anniversary today, and this one is from someone you may have never heard of, but this is missionary Bob Jones. Of course, everybody in the known world has heard of Bob Jones, but he writes, Dear Addison Baptist Church family, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Brother David Pittman as pastor of Addison Baptist Church on this, his 25th anniversary. I thank the Lord that I have been privileged to know Billy Pittman and his wife, Kim, for many years. I've always felt like Addison Baptist Church was my home church because of the wonderful way they have treated me since my early years as an evangelist. The Lord has blessed Billy Pittman with a very successful ministry. It is evident that the Lord has had his hand on the work that has been accomplished these past 25 years at Addison Baptist Church. bless him for 25 more years as pastor of this wonderful church. God bless Bob Jones. And so we were always glad to hear Brother Jones. And he has been here more times than any of us can count. And I'm sure that we all love and appreciate him. And we thank the Lord for this a letter that he has written. And as I said, we'll be hearing from a lot more today as we go through the day. All right, if you haven't guessed by looking at the screen, I'll be turning to Psalm 66. It is a joy to have Brother David Mitchell and Sister Helen with us today. Brother Mitchell was one of my Bible college professors more than 40 years ago. And I told him earlier, I'm still nervous. I feel like he's going to give me a break after I'm done. So, if I bomb out on this, just don't tell me, okay? I just don't wanna know, but it is a joy to see you all. Always a blessing, and over the years, he has shown me much kindness and friendship, and I very much appreciate it. Psalm 66. And let's just read the entire psalm and then we'll make comments. I got a lot to say and a little bit of time to say it in. And so we'll just get right into it. Psalm 66 to the chief musician, a psalm or song. Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands. Sing forth the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. To the greatness of thy power shall thy enemies submit themselves unto thee. All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee. They shall sing to thy name, Selah. Come and see the works of God. He is terrible in his doing toward the children of men. He turned the sea into dry land. They went through the flood on foot. There did we rejoice in Him. He ruleth by His power forever. His eyes behold the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. See love. O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of His praise to be heard, which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved. For thou, O God, for his tribe. Thou broughtest us into the net. Thou laidst affliction upon our loins. Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. I will go into thy house with burnt offerings. I will pay thee my vows, which my lips have uttered at I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fattenings with the incense of rams. I will offer bullets with ghosts, Selah. Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled. with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. But verily God hath heard me, he hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. And may God add his blessing of work now and help as we try to expound on these wonderful truths and we pray in Christ's name, amen. We're not told who the author is. Let me get my slides going here. Our subject today, remembering what God has done. We don't know who the author of the psalm is, but we are told, first of all, that it's a psalm to be sung, and it is a psalm, meaning that it was to be sung in worship. Who is it written to? Well, we will see application to the nation of Israel, as well as to the believer individual, as we go through. But as we see in verse one, the command to sing and praise God is for Everyone on earth has an obligation to give praise unto God. Of course, many don't do it. But one day they're going to, according to Philippians 2.10, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, things in heaven and earth, and things under the earth. That's coming. Narrowing it down to the individual believer, every believer has the responsibility to be, well, first of all, to be spiritually baptized and to be a member of one of the Lord's local churches. I believe that's God's will for every Christian, for every believer, and those that don't do that, If they're truly saved, then I think they're living in disobedience to God. But there's several reasons for that. But one is that we might, as a church body, join in corporate worship. I hear people say, of course, you've heard it too, well, I can worship God by myself anywhere. I can be as close to God out on the golf course as I can in church. You've heard all that. Well, that may be true, but it's incomplete. Hebrews 10.25, the famous verse, you know it. Not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together, but exhorting one another. And part of that exhortation is worshiping God together, and in so doing, we encourage or exhort one another. And this song is all about praising God. So now as we search We're gonna talk about a praised God, a praised God. Three things in this section. First of all, he says, sing. Verse one, he says, make a joyful noise unto God all ye lands. And music has always been an integral part of Christianity, actually, and certainly in our New Testament application of this, the church. And then, of course, the individual believer as well. And music is a powerful entity. Wrong kind of music has detrimental effects. You've heard the songs that glorify sin, death, suicide, tries to normalize things like pornication, adultery, aberrant lifestyles. By the way, and I'll just throw this for free, country music can be as bad as rock music. Like I said, I'm not going to charge you for that, but be careful of what you're listening to because that, you don't know. You can say, well, you know, I just put it aside. I don't pay attention to those things. You never know the subliminal, I mean it's not a good word, but the unconscious effects that music can have. But the right kind of music on a converse enhances the worship experience. Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn after their first observance of the Lord. in prison and the Act 16 makes a special note to say, and the prisoners heard that. It had an effect on them. And perhaps that is why that when the earthquake happened and everybody's bonds were loosed, they didn't run. Paul said, fear not to the jailer. We are all here. So their singing had an effect on the prisoners and it had a life-changing influence on the Philippian jailer. When Paul described the worship gathering of the church at Corinth, he said it involves singing in 1 Corinthians 14. There's going to be singing in heaven, as we see in the book of Job mentions that, and of course the book of Revelation as well. So don't take the music portion of our services lightly. participate in congregational singing, and listen closely to the special music that's presented, and allow it to bless you. And God uses that. Nothing takes the place of the preaching of God's word, we know that, but music can surely set the table for that. Verse two, he says, sing forth the honor of his name, make his praise So, when we sing, we make music, he says, make it a glorious thing. And, of course, that can mean enthusiasm. Congregational singing, unfortunately, a lot of times it's, you know, I love to tell the story. And your whole demeanor, I don't mean you personally, but the whole demeanor of the one singing suggests just the opposite of that. And so our praise should be glorious. I wanna throw something in here, and some might consider this controversial, a couple of different aspects of singing The first thing is congregational singing. In Colossians 3.16, teaching and admonishing one another. So this has to do in the gathering, in psalms and hymns. spiritual song singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord and so he expects us to sing together and come in a congregational setting we should join our voices and in making that joyful noise unto the Lord. Psalm 149, one of the last five of the psalms called the Hallelujah Psalm, praising the Lord, singing to the Lord a new psalm and his praise in the congregation of saints. And he said, well, in the Old Testament, they didn't have the church. But listen, he talks about a congregation, and I think that translates over into our New Testament congregation of the church. And so everyone should be involved in the congregational singing. But also, in the Bible, it talks about chosen singers. Chosen singers. This involves what we term special music, okay? What about special music? Well, we see that in the Bible, in several places that I'll show you here, we have appointed or chosen singers. In 2 Chronicles 20, 21, I wish I had time to go over the background of this, but this is King Jehoshaphat dealing with a threat to the nation of Israel. And it said, when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord. Now, the congregation, of course, the whole congregation of Israel, they would sing together, but they had appointed singers. In the same book, chapter 29, verse 28, and all the congregation worshiped and the singers sang. You see, there's a distinction between the congregation and the singers. So the congregation worshiped, and no doubt they sang congregational music, but then they also had the singers, and I think that means the appointed singers. And then Nehemiah 7-1, the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed. So these are people that were chosen out, and I think it was because of their ability in this area. Each of us should seek to edify the church by exercising the individual gifts that God has given to us. That said, we should recognize don't have. We need to know what we can do and we need to know what we can't do. Not everyone has the ability or the gift to be an appointed singer. just as not everyone has the gift of teaching or the gift of preaching or the gift of administration or whatever. And so someone might ask, well, are you saying that we should tell people you're not good enough to sing a special? No, that is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that each of us should be honest with ourselves in evaluating our gifts. We ought to seek the honest, unbiased opinion of others and be involved in ministry in the areas in which we are qualified. And this goes beyond music. As I have, I've had the opportunity to visit a lot of churches before I was traveling around. and various things. And I love that. I love to be singing in other churches and all. In fact, Brother Mitchell was pastor out in DuPont, Indiana many years ago before he ever came to Clark School. And we were there with Brother Jones and the chorale came and sang and had a wonderful service. But I've done that a lot over the years. And I have observed a lot of things I have seen just awful things, what I consider awful. I mean, I'm talking about Sunday school teachers, and I use that word very loosely in this case. I'm talking about those standing before adult classes. or what they were doing. I've heard preachers, frankly, they're no