The Lord Reigns: Tremble, Praise, Worship

Thank you, Father, that all Scripture is God-breathed and

is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training

in righteousness. Open our hearts to receive

your Word, that we may know you better and be thoroughly

equipped for every good work. Through your Son, Jesus Christ our

Lord. Amen.

Do you recognise these advertising campaigns

and their call to action? Slip Slop,

slap. Yep, protect yourself from sunburn.

Like, be in it. You might remember the

character Norm, get up off the couch and be active. I think that was a

little bit before my time. Don't be

a tosser, or keep Australia beautiful.

Calls not to litter. Calls to action

for everyone in Australia. Well, Psalm 99,

which is what we're looking at today, is a call to action. And like

the campaigns, it's a call to action for everyone.

If Psalm 99 were an ad campaign, maybe it would be summarized

as God's reign, God's justice, and God's

care. And the call to action, worship.

Now Psalm 99 is part of the book of the Psalms. Which was

the hymn book of ancient Israel.

Some of the Psalms were written by the kings of Israel, like King David.

Some of them were written by members of the priestly court, like the

Songs of Asaph. Others, like Psalm 99,

we don't actually know who wrote them. But these

Psalms, these songs, they differ from the songs that we sing today because

the Psalms were breathed out by the Spirit of God.

They are his divinely inspired word.

And so the Psalms are God's songs for his people and

God's songs for us. And as God's

songs, they speak of God's faithfulness in keeping his promises. And as

we'll see today, they look forward to how God will keep his promises

in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let's come back to Psalm 99. It'd be good if you had that open

in front of you in your Bibles. And remember the

ad campaign: God's reign, God's justice, and God's care.

And the call to action: worship. Well, we're going

to start with God's reign. Verse 1 begins,

the Lord reigns. Our Lord in capital

letters in the Old Testament is God's name, written Yahweh in Hebrew.

It's the name that God revealed to his people in Exodus chapter 3 so

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

that they could know him as their God.

And this Lord reigns. He rules over all. There is

no one above him. Today we live in an

age where we like to choose for ourselves. We want

to define our own truth. The saying, whatever is true for you,

or that's your truth. When people say those things,

they kind of resonate with us.

But in Psalm 99, we're confronted with a reality that is true no

matter what we believe. The Lord reigns

and everyone is called to worship him. Let the peoples

tremble. God is

God. And even though our world today

doesn't acknowledge his rule, he reigns.

Denying him does not make him not exist or disappear.

The Lord reigns. And he's

working through all things for the good of those who love him,

bringing all things to its proper end in Jesus.

And this is comforting because it means our world is not like an

unanchored boat just going wherever the current takes us.

But it is anchored in the Lord who reigns, the Lord who gives us life

and meaning and hope. In the

second part of verse 1, the Lord sits enthroned upon the cherubim.

Cherubim are fierce heavenly creatures.

Ezekiel chapter 10 gives us a picture. They have bodies

Ezekiel 10 · chapter mention

of a lion with 4 wings and 4 faces, the face

of a cherub, an eagle, a human, and a lion.

The wings are covered with eyes and they're surrounded by fire and

lightning and burning coals move among them.

Fearsome heavenly creatures and they are God's chariot.

God sits enthroned above them and

the earth quakes. The earth

trembles. We get a picture of what this might

look like when God comes down and gives the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai in

Exodus chapter 19. God made

Exodus 19 · chapter mention

his presence known in fire and thick cloud. There was lightning and thunder.

All Israel trembled before God.

The mountain trembled before God.

And then in verse 2, the Lord is great in Zion.

Zion in the Psalms is the restored heavenly Jerusalem where God's

King rules. In Zion, God through his King is exalted

above all the peoples, and that King is Jesus.

Jesus is the Lord of all. Jesus is

the one with the name above all names.

Our God rules. His Son Jesus rules.

Rules. So heed the call to action.

Tremble before Him. And in verse 3, let them praise

Your great and awesome name. Holy is He. Tremble and praise,

tremble and praise before God who reigns through

His King Jesus.

So what does it look like for us today to tremble? And to

praise God. Well,

someone who has a posture of trembling before God has

a sense of the holiness and majesty of God. We see

this in verse 3, holy is he. Holy is the

Bible's way of saying that God is separate from us. He's unlike us.

He's pure and perfect in every way.

We, on the other hand, are full of sin and rebellion and unholiness.

