Please remain standing and turn to Psalm 150. Psalm 150 is the last of the Psalter. It's the last of the five Hallelujah Psalms, and I think it ends in an appropriate divine note. Please hear the Word of God as I read Psalm 150. Praise the Lord. Praise God and His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty firmament. Praise Him for His mighty acts. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise Him with the lute and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance. Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes. Praise Him with loud cymbals. Praise Him with clashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Could you join me together? Praise the Lord. This is the word of God, and may God, by his spirit, teach us and convict us according to his will. You may be seated. The Psalms are generally thought of as praise and worship Psalms, but as we've gone through all the Psalms, at least through our calls to worship, not necessarily preaching through them, and I hope occasionally you read those little inserts that are in the bulletin from time to time that gives you a commentary as the Psalms come by every couple weeks, But as we go through the psalms, we know it's not necessarily so that the psalms are not always praise and worship psalms. There's a wide range of emotions and topics in the Psalter. But still, there's a certain order and flow as you go through the Psalter. And part of that flow is that it begins more and more pointing to praise as you go from the start to the finish of the psalms themselves. Most of the lament psalms and the imprecation psalms are at the beginning. with most of the praise psalms are at the end. And even the psalms themselves are divided into five books. At the end of each of the five books, they end with a doxology, a praise to God, just like we end our service, if you will. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. See, I can't do that without singing. Praise Him. But everybody's praising God. At the end of each of the five books, essentially what this altar says is, blessed be the Lord, forever and ever. Amen. And so we have these guideposts as we walk through the Psalms of praising God with doxologies. And then the last five Psalms after the sixth from the end Psalm is even so high in praise with David's last praise Psalm. The last five Psalms are what we call the Hallelujah Psalms. All five of them end and begin and end with praise the Lord, which literally is Hallelujah. And the last Psalm, which we just read, is fully and only praised. Did you happen to notice, did you almost get tired of hearing, and I hope not, that each of the 13 lines in Psalm 150 basically says, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise God, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him. 13 times the Lord is called to be praised in each of the 13 lines. And if you think about the Psalter itself, the Psalter begins with Psalm 1, which we read at the beginning of our worship. with the blessed man, and he's blessed because he meditates upon and walks according to the Word of God. And then the psalter ends then with this man who is now blessed, responding in praise with all his soul to God who has blessed him so. The psalter starts with God blessing man, and now man is blessing God here at the end in Psalm 150. because man was created in the image of God to the praise of God's glory, and sinners are recreated into the image of Christ to the praise of God's glory. All things are created and recreated for the praise of God. Psalm 150, which we just read, could be entitled simply Praise the Lord. If you're running out of creative ideas to label this psalm, you could just label this Hallelujah. For every line in it calls us to praise the Lord. But Psalm 150 may be best summarized by verse six. Do you see verse six there? Which fittingly is the last line of the entire Psalter. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Though this Psalm is seemingly simply written, it gives us an opportunity, I think, as we walk through it, to profoundly revisit the importance of our worship of the God of eternity, and to convict us of our commitment to and our hearts for God in worship. That's what we intend to do as we walk through this psalm, is to reacquaint ourselves with perhaps things that we already know, but to inflame our heart to worship God aright. For God is the only one to worship. God only is worthy of worship. He deserves to be worshiped everywhere. by everyone who worship Him with everything they have and forever. In fact, that's essentially the main points of our sermon this morning, is that God only and alone is worthy of worship. That's the whom of our worship. He deserves to be worshipped everywhere. That's the where of our worship. By everyone, that's the who, are to be worshipping with everything they have. That's the how. and forever and ever and every day, that's the result of understanding why we worship. And so very simply, you'll see an outline in your bulletin. I didn't even put it vertically, we just listed it horizontally because it's so simple. We will look at the whom, whom do we worship, the where, the why, the how, and then the who worships in our praise and worship of our God as we walk through Psalm 150. So first of all, the whom of worship, and you put an M on the end, I think, grammatically, so you can say this is who we are worshipping, not the ones who are doing the worshipping, but the whom of our praise, the whom, whom is our praise to be rightly directed. As we've already said, perhaps even twice, each of the 13 lines in Psalm 150 directs us to praise Jehovah God. It opens and closes with praise the Lord, and praise God, and praise him nine times in between, And a key word there is the word Lord. If you look at the very first line, praise the Lord. And perhaps in your translation, it's all caps in Lord. Maybe the O-R-D are all caps, but they're smaller than the big L. But it's usually the word that's represented as Lord in all caps. It's the word that represents Yahweh or Jehovah. The word is meant to be representing the name of our God and his I am-ness, his covenant-ness. And that comes from Exodus chapter 3. If you remember Exodus chapter 3, where the Lord is speaking to Moses, and we think that's the second person of the Trinity, then speaking to Moses through the burning bush. And Moses is being commissioned through the burning bush to go to Pharaoh. In Exodus chapter 3, starting in verse 11, Moses says, who am I? And I think that's good to keep in your mind. Who am I, another I am, but in reverse order, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He's a little bit timid about this, and I think we can understand why. He says in verse 13, indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? So Moses is speaking to the Lord and saying, who am I? Essentially, who are you? And God speaks to Moses, says in verse 14, I am who I am. A stunning thing to say, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent you, has sent me to you. And God continues, moreover. Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, and there's the word L-O-R-D with all caps, that's Jehovah God of your fathers, who's just said, I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial to all generations. And so what we gather then from Exodus chapter three, that Jehovah or Yahweh, Lord in all caps and I am are basically interchangeable. If you understand what does Jehovah mean, it means I am who I am. And both of those Hebrew words are built out of the same Hebrew word as well. It's a stunning declaration. God is saying, I am. I am self-existent. I am self-sufficient. I'm eternal in and of myself and my own being. I'm unchangeable. I'm ever-present. I am holy. I am, I always have been, I always will be, I'm self-sufficient to accomplish whatever I desire to do. My existence, my wisdom, my plans are not contingent upon anybody else or anything else. And my being is in myself. I am the source of all things and all things reflect me and depend upon me. I am the I am Jehovah God of eternity. And so God alone is worthy to be praised. God alone is worthy to be praised. It makes us think of the hymn Immortal Invisible. We were saying unresting, unhastening, and silent as night. God is perfect in Himself. He doesn't need to rest. He doesn't need to hurry. He does everything right. He doesn't run out of energy. He's silent as light. Nor wanting, He lacks nothing. Nor wasting, there's nothing wasted. Anything He does or decrees, but He rulest in might. If that's all you had, you'd think, well, this is kind of scary. But then the second line is, thy justice, like mountains high soaring above, he is righteous and holy and just. There must be justice against sin. And we're getting a little bit concerned, but then it says, thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love. And you have the picture then of the scary mountains that are rising above. It represents God's wrath and his justice. But the clouds that surround the mountain would be his mercy, his grace, his goodness, as represented in Jesus Christ. He is the I Am God of eternity. And so that makes us think of Christ Jesus. And when Jesus himself refers to himself as I Am, that means something. And he does so in the book of John and John's gospel. He claims to be deity. He claims to be the I Am God that demands worship himself. And in John chapter 8, verse 58, he says to the religious leaders who are persecuting him, he says, Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. And they knew what he meant because they tried to stone him because he was claiming to be the God of eternity. And in the book of John, Jesus says, I am. the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the true vine. And we saw recently that when he was arrested in the garden, he first of all said, I am. Everybody fell backwards in response to his glory and his deity. But yet, man in his sinfulness, they got back up and still wanted to arrest him. But Jesus Christ is the I Am God. It's amazing then that the Son of God took on flesh to live in our place, to take our wrath, to die in our place, and to be raised on behalf of those who say, who am I like Moses? that the I am would come and be in the place of the who am I's to redeem them from their sin. And he's now the ascended king of kings and lord of lords and he rules over all things. And so with this first point, the whom of our worship, it seems like that's the place we should start. Who are we worshiping? Who are we commanded to worship? Who demands our worship? Who is he? And we understand this call and this command to praise the I am Lord God of the universe, and this call and command to praise his son that he sent as the I am Savior God man who now reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Shouldn't we treat our worship with a greater priority and sobriety than maybe we often do? As we're coming before the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, in particular on our Sabbath morning worship corporately, the high point of our worship and the high point of our weeks and lives? Shouldn't we look forward to our corporate worship in preparation and expectation and sobriety that this is the important part of the week? It changes what we do on Saturday, let alone what we do on Sunday morning as we prepare. Shouldn't we come early to give him the respect that's due him, that we might settle down with our families To give a loud unified, he is risen indeed. Shouldn't your pastor come at least 30 minutes early? That you might pray with those who are gathering at 9.30 to pray for our worship and to pray for our fellowship. Indeed he should. Because of the whom that we come to worship and praise. If we understand the whom of our worship and what he has done to make us his worshipers, we should understand the privilege and the priority of our worship, and we should come ready and eager to praise him in Christ Jesus, because God only is worthy of our worship and praise. That's verse 1a. We might move a little bit faster as we go through this, but in the rest of verse 1, we see the where of our worship. The where of our praise. And the answer to that basically is everywhere. God is worthy of worship only, and then He's to be praised everywhere, but with the priority in the assembly of the saints. He's to be praised everywhere. He's calling for that, but with the