saw me through, you carried me through the fire.

God, I remember.

Let that woo your affections for him.

Recount the work of his hand, recount the ways in which you have seen God move in your life and in the life of others.

Praise God.

I remember when my brother didn't love you, I remember when my own father didn't serve you.

I remember when I when I saw you move mightily and victoriously through others' lives.

Let the word and work of God be a fountain of our praise.

Even if we have to joyfully lose the world so that we might gain the fullness of heaven.

Let his word and work cause expressive praise to be in us.