more called a priest than my dog at home. And you say, well, you shouldn't say that. Don't ever say that. I've seen those in positions of administration, have no clue what they're doing. You say, well, that's harsh. That's judgmental. Well, I mean, let's just be truthful. Some things are as obvious as the nose on your face. So the bottom line is this. Practice intellectual honesty with yourselves, and not just in the area of singing, that's one area, but in any area of ministry. Serve God where you are best suited, so that all the gifts working together, as it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, I think, that it helps the church to function as a body, as an organism, with each member, each part, doing their role in the ministry. Be a blessing and not a burden. So, we are to sing, and let it be as well look at verse 3 it says say unto God how terrible art thou in thy works through the greatness of thy power shall an enemy You've got to understand the modern usage doesn't do justice to the biblical usage of the word. If we say something is terrible, you say, well, someone's a terrible driver. That means they're just not good at it, and it's just not a good thing. But terrible in biblical usage has to do with something to be revered, something awe-inspiring, and yes, fear as well. Job said, and I've heard people say, well, you know, when the Bible talks about fear of God, it doesn't mean to be afraid of Him. Well, Job said this, I'm troubled at His presence when I consider I'm afraid of Him. So, Joe is recognizing God as being an awesome God, and there are times when it pays to be afraid, when we haven't been obedient, when we're not living for the Lord, perhaps we should be afraid. Verse 4, all the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee, to the millennial kingdom when there's gonna be peace and the Lord is going to rule the earth and there is going to be harmony, there's gonna be no disobedience, all the earth will worship the Lord. And then, I don't know what are we to sing and to say, but then it says sing. conceit, the works of God. He's terrible, there's that word again, in his doing toward the children of men. There's value in remembering the past. A fellow named George Santayana, I guess that's the way you pronounce it, he said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I guess there's some truth to that. But here we are exhorted to remember in verse six, he says, he turned the sea in dry land and went through the flood on foot. Of course, a reference to the parting of the Red Sea. And I tell you what, if you think about it and think about all the different miracles that were performed through the Bible, the parting of the Red Sea may have been, just in terms of size, may have been the largest of all the miraculous occurrences of the Bible that people observed. And I'll tell you what, it really had an effect on the children of Israel over the next 40 years, and then even beyond, because it was mentioned for many years, and it's mentioned even here in these Psalms. Verse seven. He ruleth by his power forever. His eyes behold the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. When I read that verse, I thought immediately of Psalm 2, where it says the kings and the rulers of the earth set themselves and said, let's break their bands asunder from us. We don't want to know they have the influence of Christianity in our lives. And so those even in higher places were trying to legislate against Christianity. Does that sound familiar? because it's happening in our world and even in our nation today. But he says, remember, remember the things that God has done. And when we remember the works of God in ancient past, in the past of our lives, that should strengthen our faith. If God has been faithful all these years, if God has been faithful in my life, is there any reason to believe that he won't be faithful in times to come? So, a priest. God. Number two, a proving God. Beginning in verse 8, verses 8 and 9, we see the trust expressed here. Verse 8, O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard, which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet. to be moved. So, he says, I'm ahead of myself, where am I? Okay, verse eight. Verse nine, he holds our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved. Now, does that mean that God is going to deliver every believer from every attack that might come upon him from every trial, every affliction that might happen in the believer's life. No, it doesn't mean that. The book of Hebrews, in chapter 11, You read about these heroes of faith and great victories that won and it says through faith they did this and did that and they stopped the mouths of lions and I mean they just all kinds of wonderful victories and miracles that were performed and as you're reading down through there if you're reading for the first time you can imagine someone They're reading all that and all the great things that happened. And they're saying, yeah, go God, go get him. And he's knocking out every single thing. And then you get down, I forget which verse it is, but there's a verse which says, and others. Now, see, he won the great victories in those lives that he's already mentioned. And then he said, and others. They suffered trials. And others were sawn asunder and slain by the sword and wandering about destitute. And the great miracles didn't happen in their lives. So this does not mean that every trial you experience, every affliction you experience, every attack that comes upon you, that there's gonna be a miraculous deliverance, and God's gonna show you a marked victory. But we're not living for the victory, we