priority being the assembly of the saints. So verse 1 says, praise the Lord, Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty firmament. So there's two things mentioned in verse 1. In the sanctuary and the mighty firmament. First of all, the sanctuary. The word for sanctuary is referring to the tabernacle. Perhaps the Holy of Holies. And the emphasis is on the holiness of it. Even some versions just say praise Him in His holiness. But I think it's going too far. It's in His sanctuary. It most likely refers to the temple, worship, and the Old Covenant. which corresponds to the corporate New Covenant worship of the church that we are in even now. This is the most holy place and the place of the most holy worship in the Old Covenant. And the temple of the Old Testament looked forward to Jesus Christ himself, the temple representing God with us. Where God dwells, and we see in John chapter 1 verse 14, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That word for dwelt literally means the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, that God now is with us. He dwells with us. Christ Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the temple of the Old Testament. There's no need for a temple again. And the temple of the Old Testament also looked forward to the church, Christ's body. In the New Testament, the church herself It's called the Temple of God, where the Spirit of God dwells, where God is with us. God dwells in His church, in particular, in the church's worship on a Sunday morning. In 1 Corinthians 3, verses 16 through 17, the church is called the Temple of God, with the Spirit of God dwelling in her. What's interesting about that is, if you look at 1 Corinthians 6, the individual members of the church are also little temples of God, because the Spirit of God is dwelling in them as well. So you have a temple full of little temples because God is with us and in particular when we worship. And when the church gathers to worship on its appointed day, that is the highest form of worship on earth. And it's a slice or a taste of our heavenly worship to come, which is what we'll be spending eternity doing. It helps us then to prepare for our heavenly occupation when we worship our God together. but without sin forever. And as the Old Testament sanctuary was filled with smoke and incense, the New Testament sanctuary here today should be filled with praise. And while the Old Testament sanctuary was restricted, only certain people could go in. The New Covenant sanctuary, the temple, the Church of Christ, is free to all who have access to the Lord Jesus Christ, because as his flesh was torn, we hear in the book of Hebrews, the veil was torn. So now there's access into the holy place. Sinners could come before God and praise because Christ Jesus took their sin and gave them his righteousness and gave them access to come boldly before the throne of grace. As the redeemed gather to worship in spirit, in truth, it's a far better situation. in the Old Testament worship. So the emphasis is on the sanctuary, the assembly of the saints. That's the priority of worship. But it's interesting in verse 1, praise him in his mighty firmament. That perhaps most likely is speaking about we've gone from the earthly worship, the highlight of earthly worship in the sanctuary, but now we're going to the heavenlies in the atmosphere, the heavenlies above. It's a way of saying, God is to be worshipped everywhere, from the earth to the heavens and in the heavenlies, in the heavenly places themselves. God is to be praised everywhere, the earth below and the heavens above and everywhere in between. God created everything for his praise and his glory. He's to be praised everywhere. We think of the doxology that we sing. Therefore, corporate worship is the priority because we have access to praise him But we also have access to praise Him everywhere at any time and in every circumstance and every situation because of Christ Jesus. And our great God deserves such great praise. As we do some little guerrilla warfare with the preceding Psalms in this altar, You'll see there's some themes in Psalm 148, which we did look at a few weeks ago, at least in our opening to worship in Psalm 148. It begins with this, praise the Lord from the heavens. And if you remember Psalm 148, there's this tracking from the heavens, the highest heavens down to the earth, down to the depths of the earth. And the idea is that God is to be praised as high as you can go and as low as you can go, even in the depths of the sea when even men have never even looked. And all things are then made for his glory. And it means all of creation, all of his creatures, all mankind, but then especially the saints most of all are called to worship and to praise God. That's Psalm 148. And that's what Psalm 150 is calling us to do here. All creation is to praise God. I think though, when it says the firmament in the heavens, It could also be referring to the heavenly worship of the angels and the saints that have gone before us as well. You think of Hebrews chapter 12, verses 22 through 24. I won't go there, but that's where we get a glimpse of, as we are worshiping here even now, we are joining the saints and the angels in their worship in the heavenlies before God at the same time. And it could be that's what's being at least hinted at from the sanctuary to the mighty heavens, the heavenlies above. Praise God, praise Jehovah. And if so, it has the sense then that our corporate worship on earth is indeed joining with the heavenly worship above as it does each Lord's Day. It has the sense of the Lord's prayer that thy kingdom come on earth as it is on heaven. May our worship mimic as much as it can the worship in the heavens. the church reflecting what occurs in heaven in the heavenly worship. And so again, as we look at the whom is God is worthy of all praise. And now we look at the where that God's be praised everywhere. But then, especially in the sanctuary of the saints, we see again the importance of corporate worship on the Lord's day. All life is to be praised. Yes. You can worship God anywhere. Yes. And you should. But sometimes we hear, yes, well, I don't need to go to church since then. I