And I realize for those of you that are watching live stream, this will be a little challenging, but I hope that you'll still get the benefit of this. So I gave everybody here a sheet of paper. I have a pencil if you need a pencil. How about if you don't mind, Rob, just kind of pass them out. Well, I guess you can use the hymn book or something to write on. Next Wednesday night, I want to start a study on the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about who he is and what he does, and we'll jump into that next Wednesday night. But tonight, I just want to look at this 135th Psalm. 21 verses and I want to get you involved in this a little bit and kind of a little Bible study Let me read the psalm and then I'll tell you what I want you to do Praise you the Lord Praise ye the name of the Lord praise him. Oh you servants of the Lord Ye that stand in the house of the Lord in the courts of the house of our God praise the Lord The Lord is good sing praises unto his name for it is pleasant For the Lord hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure. For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all the deep places. He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He maketh lightnings for the rain. He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries, who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of the old Egypt upon Pharaoh and upon all his servants, who smote great nations and slew mighty kings, Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan, and gave their land for an heritage unto Israel his people. Thy name, O Lord, endureth forever, and thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations. For the Lord will judge his people. He will repent himself concerning his servants. The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like unto them. So is everyone that trusteth in them. Bless the Lord, O house of Israel. Bless the Lord, O house of Aaron. Bless the Lord, O house of Levi. Ye that fear the Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, which dwelt at Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord. What I would like for you to do is to go back through this psalm and to kind of note, you know, when we were, if you were in here in Sunday school and we were talking about Bible study, we're in the observation stage. What's in this psalm? And I tried to help you a little bit by kind of dividing it up. So let's do this first one together. So verses one and two, not asking you to make application, just asking you, all right, so what is in verses one and two? Just summarize what you find there. What would you say it is? Praise the Lord. But who? Hm? Which servants? So who would that be? Yeah, and the Levites. So verses one and two, we could say is a call to the priests and Levites to praise the Lord. So what about verse three? I divided it up into two different thoughts, but in verse three, You have what? OK, there is a call to praise the Lord because he is good. What else? What else is in verse three? All right, there's a call, not only to praise Him for His good, but a call to sing praise to the Lord. And why is that? What does it say? Why is that? Because it's pleasant. So we could say, you can word it however you want. This is just the way I worded it, a call to sing praise to the Lord for it is pleasant. What about verse four? What? Okay, so put it in the form of a statement or a sentence or whatever. Okay. What, Rob, what were you saying? Now, notice that verse four starts with the word what? Four. So, what does that four look back to? In praising the Lord. So, let's back up. What's the theme of this psalm? Praise the Lord. That's why I put hallelujah, all right? So pretty much everything could begin with praise the Lord or a call. In some cases, it's a call. When he says praise the Lord in verse one, he's calling on us to praise the Lord and he's calling on the priests and Levites to praise the Lord. And he gives us the reasons why we should praise the Lord because he is good. We should praise the Lord in song because it's present. We should praise the Lord, verse four, for what? choosing Jacob and Israel, or really they're both the same. It's just two different ways of referring to Israel, okay? Which he calls his what? In verse four, he calls them his peculiar treasure. So, tells us something about how God feels about Israel. Now, in verses five through 12, there's kind of a, it's kind of a, it's all kind of together. Verse five would give us kind of the theme, a sub-theme, if you will, in this psalm. What is it that he's gonna talk about in verses five through 12? How great God is. And the greatness is compared to what? Yeah, so praising the Lord because he is greater than all the gods. all the idols of men. All right, in what way do we see that he is greater than all the gods? Well, what does, what does it say? What does verse six say? He's greater than all the gods in that he, what? Well, he is the creator, but it doesn't speak specifically about the act of creation, but Yeah, right. Yeah, he does whatever he pleases. Do anything he wants, whether it's in heaven, in earth, in the sea, down under the earth, deep places, wherever, wherever, God does whatever he pleases. What about in verse seven? What would be an indication or in what ways God greater than other gods? Yeah, he controls the weather. Absolutely. What about, really, I think he could put verses eight and nine together. And he is great, and that is seen in the fact that he did what? Yeah, he delivered Israel from Egypt. And then, in verse, Really verses 10-12, I divided it into two things, but you could either do one or two. But what would you say verses 10-12, what did God do that demonstrated His greatness and greater than other gods? He what? Okay, and the Amorites, yeah, and the Canaanites. And in doing that, he did what for his people? I mean, he gave them the land, he gave them the power of the enemies, he protected them, so yeah. Alright, so here's what we have so far in verses 1 and 2 there is a call particularly to the priests and Levites to praise the Lord. And then there is a general call, praise the Lord for He is good. And praise the Lord for it is, sing praises to the Lord for it is pleasant. Praise the Lord for choosing Israel. Praise the Lord because He is greater than all the gods. He does whatever He pleases. He controls the weather. He delivered Israel from Egypt. He gave Israel the Promised Land. He gave them victory over the Canaanites. All right. In verse 13, praise the Lord, why? Which says what about God? He's eternal. Very