Gripped By Glory

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Nick Whitehead

0:11Sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name. Tell his salvation from day to day declare his glory among the nations. His marvelous works among the peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He's to be feared above all gods for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens ho the Lord made the heavens ascribe to the Lord, oh families of the peoples ascribe to the Lord the glory. Do his name ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, bring an offering and come into his courts, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

1:04Tremble before him all the earth say among the nations. The Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established. It will never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let the field exalt in everything in it. Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord? For he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Amen. Amen. Amen.

1:46It is good to praise our great God together. As I mentioned earlier, my name is Nick Whitehead and this is our global focus week where we as a body, I hope you can tell by the songs we're singing and by the ways we are praying are setting aside our time to consider God's missionary ambition, to ponder afresh the role we might play in God's redemptive plan for the nations. Now, why do we do this? You may be saying, I understand pausing our sermon series, setting that aside for Christmas or Easter, right? These are core tenets of the gospel, the incarnation of Jesus, the resurrection. But why do we set our sermon series aside?

2:26Why do we set a whole week aside two Sundays to global focus? And there might even be some of us in the room asking, is the overall global investment we make as a church really worth it? I mean we've got a full-time staff person giving his attention to this. We've got a volunteer team giving all their lay hours to this. We invest hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in global partners. That's what we call our missionaries. Couldn't we get a better bang for our buck if we just devoted all of our resources and energy to building up this local body, maybe doing some local outreach around these cities. After all the saying goes, proximity equals responsibility, right? There are plenty of needs here.

3:11Should we really be thinking about peoples that are geographically thousands of miles away from us and miles away from us linguistically and culturally as well? Furthermore, our own kids, our own church, our own government is in great danger. Our biblical worldviews under attack right here in Minnesota, is it really good stewardship to scatter our people, to scatter our resources to the nations when our own families and churches need to be protected and preserved. Some of you might just be thinking more practically like I'm prone to. I've got plenty of things to be concerned about in my life. I've got dishes to do, I've got bills to pay, I've got mouth to feed, I've got unbelieving family members to share the gospel with.

3:58I'm just trying to find time to get in the word every day. Is it really a big deal? If I'm not that concerned with the plight of the nations people's thousands of miles away from me, why should I be concerned about them? We're people of God's book North Church. I know that about this people and I love that about this people. And so this morning I want to take us deep into Psalm 96. It's the Psalm you just heard a few moments ago when I got up here, but now if you're able, I'd love for you to see it with me as we work through it. So turn in your Bibles to Psalm 96 and as you turn there, let me, let me pray again. Father in heaven we come with great expectation before your marvelous word.

4:47It is our guide. It is revelation from you to tell us how to live and how to think. And yet even more than that, it shows us who you are and what you've done. So I'm asking you to meet us in this psalm written a thousand years ago for our good, for your eternal glory, and for the everlasting joy of the nation's. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. The main idea of this psalm, our psalm this morning and five words is this, God's glory summons worldwide worship.

5:24And my hope is that you come away from this psalm seeing that global missions starts and ends with right thinking about God. When we are gripped by the glory of God, we will respond with appropriate praise and proclamation until the whole earth joins in the chorus. When King David wrote this psalm, which we originally find in one Chronicles 16, he had just been dancing and leaping and stripping himself of his royal robes without shame and jubilant praise of his God. As the ark of the covenant, the resting place of God was brought back into holy city of Jerusalem and in this moment, this moment of praise, David summons God's people to join him, summons them to praise Yahweh, the personal covenant God of Israel and he makes three calls of worship here.

6:16So verses one through six, call us to worship and witness the God who saves verses seven through 10, call us to worship and witness the God who reigns like we just sang about. And the final section verses 11 through 13, makes an appeal for all of creation to sing for joy in light of God's coming judgment. So let's begin working our way through this first call to worship. Follow along with me in verse one, we get a threefold summons to sing, sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to the Lord bless his name. David commands us to bless our Lord by raising our voices in a new song.