can worship Him while I'm fishing. I don't think we quite understand. Some would even say, well, every day is the Lord's day. And so all the same, and of course the response is really, is every supper the Lord's supper? When you attach the word Lord on the front of something, that means something that owns it to our Lord, and so yes, the Lord's Day is actually set apart for something special that should be desired. The Lord's Day Sabbath gathering for worship in a local church is our priority for worship, and it's a priority for the believer's life and desire. We should pursue Him in praise and our devotions. Yes. Please do this. We should pursue God in our praise and our family worship. Please do that. We should pursue Him in praise in all of our life. Yes. And all of those things are good for our soul. They're commanded. But they prepare us then for the greatest part of every week, which is the foretaste of heaven. Our Lord's Day gathering of praise and worship in the assembly of the saints in the sanctuary. And so it's interesting with Psalm 148, Psalm 148 ended with a call to all the saints to praise. After you look at all of the creation and creatures of the world that God made, then he ends Psalm 148 with a call to the saints to praise. And so Psalm 149, which is right before Psalm 150, I think, then takes that and starts off with and says, praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song. Singing is an important thing. And praise, his praise in the assembly of the saints. So Psalm 149 takes what is said at the end of 148 and says, so do it, saints, in the assembly, sing and praise. Let Israel rejoice in their maker. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their king. That's what we do every Sunday morning. So the whom of our worship, God only is worthy of our praise and worship. The where, well, we're to be praising God everywhere, but especially in the gathering of the saints. when we gather on his day. Now verse two, the why of our worship. The why of our worship. I think the point of the why of our worship is this, when we understand the why we worship, it will lead us to want to worship him all day and forever. Our worship is to be forever. And what we see in verse 2 is that we're to be praising God for what He does and for who He is. Verse 2, praise Him for His mighty acts, and praise Him according to His excellent greatness. We're to be praising Him for what He does and for who He is. What is wonderful is God commands and demands our worship, and sometimes that bothers the non-believer. I can remember that I've told this story before. back in my days of cubical-dom, and my co-worker, who is an atheist, said, I couldn't worship a God like you worship. What kind of a God says, well, you must worship me? If any man would do that, we'd kick him out. What kind of egotism is that? But that's the point. He's not a man. He's God. And according to his nature, all things should worship him. He demands our worship. If he didn't demand our worship, he wouldn't be God. But the thing is, He does not demand unreasonable obedience. It's obedience to praise and worship Him, but He doesn't demand unreasonable obedience, because if we understand what He has done, and who He is, we recognize that He deserves our obedience, including our praise and worship, and we should want to. I think one key thing about this, His mighty acts and His excellent greatness, they are inseparably connected. Because what he does flows from who he is. We cannot separate what he does from who he is. What he does flows from who he is. His mighty acts flow from his excellent greatness. And oftentimes, when we think about the mighty deeds or the mighty acts of God, we summarize those in four categories. His deeds of creation, his deeds of providence, his deeds of redemption, his deeds of judgment, The summary of God's mighty acts that deserve worship would be his deeds of creation, providence, and redemption. You can remember those. He's a CPR God. His creation, his redemption. See, I can't even get it straight. His creation, his providence, and his redemption, but also his judgment, which we don't often like to think about, perhaps. And so we praise him for his mighty deeds because he acts in creation and providence and redemption and judgment. But those four things flow from his being. Those four things flow from the fact that our God is great. He is good. He is gracious. And he's righteous. Because he is great, we see that in his acts of creation. Because he's good, we see it in his acts of his providence. Because he's gracious, we see that in his acts of redemption. Because he's righteous, we see that in his acts of judgment. And we praise him for who he is, his greatness, his goodness, his graciousness, his righteousness, and for what he does as a result You might look to Psalm 145. I know the Hallelujah Psalms are 146 through 145. But 145 is really the kickstarter, the jump starting into praise at the end of this altar. Psalm 145, before you get to the Hallelujah Psalms, David starts it all with his last praise psalm in Psalm 145. And Psalm 145 begins with this, I will extol you, my God, O King. Again, if we understand that God is our King, It would change the way we prepare for a Sunday morning. And I will bless your name forever and ever. There we have, if you understand who God is and what he does, you understand our praise then is forever and ever. Every day I will bless you. Not just in the future, but today. Every day, forever and ever, I will praise your name forever and ever. That's the beginning of Psalm 145. Every day and forever, He deserves praise. But as we go through Psalm 145, which you have to love, we see, first of all, it's because He is great that He's greatly to be praised. Because He is great, He deserves great praise. And His greatness is unquantifiable. How can you describe it? It's beyond what we understand. And so we look at His mighty acts to help quantify His greatness. That helps us. We see what He does. We can start to understand who He is. And so in verses 3 and 4 in Psalm 145, Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. Who can describe it? But verse 4 tries by what He does. One generation shall praise your works to another. and shall declare your mighty acts. We praise you for your greatness. Maybe sometimes it's easier to praise you for what you do and recognize your greatness that's behind it. In verses five and six of Psalm 145, I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty. It goes back to who you are, you're majestic. I meditate upon it and I have all eternity to do that even after the resurrection. But he doesn't just meditate on his majesty. He says, and on your wondrous works, what you do. I meditate on who you are and what you do that flows out of it. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts. What you do, we speak of what you've done. And I will declare your greatness, who you are. You can't separate the two. It's good to meditate and praise him for both. And God is great. And he is good. And he's gracious and righteous. And that's really what Psalm 145 drives home. In verse 7 in Psalm 145, they shall utter the memory of your great goodness. And it's a wonderful thing because he's great. Everything about him is great. His goodness is great. And shall sing of your righteousness. You're great. You're good. You're righteous. The Lord is gracious. Verse 8 of Psalm 145. The Lord is gracious. He is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. So he's not just merciful. He's great in his mercy because he is great. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. All his works are covered by his mercy. You can't separate who he is from what he does, and you don't want to. So because he is great, his mercy is great. The same with His goodness and His righteousness, and it makes us think of the Catechism. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And we sing that really fast, kids, but understand the first part is great. The second part is great, but the first part describes what the second part is. So God himself, he's infinite. He has no limit. He's eternal. He has no beginning and end. He's unchangeable. He will always be this way. He's the I am God of eternity. And therefore his wisdom has no limit. has no beginning and end, it never changes. His power has no limit, has no beginning and end, it never changes. The same thing with His holiness, His justice, His goodness and truth. Who He is tells us what He does. In Psalm 147, if you remember Psalm 147, it tells us because God is good, it's intrinsically good to praise Him. Psalm 147 says, Praise the Lord for it is good to sing praises to the Lord. For it is pleasant and praise is beautiful. Since God is good, it's good and intrinsically good to praise Him because that's just what flows from it. So His mighty acts and His excellent greatness, that's why we praise and why we want to praise all day and forever. And the key of those two things, though, has to be who He is. The key, the foundation to our praise and to our lives is who He is, not so much what He does, but who He is. He is unchangeable and unchangeably worthy of praise. That's who He is. This is the anchor when our circumstances become changeably, and so much so it throws our lives into turmoil and we don't know what to do when we get up in the morning. We don't want to get up in the morning. We don't want to sleep at night. When our circumstances are awful, God doesn't change, and so we still praise Him, regardless of what we think He's doing. We're reminded that in Daniel chapter 3, remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? In Daniel chapter 3, King Nebuchadnezzar says, you're not going to bow down to my idol? I'm going to throw you into the fiery furnace. What do you think your God's going to do about that? In Daniel chapter 3, verse 16, They responded, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace. And he will deliver us from your hand, O King. That means if he saves us physically, but even if he doesn't, he will save us from your hands, O King. But if not, if he doesn't deliver us, let it be known to you, King, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up. Their trust was in knowing who God is, and therefore they could trust him and worship him and praise him, even in the midst of the most difficult situation. Last week we looked at Job, 42 chapters in just 50 minutes. That was wonderful. But in Job chapter two, after all of these things were happening, Job, remember what his wife said, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die. And Job says in Job 2, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks, which, I don't know, husbands, don't be careful. Don't call your wives foolish. But he then says, shall we indeed accept good from God? And shall we not accept adversity? In other words, I know who my God is. He later says, I know my Redeemer lives. I'm going to die, but I will see him again. And God blesses us, we rejoice in that. But if it doesn't seem like it's a blessing, we accept that as well because God is in charge. God decrees all things. He's great. He's good. He's gracious. He's righteous. And even if we don't understand, we still worship and we praise him because of who he is. But even saying that the foundation is who he is, it is indeed his mighty works in and through Jesus Christ that are foundational as well. to our praise and our life. The mighty works in and through Jesus Christ are foundational in our praise and our life as well, because the mightiest acts of God are His mighty acts of redemption in Christ Jesus our Lord. In His greatness, God doesn't just create, He recreates and He resurrects His people in the image of His Son. In God's goodness, Through His provision, He provides His Son as the only hope for salvation, sanctification, and glorification. In God's graciousness, He sends His Son to redeem in His acts of redemption, to redeem us by taking our sin, our wrath, our shame, and our death, that we might be saved and undeservedly so. And the God who is righteous, in His righteousness, His Son suffers our righteous punishment that we deserved, and He imputes His righteousness to us. And Christ will return in righteous judgment upon all those who refuse to bow down to Him and to receive Him and His work. So the foundation is who God is, but it's also what He has done in Christ Jesus and