good. Yeah, He's eternal. Praise the Lord because He's eternal. Verse 14, praise the Lord because what? What does it mean when it says, he will judge his people and repent himself concerning his servants? He's a just God, and Terry said it. He is what? Merciful. He repent himself concerning his servants. He will chasten his people when they sin, but he won't He doesn't retain his anger forever. He is merciful. He will forgive. That's the idea of verse 14. And then verses 15 through 18 is kind of a backdoor of praise. It talks about what is verses 15 through 18 telling us? Yeah, yeah. the foolishness of worshiping idols, the uselessness, the vanity of worshiping idols, whatever. God is greater than those idols, and it's foolish to worship them. And then verse 19 and 20. How would you sum up those verses? Yeah, everybody. Everybody should bless the Lord. Everybody should praise the Lord. And then verse 21. The Lord is to be praised where? Mm hmm. Zion would be another name for Jerusalem. So really, you have in the Hebrew poetry we talked about in the past and some about parallelism. Sometimes they say the same thing in two different ways. So bless the Lord as Zion, which dwelt at Jerusalem. Zion and Jerusalem are the same thing. So praise the Lord at Jerusalem, which is his dwelling place. OK, very good. Everybody participated and you did well. Now, here's what I want you to do, and I want you to take a few minutes and work on this, and you can work together or on your own, but looking at all that, then, all right, so now, let's make some application to ourselves. What should I do? What are some things that I should do based on what is said in this psalm. So take a few minutes. I'll give you maybe five minutes to write down some applications. So what do I need to do? I understand now what it's saying. So now how does it relate to me? What do I need to do because of what it says? So again, you can work together on it if you want. Just take a few minutes to think about that and write down some thoughts. If you're watching the live stream, do this on your own piece of paper. If you've got a piece of paper and a pencil, you can do that. We'll talk about it again in just a few minutes. about another minute and then we'll let you share some of the things you've jotted down. All right, who would like to share some of the things you've written down? I should say, who wants to go first? You don't need to be shy, bashful. There's no wrong answers. Go ahead. Okay, good. Anybody else? Yeah. So the idols of religion, I didn't know, were based around him. They had mouths, but they didn't have, you know, they had ears. So it kind of makes me think sometimes that when I'm talking to people, and when I'm witnessing, even for people in my family at home, it's like, I've got to get used to these people. I've got some people at work, I've got brotherhood. Reminder to the need to let the Lord work in delivering people from idolatry. Good. Somebody else want to share? Something maybe that hasn't been said yet? Yeah. Okay, good. Reflect on all that God is and all that he does and let it cause us to worship him truly from our hearts. Anybody else? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Good, very good. Praise the Lord no matter how we feel or what's going on in our life. We're commanded to praise the Lord and we're not limited by what's going on or whether we feel like it or not. Anybody else? Yes, sir. OK. Anybody else? Anybody? Yeah. Okay, don't be drawn to the idols of the world. Anybody else? Okay, the idols don't do for us what our Lord does. I just noted we ought to praise the Lord in song. And when I think about that, when I think, all right, when we gather together as a church and we sing, I should just not participate, right? No, I should participate, I should sing. And I need to sing from my heart. So I need to try to sing what I'm singing from my heart, not just singing something, especially if it's a familiar song. Or even if during the day, during the week, a hymn comes to mind, a Christian song, and I begin to sing it, it shouldn't just be entertainment, but try to make it actually praising the Lord. Verse seven, we ought to praise the Lord for the weather. If he's in charge of the weather, And we ought to praise him for the weather and be satisfied with the weather that he sends because he's the one that sends it. So when it's freezing outside, Lord, thank you that it's freezing outside. I'm actually thankful. It's a challenge being from the South. But it's nice to have actually it's winter and it's actually cold, which is supposed to be in winter. So that's kind of nice. So when I look at verses eight and nine, God calling Israel out of Egypt, delivering them from Egypt, we often use that as a type of our salvation. So praise the Lord for saving us. Giving them the land of Canaan is a type of our sanctification, the Lord delivering us from sin. So we praise the Lord for saving us, praise the Lord for sanctifying us. Verse 13, praise the Lord because my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and whatever else there is, descendants, God's gonna be there for them just like he's been there for me and for us. And so we can praise him for that. And then again, in verse 21, they're praising him from Jerusalem, from Mount Zion, from the temple, that we ought to join with others, that corporate praise is a part of what we do as believers. So that's just some thoughts I had. Anybody else? All right, we're gonna... So I have there also, and we won't take time to do this or share this tonight, and you can do this or not, but write out a prayer based on the psalm. So write out a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God based on what you have said, the applications you have made. So what are some things you would say to God in prayer based on what you have observed in this psalm? just write out something, just things that you would pray based on this psalm. You know, the Bible should drive our prayers. I don't, I've said I'm not big on written prayers. But I do believe that when we read the Bible, that we should pray, that we should let it direct us in our prayer. Not everything, but when we're reading the Word of God, it should direct us to prayer, and our prayer should be often guided by the Word of God. So we can take things like this, and sometimes writing it out just kind of helps you to get a feel for using the Bible as a basis for our prayers. So you can do that on your own. Rob's going to come and lead us in, let's just do one verse of the closing hymn, and we'll pray and be dismissed.