6:59What David is calling for here is a fresh response to God's unchanging person and his ongoing work. He's calling God's people. He's calling you to rouse yourself from indifference and warm yourself anew to the grandeur of Yahweh, to not be apathetic or dispirited or bored or uninterested in the magnificence of our God. One way to do this is to sing. We just did that. Thank you Dan and the rest of the team so good. It's to put melody and emotion to timeless truths in order to rehearse all that God is for us in Jesus, one of our pastors mentioned this week how his wife recently heard a song that she's heard hundreds if not thousands of times, it's a classic how great thou art.

7:53And yet this particular time it struck her in a new way and brought a fresh response, fresh tears in response to the greatness of her God. That's what singing does, that's what songs do and that's what David's calling you to in this psalm. He's calling you to rouse yourself up out of the humdrum of daily life, the humdrum of this last week and ponder again the character and works of Yahweh. Let's keep reading though, look again at verse two. We aren't just summoned to sing, we are summoned to speak to declare. Verse two says, sing to the Lord, bless his name tell of his salvation from day to day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.

8:42What we see here in this hymn of praise is that our worship is inextricably tied to our witnessing. The command to go vertical in song is accompanied by a command to go horizontal in speech. Witnessing is not merely an overflow of worship. It is a means of worship. When my four year old daughter comes out of her room and her best Sunday dress does a little spin for me in the living room and I say, you look beautiful, she smiles with glee. And yet when I turn to my wife and say, isn't that the cutest four year old you've ever seen? She squirms with delight. She loves both of those. It honors her to both hear a direct praise and to hear us talk about her to somebody else and it's the same with our God.

9:36He is glorified not only by our song to him, but also by what we say about him to others. But what are we to say? Look again at verse two, what's to be the content of our proclamation? It's to tell of his salvation. God bids us to sing and speak of his saving work. How much from day to day every day, all the time. The saving work of our God is a subject matter that will never get old or be exhausted there. There's a brother in this congregation, I won't tell you who he is, but he sits over there who I love dearly and it is not uncommon for him to grab my shoulders on a Sunday morning or anytime he sees me and say, with great excitement things like you've been adopted as a child of God.

10:24You've been purchased by the blood of the lamb. He is embodied to me what it looks like to tell of the never dull news of the Lord's salvation from day to day. The salvation is further explained by David in verse three. To tell of God's salvation is to declare his glory and his marvelous works to declare who he is and to declare what he does. We cannot fully express his saving work without explaining both of these, both his character, his beauty, his holiness, his justice, his infinite perfection, his wrath against all that he's wicked, his power, his sovereignty over all things and to declare his marvelous works, his creation, his mercy towards sinners, his redemption, his provision, his protection, all that he does to manifest his glory to created beings.

11:19And if David is calling Israel the Old Testament people of God to sing and speak of salvation, how much more should we brothers and sisters who are on this side of the death and resurrection of our savior, we have a much fuller understanding of the salvation than they we get to see the exact imprint of God's glory revealed to us in his son. Just like Todd prayed this morning, we live on this side of the climax of all of God's marvelous deeds. Here they culminate in the sending of his son in the flesh to live a perfect life, to bear the wrath of God in our place to conquer sin and death by rising from the dead so that we can be reconciled to him.

12:05What an amazing savior. But there's another important component about this salvation message that we see in verse three. It's the scope of its audience. This message of salvation is not merely for the Jews who originally sang the song, but it is to be declared among the nations, among all the peoples. David is beckoning ethnic Israelites to sing a new song that anticipates a coming day in which even the pagan nations, even Americans, would be saved and summoned into the covenant choir. And if we fast forward a thousand years, we're told in our Bibles of another new song that will be sung and revelations five, the Apostle John reports to us his vision of future worshipers singing a new song before the eternal throne room of God.