His greatness, goodness, graciousness, and righteousness. As we observe the Lord's Supper, Not today, but as we observe the Lord's Supper once a month, understand that Lord's Supper reflects what Psalm 150 is saying to call us to praise God for who he is and what he has done. We observe the Lord's Supper and we remember what Jesus said, this is my body and my blood. Take, eat and drink it. Do this what? In remembrance of me, who I am. He says for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. what I have done, till he comes, what I will do. And so even the Lord's Supper is a testimony of who Christ is and what he has done, and we praise and we worship our God as a result. And so we worship our God, because he, the whom of our worship, is worthy of praise. We worship him everywhere, but in particular in the Assembly of the Saints, We worship Him, why? Because of who He is and what He does, and therefore we worship Him forever and all day. And fourthly, what's the how of our worship? Verses 3 through 5. I submit to you that the list of all the instruments in verses 3 through 5 is saying we worship Him with everything we have. We worship Him with everything we have. Verses 3 through 5. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise Him with the lute and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance. Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes. Praise Him with loud cymbals. Praise Him with clashing cymbals. These instruments represent praise with everything we have, with sincerity and conviction. Derek Kidner said, every kind of instrument here is The solemn or the gay, the percussion, the melodic, the gentle or the strident, is rallied here to the praise of God. All that we have is meant to be praising God. In other words, all these instruments are listed to express that we are to praise our great God with all we have, and our sincerity and earnestness reflective of our thanksgiving and praise to Him. This does remind us of Psalm 149. You remember a couple of weeks ago in our insert, we spoke of Psalm 149, where the picture of praise in Psalm 149 was the military or national victory procession and celebration. And the idea of the timbrel and the harp and the dancing was used. It reminds us of Miriam in Exodus chapter 15, when they were worshiping God after crossing the Red Sea and being delivered from Egypt. It wasn't part of their corporate worship. That's a key thing to remember. It wasn't the command in the Old Testament worship to do it this way. Which is a key thing if you have a question, why don't we dance? Well, it's not just because I don't dance well and you would laugh. It's because even in the Old Testament, dancing was not commanded for corporate worship. And it's certainly not commanded in New Testament worship. If you want to dance at home in your private worship, you can do that. If I do that, my kids would probably record it and it'd be on a blog someplace and I'd have to step down. But you can do that in your private worship, if you will, but it's not in the corporate worship in the old or the new. And the same thing, I think, with these instruments. The Old Testament worship was loud, and there were instruments used. This is not a call to worship in this way, even in the Old Testament. But it represented worshiping with all you have. This could represent all of the ceremonial worship that the Old Testament believers had in their national community and private events. The trumpet represents military victory. Lute and the harp, you think of David with his harp in his private worship, even soothing the king. The tambourine and the dance, you think of Miriam, the cymbals, talking about this public festivals with the Israelites. So the question might be, well, are we supposed to use instruments or these instruments in the covenant worship today? Why don't we have all these instruments now? Well, again, in Old Testament worship, They were commanded here to use the external helps. And I think in Old Testament worship, they were commanded to use external helps for worship, instruments, scents, even visual things. The external was focused upon to be pointing towards the things that would be known spiritually in Christ and in the church. In New Testament worship and New Covenant worship, Christ has fulfilled the ceremonial aspects of the law. And now he commands worship in spirit and truth, not in the visuals, not in the externals, but in spirit and truth. And the focus on New Covenant worship is on the simplicity of spirit-filled worship from the heart and centered on the Word of God. That's what we see in the New Covenant documents of the New Testament, the ornate outward Instrumental worship of the old covenant has been exchanged for singing with grace from the heart. And by spirit and truth singing. The instruments we use now are our voices. Ephesians chapter five, verse 19. Paul says we're to be speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. In a parallel passage in Colossians 3.16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. Understand that when we're singing, we're singing to one another and admonishing and teaching. It implies the words need to be heard and important and amplified in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. So we sing with grace in our hearts to the Lord as we're admonishing one another with the words. In New Covenant worship, we don't try to duplicate the old covenant instruments, but now we use our voices as redeemed instruments of praise with focus on the words of truth. It's a very practical thing because instruments can wrongly, wrongly stir up the soul and wrongly take the attention off the words of truth in our worship. Instead, we desire the words of truth to be sung and to be at the forefront, to be heard, not the instruments. Remember, we're to be teaching and admonishing one another. And instead, we desire the gospel and the truth of the words of Christ and of God to stir up our hearts and our emotions. The words are to stir up our emotions, not to be taken away by instruments. It's interesting. Even if we wanted to, could we duplicate what you read in Psalm 150? Hey, Jonathan, bring your cymbals next week. And Donna, bring your