We do not deserve to be in his presence.

And yet even as we come here this morning,

it's possible that we have too high a view of ourselves and

too low a view of God.

Even as Christians, this is possible.

Now it's true that through faith in Jesus,

we have a relationship with God. Through faith

in Jesus, we are now God's children. We have the promise of sitting

at God's table in heaven. We have the promise of every

spiritual blessing in Christ. Through faith in Jesus, we can

approach the very throne room of God.

Jesus the Lord calls us brothers and sisters and friend,

and we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. This is a

privileged position before God indeed.

But sometimes we can forget that God is God,

that He reigns. We can forget that

we have this privilege, not because we deserve to be in God's court, but because

of God's grace to us in Jesus Christ.

Fear and trembling is a posture of the heart towards God.

Now we might be His children, but we do not want to act like entitled,

spoilt children. That's not attractive.

You might have seen the YouTube clip where a teenage girl

was given a brand new car for her birthday and

she chucked a tantrum. Why? Because it was the wrong color.

We do not want to be like that with God, treating God like a butler

instead of the Lord of glory. We have to come with humility,

knowing that we do not deserve what we've been given. We come with

an attitude of praise and thankfulness, of fear and trembling.

Our God reigns.

Then as we continue through the Psalm, we see God's justice.

Verse 4, the King in his might loves justice.

You have established equity, you have executed justice and righteousness

in Jacob. Our heavenly

King reigns and he loves justice.

This is good news for us in a world that is full of injustice.

Injustice is something we want to see ended, especially when we're

at the receiving end of that injustice.

And God loves justice.

And because God reigns, it means that he has the capacity and the power

to execute The justice that he loves.

And he does. We read it in the Psalm, he executes

justice and righteousness in Jacob.

Jacob here is just another way of referring to God's ancient people

Israel. And the Old Testament has many examples

of God executing his justice within his people

as they disobey him. For example,

Moses was forbidden from entering the Promised Land because of his sin

of not giving glory to God. God's people

were exiled from the Promised Land because of their idol worship and disregard

for God's laws. God executes his justice

and God hasn't changed. God is still

just. It's the reason in verse 5 we are to worship him.

Exalt the Lord our God, worship at his footstool. Holy is he.

While the earth is trembling in worship, we are to worship God at His

footstool, at His feet. Thrones in ancient times

had a footstool and subjects would bow down at the feet of the royal upon

the throne. Well, we are to worship at the feet of our

God who reigns. But here is the problem.

God is holy. And we are not.

In fact, God's holiness just shows us how unholy

we are. As we draw closer to God,

our impurities, our sin becomes more evident.

It's like at night, you know, your eyes adjust a little

bit but you can't ever really see anything clearly.

But as the sun comes up, you start to see things more clearly. In higher

definition. That is what happens with our sin as we draw close

to God. The sin that is hidden in darkness,

as we draw close to God, is evident.

And our God is a God of justice who does not overlook sin or

evil or injustice.

So that's the problem.

And this is where it's helpful to see how the psalm points to Jesus.

Jesus is the one who executes his justice among his people.

Jesus came and lived a perfect life,

holy in every way. Yet Jesus

died an unjust death. He was declared by the authorities to have done

nothing wrong and yet was sentenced to crucifixion.

Death on a cross,

a death that was reserved for the worst of criminals, the murderers, the traitors.

And yet this was God's plan, for as Jesus died on the cross,

he died for our sin. Jesus took upon himself

the justice of God for us. Our sin

has consequences before God. Consequences that

need to be executed, otherwise God would be unjust.

But Jesus took these consequences for us. He stood in our place,

though he did nothing wrong.

So in Jesus we see God's perfect justice, and through faith

in Jesus we can have our sin and injustice

Wiped clean. And Jesus could do this because of who he is.

Jesus is God in the flesh.

The Father, the Heavenly Father, poured out his justice

on his Son because of his love for us.

And God is Trinity. This was God's solution to

injustice, to take it upon himself.

And so in this verse, God loves justice. He's established equity.

He's executed justice and righteousness in Jacob through

Jesus.

Now God hasn't gotten rid of the injustice in the world yet.

He has promised that he will return and he will.

But meanwhile, the call to action still goes out through all the earth.

Worship him. Worship him now

before you have to pay God's justice for yourself. Let Jesus

pay God's justice for you.