12:57And what he hears tells the story of how these nations will be saved. He hears this worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransom people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and you've made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. Who are they singing to? Who does he hear them singing to? Is it Yahweh of Psalm 96? Yes, but it's also sung to a lamb standing as though he had already been slain. A lamb whose blood sacrifice has redeemed people from slavery to sin, not just from countries like Canada and Chad and Czechoslovakia, but from every tribe, every language, every tongue, every people, the Navajo, the Mimi, the PTOs, the Palestinians, the the Apostle John and we know this slain but risen lamb, who is he? He's Jesus.

14:03Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In Revelations five and our text morning call us to sing and speak of these glorious mercies that are going to come to every people group by the blood of Jesus. But David does not just command our praise and proclamation, he motivates us to participate. How does he do this? Keep looking verses four through six here, David provides the fuel for our praise and proclamation among the nations. Look at it with me for or because great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols. But the Lord made the heavens and I missed this line when I recited it.

14:53Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. The first motivation for our God word praise and our global proclamation is the greatness of our God. God is great. This is not simple. This is beautiful. God is great and therefore deserving of great praise. David is calling us to get our affections in right proportion to God's infinite worthiness. Now you might be thinking, okay, I get that we should worship God because he's great, but how is his greatness a reason for the church to witness to peoples all over the planet? Why can't he just get a bunch of worshipers from one people group to sing really loud? What if we could just get America to be a predominantly Christian nation?

15:45Again? Wouldn't that be great enough? Praise? Wouldn't that be a worthy pursuit? This text implies that the depth of God's greatness and beauty will be magnified, it will be enhanced, amplified, if you will, when a diversity of peoples are united and worship of him. We all know from our experience that as good of a singer, one person might be the song becomes all the stronger, all the more powerful when diverse voices are merged together in glorious harmony. That's why we love our choirs at the nor church. That's why we love an orchestra where multiple instruments come together Similarly, God shows off his supremacy by patchworking together a multi-ethnic quilt of people who are joyfully committed to his praise.

16:36God is not like the petty pagan gods of the nations that rule over one slice of the earth that rule over one element of creation. The God of fertility, the sun God, the rain God, no, God's supreme greatness means his praise cannot be restricted to that of only one ethnicity or one language or one region of the world. And this should compel us to engage in missions. If we are concerned with God receiving his fullness of praise from a diversity of peoples, then we will consider how we can be used to summon the nations to join the song. That's what this week is about here at the North Church. But we get another motivation here to participate in global praise and proclamation. Look at the second half of verse four, we sing and declare among the nations because Yahweh is to be feared above all gods for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols.

17:37But the Lord made the heavens look at that line in verse five in the original language. It's a poetic play on words. All the Elohim gods of the peoples are elim, worthless idols and elim there actually means nothing. All the gods of the peoples are nothing, and yet the nations are bowing before them. The people of our own nation are bowing before idols of nothingness as worshipers of the one true living God. This should deeply grieve us. The God who made the heavens, the God who saves is being ignored for worthless idols of nothingness that should stir up your heart for mission. I remember talking to a young Christian man several years ago who had spent a few months in some part of Southeast Asia. I don't remember where, but he told me about a time where he was visiting a Buddhist temple and he saw people coming and bowing before these Buddhist statues and he became so grieved by this idolatry that he pushed one of the statues off of its platform and it shattered into pieces all across the temple. He was arrested for doing this.

18:53Now I don't commend that particular action, but I do admire his zealousness for God alone to be worshiped. This is God's heart. Isaiah 42, 8. He says, I'm Yahweh. That's my name and my glory I will not give to another. It should deeply grieve us, deeply concern us that there are billions of people on this planet and thousands, thousands of entire people groups who as Romans one says, are exchanging the glory of God for images. If you're concerned about God's glory, you will be concerned with the idolatry of the nations and this should compel us to engage. We don't do missions by toppling over statues.