are living in victory. The victory's already won, and it's just a matter of how God chooses to work that out in our lives. Imagine 28, I used this verse a couple weeks ago. Fear not, then it will kill the body, not even kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. The ones that can only kill our bodies, they're not the ones that we ought to fear because God has the power over the body and the soul. There's the trust, there's the trial. In verse 10, For thou, O God, hast proved us. Thou hast tried us as silver is tried. Remember Job? Job finally came to the realization that God was refining him. And he said, when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Verse 11. And here we see that God is laying affliction on his people. Funny, that doesn't sound like the Joel Osteen God. Doesn't sound like the Kenneth Copeland God, the God that they preach. And we shouldn't say that. Like I said, don't ever do it then. But God has the prerogative to allow these undesirable. to come into our lives. We'll go on to verse 12. Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water. The commentators I've read on this verse genuinely agree that this is a reference to Isaiah 51, 23. But I would have been in the hand of them that afflict thee, which have said to thy soul, bow down that we may go over. And thou hast laid thy body as the ground and as the street to them that went over." He said, lay down in the street, we're going to run over you. We use the term, rather, like being run over by a Mack truck. Well, of course, it's figurative, and it was figurative here in this verse. But I would assume this is a reference to the conquest of Israel by the Babylonians, which was a national subjugation. I mean, they were brought down. They were brought low, the subduing of an entire nation. They weren't left there. That brings us to the triumph, the last part of verse 12. But thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. Now, Judah did return to her home place. And the Bible calls it a wealthy place. Hey, the land had been plundered. The wall, the temple were in ruins. The entire book of Nehemiah and Ezra talk about the rebuild, how they had to go in and rebuild all of those things. Yet Judah was made to see that compared to the land of captivity, it was a wealthy land. They didn't realize what they had until it was gone. I think we've experienced the same kind of thing. We don't realize how blessed we really are. And God allows adversity and loss to happen. I think so. We might have something to compare against. And it could be that we're headed for some tougher times, even than we have already experienced. And we may look back and say, wow, we really had it good. We were in a wealthy place. I've got to move on. I don't have much time. Number three, our pledges to God. First of all, our obligations, verses 13 and 14. The psalmist says, I will go into thy house with burnt offerings. I will pay thee my vows, which my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble. Now, I mentioned this in the last lesson that I taught two weeks ago. It seems that in the New Testament, the making of vows was discouraged in favor of just giving your word, being in person of your word. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. In other words, just give your word. You don't have to swear to things. We don't need to raise our hand and put our other hand on a stack of bottles. When you say, I'll do something, or when you say no, that's not, I mean, let your yay be yay, let your nay be nay. But whether we're talking about a vow or a promise, remember, you know, remember what Rush Limbaugh used to say? Words mean things. Words mean things. And he says here, he says, I'm gonna pay my vows, which my lips have uttered, when I was in trouble. Now, it's almost a cliche. Lord, if you get me through this, I'll never miss a church service again. I'll tithe, I'll do this, I'll do that. Well, hey, if you made that promise, you better live up to it. You know, people make those promises in times when they're in the hospital, and it seems like they leave them in the hospital room when they walk out the door. But it's important, when we say something, we need to mean it and whatever promises we make unto the Lord. We need to live up to that. We need to keep the things that we have promised. Secondly, he talks about our offerings. Verse 15, I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings with the incense of rams. times we don't offer our numbers. There's no need for the simple Jesus Christ, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. So we don't sacrifice burnt offerings, but that doesn't mean there's no need or no call for other kinds of sacrifice. I've got some verses here. Psalm 51, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrived heart of God thou wilt not despise. David in that song was saying You know what, I could offer burnt offerings, but that's not really what God is looking for. God wants to see my contrived heart, my broken spirit, the cause of my sin. So that's one sacrifice. Then over in the New Testament, Romans 12, 1, a deceit is read about the mercy of God. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Holy age after the blood of God, which is your reasonable service. sacrifice my body is breaking down more and more but he still wants what I have to give through my body and make it a living sacrifice and then Hebrews 13 15 by him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually that is the fruit of our lips saying There are sacrifices that we as New Testament Christians can give. He doesn't want a burnt offering on an altar. He wants our lives. He wants us to serve him and sacrifice with our lives. Now, lastly, as we get back to the outline, our prayers to God. Talk about praising God, approving of God, our pledges to God, but now our prayers to God. First of all, there's a declaration here in verses 16 and 17. Come and hear all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. Well, that's a Greek verse right there. He says, Come, all you who fear God, I'm going to declare what He has done for my soul. It's good to rehearse God's blessings with other believers. It did a wonderful thing just to sit around in fellowship and talk about the goodness of God and say, here's what God has done in my life. That's good for a couple of reasons. Number one, it encourages the others. I'm encouraged when somebody says, hey, I received this wonderful blessing and they tell me about it. I rejoice in that. And then as we rehearse, as we tell about the goodness of God and things that God has done, you know, of things. And as we talk about it, we can remember, you know what? I've forgotten all about this wonderful thing that God worked out in my life. I had an experience while I was in the hospital just recently. They told me that it was almost a certainty that when I got out of the hospital, I was going to have to be on home IV antibiotics. I've done those before where they put the PICC line in and then you have to infuse yourself with the antibiotics, which I have no problem doing, but the out-of-pocket after Medicare, the out-of-pocket was gonna be $50 a day for six weeks. Now six times seven is 42. So that means that it would have been $2,100. And that's, I don't, you know, I didn't have that extra to spend. And I was fretting about wondering, I said, Lord, you're going to have to make a way for me to pay this. We don't really understand it, but the tests that we run and come back, you don't need those home IV antibiotics. Thank you, Lord. See, I wanted the money to pay for it. He says, I'll just take it away. And that was just a small thing, but it meant a lot to me at the time. And that's the kind of thing we need to share with one another and let others know that God has been good in our lives. Verse 17. He said, I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. He mentions the mouth and the tongue. And my point I want to make here is that God wants to hear us. He wants to hear our voices. Remember the verse in Hebrews, the fruit of our lips. giving praise to his name. Now, I know you can pray silently and you can rejoice silently and you can, you know, offer praise to God silently, but it's a good thing to be verbal about it as well. And that's one thing about the congregational singing. Well, God knows I got music in my heart. Open your mouth and let it come out. He wants to hear our voices. Secondly, he mentions a detriment Here in verse 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Regard iniquity. Now, there's always some kind of iniquity in our hearts. I think you'll admit that. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know? So there's always a sin and thoughts inside of us as we seek even to bring into captivity every thought that would be any surprise, those bad thoughts and bad things come in. But I think when he talks about regard and iniquity, I think it goes beyond just the normal everyday things that we have in life. You know, Jesus said, Peter, you need your feet washed. He said, you don't need your whole body washed every day, but you need your feet washed because there's some things there. And I think that's a metaphor for the sin that attaches itself to us as we walk through a dirty world. But what he says regarding iniquity, I think it means a continual harboring of sinful thoughts and actions. The New Testament says, place in our hearts for a sin to hang out and to hang around. We might use the term unconfessed sin. He says, if I regard iniquity, the Lord will not hear me. Now, does that mean that God literally becomes deaf to our voices? I don't think so. Something else about says they said their sins and iniquities. Well, I remember no more. Does he literally forget? No, I don't think so. God is omniscient, but he does not remember our sins in a judicial sense. And in this case, God is no doubt able to hear. but not to receive those prayers for the consideration of an answer. When we have iniquity regarded in our heart, the Lord will not hear with a view to bless and to answer those things. So that's why the first order of business when we pray ought to be confession. And then lastly, over time, dependability. The dependability of God. Verse 19, but verily God hath heard me, He hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. So the psalmist no doubt practiced confession regularly as he prayed. And as a result, it says four things here. It says, verse 19, God heard. Number two, he has attended, so God heard, God attended. Verse 20, bless me God, which hath not turned away, so God heard, he attended, he did not turn away. And then it says, nor is mercy from me, so God was merciful. And that's the prayers of a righteous man, a believer, who is conscious of his God for forgiveness and confesses his sin. The word confess means to agree with. When you confess your sin, it means you're looking at your sin and admitting about your sin. The same thing that God says about sin. We are saying, Lord, I hate this sin in my life. Please cleanse me from these things. I hope that's a blessing to you. Father, bless the teaching today. Thank you for this passage of scripture, and pray, Lord, that you will remind us of these things. Help us to be people of praise as we go through our lives. We pray that Christ