lute. Maybe bring your trumpet as well. I mean, can we actually duplicate this? And if we couldn't do it if we wanted to, and even if we tried, then what would all our focus be on? Our focus would be on our band and our practicing, but not on our voices and our lives and our hearts and our worship to God in New Testament worship. So you might be asking, well, gee, Pastor, I seem to hear a piano playing in our worship. Why do we use a piano? Well, you don't have to. You could use another instrument. But the idea of the piano is it's not an element in the regular principle of worship. You have the elements. Those are the things you must do. Those are commanded. But then you have the circumstances. Are there things that we can use to help those things along? The piano is not an element of worship, but it's a circumstance to help us to sing better. I don't know what they did without pianos before it was invented, but pianos are wonderful. They keep the time and the melody at the same time, so you can keep the beat and you can keep the tune at the same time for those of us who need help, and we all do. I think by removing the piano, which I guess you could do, but we don't want to remove all the beauty out of our worship. We want to at least do it as best as we can so the piano is there not to stir up our hearts with the piano playing. Sorry, Hannah, but the piano is there to facilitate our singing, to help us, because singing congregational, and it is congregational, not individuals, but congregational singing is commanded, and therefore the piano in our mind is a help for us to do so. Like a good hymn, A good hymn has biblical words, but it has a tune that can uphold the weight of glory of the truth of the scripture that we're singing. A piano is an excellent help to uphold and adorn and amplify the words and the voices appropriately. The best part of worship is when the piano drops out and I can hear the voices of the saints, I can hear the words, and there's no greater instrument than the voice of the saints, even though we don't hit all the notes, but we should be trying to. And so that's basically the regulative principle of worship. Worship is not to be creative. It's to be regulated by what God commands. That's the regulative principle of worship. We don't worship by what He commands. And we didn't say we couldn't do this. We'll do that too. No, we only do what He commands. And we see at least an example of this in Leviticus chapter 10 with Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. Remember, they each took his censer and put fire in it and put incense on it. And they offered profane fire before the Lord. You remember this? We don't really know what it was they did wrong, but we know this, the next thing in Leviticus 10, it says, that profane fire they offered to the Lord, which God had not commanded them. That's all we need to know. They did as priests in the temple that, or the tabernacle, that which they were not commanded to do. And so fire went out from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord. I appreciate the grace of God. in the midst of our worship now. But that shows you the seriousness of this. We do what God commands us to worship. And so we strive to use the Scriptures, particularly what the New Testament tells us, so we worship as God commands us. And what does that result in? We preach the Word. We read the Word. We pray the Word. We sing the Word. And then we see the Word in the ordinances of the Lord's Supper and Baptism. So we preach, read, pray, and sing the Word of God because we think the New Testament tells us that's what we do. And we see the word in the Lord's Supper and baptism as part of our worship. Those are the elements of our worship, and it results in a God-centered, a Christ-centered, word-centered, simple but profound worship that's by the Spirit of God and performed, if you will, in spirit and truth. So we don't have dancing, or puppets, or clowns, or movie clips, or smoke, or lights, or concerts. God has not commanded it, so we don't want to do it. And God has every right to command His own worship, and we should desire to worship Him as He commands. Maybe some important applications of this when we talk about singing, because it is such an important thing. Congregational singing is commanded, and it's central to our new covenant worship in Christ's Church. We're commanded to do this, and we'll be doing it forever. You may have noticed in the Psalms we've been quoting, in Psalms 145 and on, there's an emphasis on sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. And even in Psalm 150, the word sing is not used, but it's certainly implied, and you can't do without it. So we should practice singing. We should learn to sing better. This is how we offer our worship to God. We should be familiar with our hymns and our songs and our tunes so we can worship appropriately and with our best efforts for God, and that we might then admonish and teach one another Certainly, family worship is an excellent place to do that in your homes. And the multiple instruments in Psalm 150 represent the multiple voices in our congregation. All the instruments blending together to a great effect in our congregational singing. All the voices will be blending together so the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Looking to sing well, but in such a way that the words are understandable and heard and emphasized. It means you can sing loudly, but you sing with control and with as much skill as possible so that not one person is heard above another. Even if Pavarotti was here, and maybe some of you don't know who that was, but even if one of the greatest opera singers in the world comes into our church and he's singing, we don't want to hear him. We don't want to hear him above everybody else. We want to hear us all together in moderating our voices. And so that's what we're doing with conviction, but we sing together in our respective parts. Else it's a distraction. In some of the older hymnals, there's glued in the back cover. I think probably most of them don't have that because eventually the hymnals run out. They get worn out and we get new ones. But in the back of some of the