And because Jesus is God's perfect justice, we can worship

not as condemned sinners but as people who

have been forgiven. And we can exalt Knowing

that Jesus reigns and that He is our King. So we've

seen God's reign, we've seen God's justice,

and lastly we see God's care.

We're looking now at verses 6 to 9, and it starts by listing Moses and

Aaron and Samuel, who are priests, who in

verse 6 call upon the name of the Lord. Now a priest

in the Old Testament was a middleman between God and the people.

They interceded for the people before God, that means they prayed,

and they communicated God's words to the people.

But what is emphasised in verse 6 is that they called to the Lord

and the Lord answered them.

They prayed, God answered.

The God who reigns, the God who loves justice,

answers his people. God is not

a far-off God. He is not a God who spoke creation into

being and then put earth on cruise control to see what happens.

God hears when we call to him and

he answers. And this is what we see with Moses and

Aaron and Samuel in verse 7. God spoke directly to

them in a pillar of cloud. This is most

likely a reference to the giving of the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai.

The second part of the verse says, they kept his testimonies and the statutes he

gave them. These words

were words that God spoke to Moses and Aaron which were for all the people.

They were written down and they stand as a testament to the fact that God

speaks, that God teaches us how to live.

Samuel, who came later, God spoke to him and revealed to him God's chosen

king in the person of David.

And at different times, these 3

priests, they prayed on behalf of the people of God

when the people of God had sinned. They appealed to God's

grace and mercy for God to keep his promises and deliver his people.

And then in verse 8, O Lord our God, you answered

them. You were a forgiving God to them,

but an avenger of their wrongdoings.

Here we see forgiveness and justice go hand in hand,

which is only possible through Jesus.

And this points to Jesus who is our great High

Priest, who now calls out to God

for us. We see this in Hebrews chapter

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

7. It says, Jesus is able to save

to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always

lives to make intercession for them.

Jesus is interceding for us.

For his church, and God

is answering his prayers.

How comforting to know that Jesus is praying for

you, for us.

I imagine that he's praying that we would know the full reality of everything that

he's achieved for us on the cross.

Praying that we would live our salvation with fear

and trembling and exalt God and worship him.

When you're feeling isolated and alone,

Jesus is praying for you. If you've ever felt forgotten by

the church, Jesus is praying for you. When you feel discouraged and

frustrated, Jesus is praying for you.

He's standing before God interceding for you. Your salvation is safe

and secure with him,

and he's praying for you.

But there is another fulfillment of this psalm in Jesus, and that is that today

we who have faith in Jesus Christ are called

priests. Do you have faith in Jesus?

You're his priest. Now, in the Anglican Church,

we do use the term priest to refer to an ordained minister.

However, this does not take away from the fact that God has made

every one of us a priest. And as priests,

we are called to pray. We are called to intercede for

each other and for our world. One of the values we

affirmed last week at our What Matters Most workshop was devotion to prayer.

Devotion to interceding for each other.

And when we pray, we have a great privilege. We come

before the throne room of God.

And when we pray, we can remember that God is God, he reigns,

and that he answers prayer. And we can

pray for each other.

You might like to think about who you need to pray for this week.

And this is one of the values of being part of a church.

We get to know one another. We get to know what to pray for each

other. We need to pray that

we would each become more like Jesus.

We need to pray that God would grow in us spiritual maturity.

We need to pray that God would give us his love for the lost.

We need to pray. And one

really practical way you can do that this week is by coming along to one

of the prayer meetings that are on tomorrow.

And when we pray,

God answers prayer.

He may not always answer it in the way that we want.

But he will always answer it in the way that we need.

But notice here that the call to action is actually not to pray.

It's in verse 9. It's, exalt the Lord our God and

worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God

is holy.

God's reign, God's justice,

God's care.

Tremble, praise,

worship, exalt. Will you come and worship our King Jesus?

Will you come and tremble before him?

For it's in Jesus we see God's reign and God's justice and

God's care. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, you reign

and are to be exalted above all. We praise you for your greatness.

We praise you that you are a just God who executes your

justice, that you are a God who cares and loves your people.

We thank you that we see your reign and justice and care in Jesus.

That through him, our great high priest, we can worship you forgiven,

given access to your throne room. So Lord,

give us hearts that will bow down in worship and give you the glory.

And move us, Lord, to call upon you in prayer,

knowing that you answer us. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.