Psalm 97, we'll get there in just a few moments. I meant to ask you also to pray for my son Aaron. He's going to be driving back to Austin sometime today. It's a good long road trip, so pray for Aaron. as he travels back home. I think most of the roads he'll be traveling are not affected too badly by the aftermath of that storm, but I appreciate your prayers for him. Psalm 97 is gonna be our key verse. We're looking at this section of the Psalms. I think Brother Gary shared this chart. I really like this chart. I think it's Chuck Swindoll's chart. uh... inside uh... just announced his retirement as pastor emeritus there in dallas at age ninety he's going to devote full time ministry to insight for a living seems to still be in good voice and strength when he's stepping down as pastor so I appreciate his bible teaching over the years this is a great chart that shows you the five books of the psalms We are right now in Book 4, here in Psalm 97, which is Psalms 90 through 106, which corresponds to the Book of Numbers in the Pentateuch. And it has general content, he says, and ends with a doxology in Psalm 106, verse 9. 48 overall the theme of the Psalms as we worship God for who he is and what he's done Key verse swindle says Psalm 1914 and we find Christ Clearly in the Psalms anticipated portrayed and prophesied as the coming King the Redeemer the Loving Shepherd the and the righteous sufferer. Today, Psalm 96 through 100 is our context and we're going to focus on Psalm 97 verses 1 through 12, the key verse, verse 12, Psalm 97, 12. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Let's memorize that. Oh, I think you could, you know, if you set your mind to it, you can have that memorized before we end the Sunday School class. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. I think I can maybe memorize that. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks to the remembrance of His holiness. And you pray to God right now and praise Him for being God alone. I will just answer yes to that. We could do that. Pray to God and thank Him for being God alone. Here's the outline. The Lord is King, verses 1 and 2. The Lord is powerful, verses 3 through 9. And the people's response to that, verses 10 through 12. Let's take time and read the psalm together. verses 1 & 2 the Lord is King the Lord reigneth let the earth rejoice let the multitude of isles And many people think of the Bible refers to the Isles. It's talking about westward through maybe including Britain and maybe beyond like Greenland and what came to be known as the New World. Sometimes when the Bible says the Isles, it's talking about the Western world. Let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of the Isles be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about him. Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne. The Hebrews and many cultures had an advantage over us in some respects. One of those advantages is their understanding experience of royalty. We do not, as Americans, have any real sense or appreciation, although some Americans follow the British monarchy or have followed the British monarchy from afar, sort of as a celebrity type thing. I still remember watching news clips of Queen Elizabeth How many of you old enough to remember Queen Elizabeth? Well, all of you should remember. She was crowned in 1952. Is that right, James? Right there, right there. 1952, is that when Queen Elizabeth took anyone? It was in the 50s, right? And I remember she was a young and very popular queen, and she would often travel. You know, she traveled to Kentucky. periodically. She loved horses and there was a particular horse farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky that Queen Elizabeth visited quietly, not necessarily as a celebrity, but she would go there and she loved horses, she loved horseback riding. I'm told Dr. Billy Graham said that Queen Elizabeth was a genuine believer in Christ, that he had personal conversations with her about knowing the Lord. But anyway, Queen Elizabeth was quite a popular monarch. I know she's a symbol and they have a parliament and all that. But still, I think the Queen or King of England has some statutory responsibilities. I think they can summon the Prime Minister at any time. I think they can direct the Prime Minister to call for a vote of confidence in the government. So it's basically a symbolic office, but they do have some authority. And they're still held, the monarchy in England is still held in high regard. We don't have much experience with that. When our country was formed, we deliberately chose not to have a monarchy. There were some who wanted George Washington to be our first king. I think if George Washington had wanted to be the first king, he could have been the first king of America. He was that popular. But he declined. He refused. And he helped guide the country to choose the form of government that we have today, which somebody said, the form of government we have today is the worst form of government in the world except for all the others. There is, when you have human beings, sinful human beings running things, which they run everything, we're all sinners, government's going to be plagued by that. Same thing with monarchy, certainly the same thing when you have democratic republics or dictatorship, the worst the people are the more trouble they cause. But we don't have an appreciation for monarchy quite like the Hebrews did. So sometimes we're at a disadvantage there. The Bible has a very strong theme of the throne of God. God is pictured We know he's a Trinity, but God, the Father, especially, is portrayed in the Bible as sitting on a throne. And we have different ideas of how lofty and wonderful and glorious the throne of God may be, and from which God rules over