19:39We do it by telling of salvation. It is the power of the gospel that will move a multitude of idolaters to forsake the diversity of false gods and say Yahweh alone is better. There's no God like Yahweh. Look at verse six, hear the psalmist pauses to revel in the matchless glory of this Yahweh. Let us marvel with him. Here we get a powerful image of even the most excellent of attributes coming before God. Not only will the nations fear him, splendor and majesty themselves come before him, beauty and strength are personified as attendance in his holy sanctuary coming to serve him. Just reflect on that beauty and strength.

20:25Our God is not like a caveman with a club all muscle, no beauty. Neither is he like fine China, delicate and frail but attractive. He is strong and he's stunning. For my friends who enjoy the Chronicles of Narnia, you'll remember a scene from the magician's nephew in which the main character dig degree gets an eye full of Aslan the lion and listen to what dig degree sees. Dig degree slipped off his horse and found himself face-to-face with Aslan the lion and Aslan was bigger and more beautiful and more brightly golden and more terrifying than he had thought. If we do not see in our God raw, terrifying unpassable power and perfect alluring loveliness, we are not standing close enough.

21:21Are you so blinded by the daily humdrum of life that you are failing to see his majesty? Oh, how this happens to me? Take a step in, get face to face, readjust your lenses. The problem is not with God's demonstration of his glory, it's with your seeing of it. Get an eye full of Yahweh of the nations and with these descriptions of God's majesty in verse six, the psalmist has to launch and to another call to worship. So that's where we go in verses seven through nine, read it again with me. Ascribe to the Lord o families of the peoples ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength ascribe to the Lord the glory. Do his name, bring an offering and come into his courts, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the earth.

22:15I hope you're hearing by now the repeat, the missionary heartbeat of this psalm. Now the families of the peoples are being directly called to ascribe glory to the God of Israel. To give God glory does not imply that God is lacking anything. He doesn't lack anything from his creatures. Acts 17 says, the God who made the world and everything in it is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. He's not dependent on us and yet his glory deserves merits, our affections, adorations and praises. We respond this way to his infinite worth. His glory simply demands it. The Israelites would've come as we know with bloody sacrifices, aromatic fragrances, grain offerings.

23:09But on this side of the once for all time sacrifice, the author of Hebrews says that through Jesus we continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. Lips that acknowledge his name. Look at verse eight with me, the nations and the Gentiles. This includes the majority of us are commanded by God to bring an offering, not of a ram or a goat or a bull, but an offering of glory, his due glory to come into his courts. And King David's day, the Gentiles were restricted to the outer courts of the temple. They could make no direct sacrifices there. But in this psalm, they're being beckoned to come bring their offerings of praise to the inner courts of the temple just as the Jews once did to offer glory in the very presence of God.

24:01This is only possible by the once for all time sacrifice of Jesus. And this worship once again in verse 10, we see gives way to witnessing among the nations. Look at verse 10, say, among the nations, the Lord reigns. The message this time is not Yahweh saves it's Yahweh reigns. God summons us to tell the nations not only of his deliverance but of his dominion. We don't merely proclaim Jesus as savior, we proclaim him as Lord. Why? Why do we need a, why should a message of salvation be proclaimed and also a message of sovereign kingship? We get the message of salvation. That's good news. A message of kingship. What's that about?

24:53And I think the rest of verse 10 explains a little bit more says indeed the world is established. It shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. What the nations need to know is that this is God's world. He has all authority over it. He establishes not only the physical order of that world, but its moral order right in accordance with his perfect standard. He will be the good, fair, and faithful judge of all peoples. That's why this positive message of salvation Yahweh saves, must be accompanied by this warning. Yahweh reigns the humble savior who came to die for the sins of all who believe he's the same one who the Bible calls a righteous judge who will come again to subject his enemies under his feet and rule the nations with a rod of iron.