hymnals, there was originally the seven rules of singing by John Wesley. And it goes like this. First, learn the tunes. Makes sense. Learn the tunes. Try that at home. Sometimes there's emails that are sent out. And you know what the songs are ahead of time? Sing them as printed is number two. Number three, sing all. I think that means all the songs and all the verses of the songs. If it's a cross to you to sing, all of them will take it up and you will find it a blessing. There may be songs that you don't like. There may be songs I don't like, but we sing them anyway and we do it to the best of our abilities, to the glory of God. Number four, sing lustily. That means with a fervor, with a conviction, and with good courage. But number five is sing modestly. Do not brawl. We're not screaming. We're not shouting. We're singing with conviction, but under control. Number six is sing in time. Don't run before or stay behind. Sometimes that's hard. We go fast or so, but do your best. But then number seven is a catch all. Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing God more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually." That helps with our singing. And so, the whom of our worship is God, and He is worthy of our worship. The where is everywhere at all times, but especially in the assembly of the saints, the why is because of who He is and what He does, and so we worship Him forever. The how is with everything we have. And then lastly, the who of our worship. Verse 6, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. The who is to worship, and it's everyone and everything. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. And that can mean that every living thing that exists on the earth is meant to praise God. We've been seeing it over and over again. We saw it in Psalm 148. From the heavens to the depths of the earth, all creatures, all men, and especially the saints are created to the praise and glory of God. I think this last verse of the psalm and also the last verse of the whole psalter is a testimony to how our singing now in New Testament worship is with our voices. The psalter in this psalm does not end with loud clashing of cymbals, but ends with, let everything that has breath, everything that has breath praise the Lord. which indicates that it's not merely saying, the psalmist is not merely saying, every living creature is to praise God. It means every living thing that can voice praise to God should be praising God with his breath and with his voice. All that can voice words and praise to God are called to do so. That's specifically the image bearers of God himself, the apex of his creation. And from the image bearers of God, Christ redeems those who can praise him. In Romans chapter eight, I think we see the creation of God, which fell because of our sin. It looks forward to its own redemption, but it looks forward even more so to the redemption of the saints from the sons of God will be made like Christ. And part of that I think is the creation. eagerly looks forward to the sons of God when they'll be made like Christ when Christ returns. And then they can hear the sons of God praising God and the lamb forever. That's the highlight of our worship in heaven. It will be like what we see in Revelation chapter seven, where the church is signified here is. I looked and behold, a great multitude, which no one could number. Out of all nations, notice it's not the nations themselves, but it's out of all nations, tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne before the lamb clothes with right robes. It means they're in righteousness and with palm branches. It means they're victorious. Crying out with a loud voice saying salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into the lamb. This is our song for eternity with our voices and all the angels stood before the throne and the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and they worship God saying, now we have heaven and earth joined together in heaven, the angels, the creatures, the redeemed, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, amen. And so as we close, we should start practicing now. We should start now to sing praises with our whole hearts, with every breath, while we live. And in fact, Psalm 146 begins with, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God. While I have my being, that's what I'm here for. As we practice our singing and our worship, we'll be practicing what we'll be doing with great joy and purpose for eternity. I think the other quick application is that We should be serious about the great commission that's been given the church. We should be serious about the great commission that's been given the church. The great commission that says, take the gospel to go forth to all peoples, into all nations, that we might save sinners from the nations, that they might praise Jehovah. They might praise him everywhere. They might praise him with everything. And all sorts of people, everyone from those nations and those tribes, all types of people would praise Him. And forever, because our God alone is worthy to be praised, and our Savior is worthy to be praised. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we praise You. confess that our praise and worship is often lacking because we're distracted and we don't see the priority of our life being you, that you are self-sufficient, you're self-existent, you're the I Am God of eternity, your son is the I Am Savior of all, and therefore we should find our sufficiency and our existence in you. that we would enjoy you and we would praise you and we'd glorify you in our worship and in our lives. May it be so. May our praise and our worship for you at RBCKC grow in leaps and bounds in our private devotions, in our family worship, in our lives, but in our corporate worship. And we beg of you that as a result of our worship of you and proclaiming the truths of your word, that those among us who do not know Christ, that you'd bring them to repentance and faith, and they would come to know the I Am Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and join in the chorus of the redeemed forever as well. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.