all of the universe, all of creation. We have a disadvantage about that because we tend to think of politics as pragmatic and politicians are just people like we are and maybe a little better, a little worse and they have their good days and their bad days and we vote on things and argue about things and all democracies are like that. a monarchy, if you had a great and wonderful king, or queen for that matter, it could be a great advantage. Now I'm not indicating that we trade democracy for a monarchy because the monarchies in the world are no better at following God or doing the right thing than democracies are. But when the Bible talks about these pictures, We probably have trouble in the West imagining, boy, what a wonderful thing to see the king on his throne, to be comforted by that, to be inspired by that. You remember when Isaiah went into the temple in Isaiah chapter 6, and the king had died. In a monarchy, to have the death of a king, there's a lot of uncertainty. Because there's not any real clear succession, you might say. There might be some kind of succession. But until it happens, and monarchies are often thrown into great disarray, and there's sometimes civil war, and all kinds of people trying to become the next king. And so great tumult. So when the king of Israel dies, it's a very tumultuous terrifying thing and Isaiah is only comforted when he goes up to the temple and realizes that God is on the throne and He's on a throne higher than Jerusalem. He's on a throne higher than just this world. He's on a throne that oversees the whole universe. So when Psalm 97 talks about the Lord as King, we have to kind of work at appreciating that. I think that we have a, Glorious, wonderful, powerful, omnipotent, all-knowing King who does all things well. He does all things that are holy and right and good, good news. Our King is a loving, compassionate, merciful King, but He is a wonderful, glorious Majesty. So, we sometimes have to work at appreciating that because We tend to think of our leaders as just ordinary people, and they are. And we even have trouble sometimes disrespecting the office or their official duties. But this king says, the whole earth should rejoice. Clouds and darkness are round about him. Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. Our King lives in absolute righteousness and judgment. Verse 3 says, A fire goes before him, and burneth up his enemies round about him. His lightnings enlightened the world. The earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declared his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. glory now some Bible students discuss about whether this picture of the throne at what time is this just eternity past or eternity present because realize God's outside of time he doesn't God is not bound by time. Time is something that God introduced to us and there's coming a point when there will be a day when he says time will be no more. We won't even measure time like we do now. I think one of the most Maybe not the most, but an amazing thing about eternity will just be the loss and we won't have to worry about watching the clock or the calendar. We won't have to be bound by minutes and hours and days. They're great tools for us now because God has made us creatures of time. We're subject to it. That's never more obvious than when we look at aging, or we celebrate a birthday, or the passing of time. There's coming a day when there will be no more time. So, our Lord reigns outside of time. And so, some people think this might be a picture of the eternal state. Or when God sends His Son to established the millennial kingdom, and Jesus rules and reigns on the throne of David for a thousand years. But either way, there's a picture here of the Lord, first of all, as king, and secondly, as powerful. There have been kings in the past, earthly kings, and many modern kings, they don't really have any power. They have a title, they have a name, they have fancy robes and crowns and scepters, but they don't really have any power. Our king has all power. Matter of fact, his ability to control the earth and to make the earth tremble is an amazing thing. The heavens declare His righteousness and all the people see His glory. Cornelius Nantill, I think rightly says that Romans 1 teaches us that all people are born with an innate capacity to sense a creator. It doesn't mean they're believers. As a matter of fact, Romans 1 says the natural man suppresses that. Inside every lost person's heart there is an inborn instinct that creation and conscience tells every person that there is a God. The denial of the existence of God is born of resistance to accountability. It's not born of scientific fact or scientific confidence that, well, there's no God because everything just evolved from nothing into something and life just began as mere chance. It isn't based on that. Cornelius Mantile says, in every person there is a voice, however suppressed, and insisting that there's a Creator. Now, by the way, as witnesses, as evangelists, that's a great advantage to us. If someone is suppressing a truth, and you tell them the truth, that resonates with them. Now, they may resist it, they may hate it, they may despise it, they may reject you, Unbelievers do continue to reject that truth. Someday they're going to acknowledge that there really is a true and living God. He's the creator, the judge of all things. But the heavens declare His righteousness. The constellation of the stars, the arrangement of the planets, the second heavens in space, the first heaven in our atmosphere declare God's righteousness. Even the rainbows that appear after storms declare God's right to judge the earth, to send judgment, and his covenant promises, and all the people see his glory. Psalm 19, one says, the