25:50We are not universalists here at the North Church. We do believe eternal judgment is coming for all people from any and every nation who run after worthless idols. God will manifest his supreme kingship over all that is in opposition to him. This should fuel our sending and our going. The nations are in dire need and the gospel message is their only hope and what a hope it is. In fact, our psalm this morning actually doesn't emphasize so much the warning side of God's judgment, but the positive side, it boasts of God's final overwhelming demonstration of his sovereign rule. And this is incredibly good news for citizens of his kingdom and for all creation. So look with me at those final three verses.

26:42Here's David's final call to worship. Who does he beck in this time? Is it Israel? Is it the families of the peoples? Let the heavens be glad. Let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let the field exalt and everything in it then show all the trees of the forest. Sing for joy before the Lord. For he comes for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness, all of creation. All of creation is commanded to rejoice in the coming judgment of God the day he defeats all the opposition and makes all things new. Sky and soil will be glad.

27:24Every barnacle and bottle nose dolphin in the ocean will sing for joy. The pastures full of field mice are gonna sing praises to God. The sycamores, the sequoias, the spruce trees sing a song of joy. He's not only out to get multi-ethnic worshipers from the human species, he's so diver, so deserving, a diver of a diversity of praise that even the animals and the plants and the rocks are gonna cry out to him. Him in song. Do you remember how Jesus responds to the Pharisees when they come and tell him to rebuke his disciples for praising him as a king? He says, if these disciples were silent, the very stones would cry out in worship.

28:13He will get his universal praise. And obviously we aren't living in this day yet. We still see our creation, groaning in pain, longing for the day. It is set free from its bondage to corruption. The world including each of us, can give testimony to the fact that we are still subject to illness and immoral government, political turmoil and terrorists, natural disasters and destructive relationships and decaying bodies. But the Lord will indeed come. It says verse 13, our king will establish his perfect government. He will judge the earth and all the peoples. He will make it all right. And if you love this king and you find your refuge in his saving work, then his judgment, his reign will not be an oppressive enemy of your joy, but it will be the producer of it. Do you love him?

29:10Are you hiding yourself in Christ today? Judgment is coming. And notice in the last call to worship there in verses 11 through 13, there is no command to witness like the other two sections. There's no summons to declare salvation to the nations. And that's because, and this coming day when all of creation is singing, worship will be all that remains. Pastor John Piper says this so well when he writes, when this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity, but worship abides forever. We will one day see what the apostle John saw in Revelation seven.

29:58A great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb praising God together for his salvation. And notice in Revelation seven, the most important part of that worship scene is not the diversity of that choir, it's the object of their praise. He is worthy. Missions starts and ends with worship of our savior king. I wanna conclude this way. Our, our congregation has inherited a rich legacy of global outreach. But as we launch out as a new church in our first official year of existence as the north church, how will we continue to maintain this value?

30:46What will keep this flame burning? Our engagement in global missions is dependent on our fascination with the glory of Jesus. We will be compelled to pray, to give, to send, to go if, if we continue to be enthralled and captivated by our risen and reigning savior. A savior, so great, so glorious, so sovereign, so gracious, so beautiful that we are jealous. We are jealous to see him worship by a myriad of peoples. Our horizontal endeavor to bring the nations into salvation is compelled not primarily by a desire to obey commands or by a love for the nations, but by our supreme interest in Christ.

31:35Don't come to this book merely looking for commands to obey, promises to cling, to come to it, looking to see and savor Jesus. Ask God to enlighten your heart in new ways, fresh ways, ways that make you sing new songs to his unchanging character and remarkable works. He will answer. I wanna give you a brief story. I want you to show. God answers these prayers this summer. I'd been praying a lot for two of my friends here at the North Church who were walking through increasing challenges with their aging mothers, caring for them. It just so happened that one summer, morning nonchalantly, I approached my Bible reading open to the next thing and my reading had me in John 19. And God worked in unexpected ways in this.