heavens declare his handiwork. So God is not only king, but he is a powerful king. 7 Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols. Worship them, all ye gods. The word God means powerful person. There's the true and living God, and then there are, the Bible sometimes uses the word gods plural to describe kings or powerful persons. I don't think he's talking about a pantheon of mythology like the Roman gods or the Greek gods. I think those are false gods. But the point he's making here is People are religious. It's the only explanation for all the different kinds of religious activity you see in the world. All the graven images, all the idols, all the different kinds of worship that go on in all the cultures of the world. There's not a place in the world, not a culture in the world that doesn't have some history of worshiping something or some things and they have religious artifacts, religious structures, religious buildings. Every culture has its religious priesthood or some kind of activity. Some people make a mistake and say, well I guess then that means there's many ways to worship and many ways to acknowledge the truth. But no, actually that worship is part of the suppression of the truth of the true and living God. The natural man knows that there must be some deity, there must be some power, there must be some something beyond this world in control of this world. Some of the ancients, like the Egyptians, they just concluded, well, I guess the sun, that big yellow thing out there, that must be a god. Look how powerful the sun is. I mean, it warms the earth. It makes things grow. It is very powerful and so the Egyptians concluded that that's probably a god up there. So we should worship the ray, the sun god. Offer sacrifices to the sun god so he'll shine when we need him and maybe not make it too hot and we'll have to worship him. And the Egyptians looked at the River Nile and they saw the life-giving blessing that water gives. Flooding is a terrible thing and disaster, but we need water to live. We need water to keep the plants growing, the crops growing. So the River Nile is what made Egypt rich. because they had this fertile valley along the banks of the Nile River, and it's what helped Egypt become wealthy. And so they said, you know, the Nile River must be a god. And they worshipped the river. They would offer sacrifices to the river, and the river Nile was one of their gods. The sun and the river, I don't think they are gods, but I can almost understand why people would look at the power of them. You look at the power of the French Broad River that flowed through the gorges there in the Smoky Mountains and just utterly devastated. I could see where someone who didn't know would think, here's an angry deity, here's an angry god destroying everything in their path. I can understand why people might worship the sun. They're wrong. I can understand why people might worship the river. They're wrong. But when you get to the Egyptians and the frogs, you lose me completely. Now, I once heard a myth that if you kiss a frog, what happens? You get warts. No, no, that's a different, a prince, right? Remember that old story? I've never really understood the Egyptians and their, Frog God I've never been Alligators or crocodiles Those you see those orca whales in South America hunting those dolphins Did I dream that or was that on the news? I probably got swallowed up by some other news. Well news we've had you saw Steve And there were they called them rogue orcas of hunting among the dolphins there. Was it off the coast of Peru? I don't remember, but I believe that's the area. Yeah, I can understand people seeing great whales and saying, wow, that looks like a god. That's powerful. We should be afraid of that. But frogs, I think you just need to get over the frog fear. But they worship frogs. A lot of cultures worshipped cattle. I gotta tell you, I don't see that either. I guess there's some dangerous cattle, bulls and the like, but as a general rule, cattle are pretty docile, they're pretty tame. You leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. But it's understandable why ancient cultures tried to find explanations for natural events and what they saw as supernatural events, like a terrible flood or a terrible fire or lightning. I could see where, you know, ancients would see lightning and be terrified by it. I don't know if anybody here has ever been rattled by thunder and lightning. Nobody's going to raise their hand. Ever had thunder and lightning wake you up and, I mean, the crash? I have a pastor friend in Florida who's been struck by lightning not once, but twice in his lifetime. walking to, both times, walking to his car. And by the way, he's still a pastor. He's still, I've met him a couple of times. He says, it's terrifying. I cannot imagine being struck by lightning. I've heard some lightning strikes that kept me awake the rest of the night. So I can understand somebody saying, you know, the lightning must be a god, it's so powerful, it's so fearsome. All that tells you is that they're trying to find a supernatural explanation for the world in which they live. But actually the heavens declare the true and living God's righteousness and His glory. For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth. Thou art exalted far above all gods. Then the people's response to these great truths. The Lord is king, and the Lord is powerful. Ye that love the Lord, hate evil. Now, read it carefully here, he's not saying that Everyone who hates evil loves God. It could be taken that way, but actually it's a command. He says, if you love God, hate evil. I command you to hate evil. Some people say, well, you just love everything. Just love everything, but the Bible actually commands us to hate evil. He says, God preserves the soul of His saints. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. Life is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Just as it's difficult for us to appreciate monarchy or royalty with our Western views of democracy and republics and voting and so forth and so on. In our system of government, Caesar is us. The electorate is Caesar in our form of government. So it's kind of hard for us to see, well, here's a king. Here's a queen. They're high and lifted up. They have all authority. They have the power of making war. They have the power of judgment. And of course our modern monarchies don't have that, but the ancient monarchies did. They had absolute power. They could take their nations to war. The kings of Israel, they had advisors. But they didn't have any Senate, or House, or anybody that had to vote on anything they did. Sometimes that was to their disadvantage, because sometimes they did things without consulting God, without consulting the will of God, and they might have been better off if they had to ask somebody to vote on something. But our God is a King, and that's hard for us to appreciate. But the second thing that's hard for us to appreciate is His holiness. Holiness is a concept that is really alien to us, not just because we were born in sin and we're sinners by nature, but holiness is usually something we think of as a cumbersome, quaint, we think of it as some kind of lifestyle, maybe overly puritanical. I guess one of the biggest insults you can do is tell someone, wow, you're holier than thou. You think you're something. It's menacing insult, it's not menacing compliment. People say, oh, you're holier than thou. And sometimes it's because people are saying like, you know, some things are wrong and some things are right. Well, you know, that's just your opinion. And maybe sometimes it is. But if it's God's word, if it's what the Bible says, if it's a reflection of God's holiness, that's a different matter. As a matter of fact, the Psalm 97 ends, we should give thanks that God is holy. I think, well, since we're sinners, you know, it's to our disadvantage that God is holy because we're fearful of judgment. But the same God who is holy is also a loving, merciful God. And a holy God, who is all wise, can devise a plan to save sinners. Now every believer in this room is way ahead of me. You think, that's what God did for me. God loved me. God knew I was a sinner. And God is holy and God must judge sin. But God loved me and sent his son to take my place on the cross. One of the conversations that I had more than once with Virginia Years ago, not long after I came here, she had some questions about the doctrine of eternal security. About being sure that you're saved when you put your faith in Christ. I think the Bible says we're supposed to examine ourselves to make sure we are believers. But the Bible does say that once we put our faith in Christ, we can never be lost. We can never fall out of God's hand. Once we're in Christ, we are secure in Christ. We have eternal life. Otherwise, eternal life doesn't work. really mean anything if it's eternal life temporarily or eternal life for a little while then it's not really eternal life. God said we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and we have everlasting life. Now if he only meant to say that well you'll have it for a little while, then he wouldn't have to say everlasting. He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll have life as long as you know you hold on, or until you sin again, or until you fall. He said if you believe on him, if you receive him, if you trust him, you put your faith in Christ, you receive everlasting life. That means you have life that's everlasting. That's because a loving, holy God has devised a plan of salvation that can rescue us from sin. God is not cheating, or lying, or sweeping our sins under a rug, or shoving our sins into a closet, or down into the basement saying, well, we won't talk about them anymore. God is not only holy, He is wise And God has given a perfect plan to take our sins away. Not because of what we've done, but because of what Jesus has done. That's why we can rejoice at God's holiness. A God who cannot lie, Hebrews says, has promised God can't lie, but he's also promised that we can have eternal life. Aren't you glad that you know the true and living God, who not only made us, but has recreated us in the image of his Son by grace, through faith. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. Let's pause there. We'll continue our study. The last question, how does Psalm 97, 10 through 12 bring you comfort and encouragement? I just shared with you my answer to that question. It comforts me to know that my God's in control. It comforts me to know that He is going to do the right thing, and if He promises to save me, He has a perfect plan. He has a holy plan. He has a powerful plan. And he will finish the work that he's started in me. Let's bow and pray. Brother Steve Cox, you dismiss us from the Sunday School Hour, please. Heavenly Father, as we come into your presence once again, Father, we praise you for who you are. We praise you for what you've done in creation. Most of all, Father, we praise you for the salvation you have provided for us. Father, we thank you for picking us up out of the dirt. You breathed the breath of life into our nostrils. And then, later in life, you breathed the breath of life into us once again. I want to pray that you would give us the message and the understanding and the wisdom that we need to receive from our Sunday School lesson. I want to pray that you would be with Brother Griffin in the service coming up and that your Holy Spirit would speak through him and we ask you in Jesus' name and for his sake.