32:27In this chapter in Jesus is hanging on the cross and in one of his final moments, he looks around to find his mother. And the text says that when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom Jesus loved standing nearby, he said to her Woman, behold your son. And then he looked at his disciple and he said, behold your mother. And from that hour it says, the disciple took her into his own home. And here was a text I'd read dozens of times. And yet that morning God used the experiences of my two friends caring for their mothers to readjust my lenses, to see my Lord with a new fresh vision. I was not expecting it, but that morning I saw my Lord hanging on a tree, probably barely able to move his head to utter a word, probably trying to see through blood and sweat dripping from his hair.

33:26And even in his most agonizing moments with death at his doorstep, Jesus finds strength to consider one more time the interest of his mother above his own. And even in the most shameful experience of his human life, in his weakest moment, he demonstrates his divine authority by with a word, providing a son for her, a new family. I saw that morning in a fresh way, a meek and a majestic savior who sacrifices and provides for his own God will put his majesty on display before you as you spend time in this book. He does these miracles. I was not expecting that so many times He comes and he opens my eyes, spiritual eyes to see his glory through his living and active word approach it this way, come with eager expectation. And as you read, you're gonna come face to face with a savior who is concerned not only with the wellbeing of his little Jewish mother, but also with the praise of the nations.

34:36Pay attention to how often the Bible talks about that. And I have no doubt that if we are a people reading with spiritual eyes, seeing and savoring our Lord, that some of you are gonna be compelled to go out as ambassadors for the expansion of God's kingdom among the peoples. He will work that way. Some of you in this room are wondering what it might look like to prepare yourself to be evangelists, disciple makers, pastors, teachers of God's word among the nations. If this is you, I'd invite you come talk with one of your elders that you know. If you don't know an elder, get to know one. Come talk to me.

35:13We would love to hear about the ways the Lord might be working and stirring in you and pray with you about this. And for the rest of us, which I believe will be the majority of us who stay, Christ supremacy over all peoples will stimulate our robust partnership. For those who go out for the sake of the name, may the Lord use those of us who stay as generous contributors, committed intercessors, encouraging friends who labor to sustain our long-term gospel workers through hardships and discouragements that they face in cross-cultural ministry. If you know one of these global partners, consider diving deeper, asking more, hear their heartbeat from ministry, catch their ministry vision.

35:56Ask them what they do, get on their newsletter list. Commit to praying for them regularly. If you've never met a global partner, today's a good day to be here. There will be some of them out in the commons at tables after this service. Please go make yourself available to them. Talk to them, spend time with them. I want to give one brief word before I close to moms and dads and perhaps grandpas and grandmas. This Wednesday evening. We're putting on an event, as I mentioned before, that's geared towards stirring up a passion for God's glory even among our children. If you come, you're gonna hear a letter written to a father asking him to be willing to give up his daughter to the sufferings and rewards of missionary service parents, grandparents, are you willing to raise children?

36:44So enamored, so enamored with God, so compelled by Christ's supreme worthiness that they risk their lives to usher in his bride from the farthest corners of the earth. None of these efforts are sending our going, our praying, our teaching will be in vain. This is the best news because we not only have a king who wants the worship of the nations, we have a king who will get it. Jesus said, I have sheep outside of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. The lamb that was slain will receive his multi-ethnic bride as a reward for his sufferings. Missions is not a risky investment.

37:31It's a guaranteed success. That's why we participate. We participate in an undertaking that cannot be thwarted. Our king is coming and he will get the global glory he deserves. Let me pray and I invite you to rejoice with us in song worthy. Are you Lord of all blessing and honor and glory and might worthy are you Lord of the praise of every person in this room and the songs of a thousand different tongues for all eternity? Lord, would you captivate us more and more with your all glorious character and your merciful works so that we and the nations might hail you and enthone you as king overall in the name of the Lamb who is slain I pray? Amen.

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Sermon Text

Psalm 96