The Impetus of Worship

I'm going to refresh your water here. All right. Thank you, Pastor Stovall. Just again, I want to thank the organizers for the opportunity of being with you this weekend. It's been a glorious, refreshing experience and a great joy to minister alongside Dr. Ware. I'm very committed to what I call Reformed ecumenicity. And I rejoice in the freedom to labor in a context of Reformed Baptists. And I thank God for what he's doing in your lives and apparently in your churches. It's a great thing. I'm going to talk about worship this morning. And let me just say there's only one left. One of our conference books is The Worship of God, Reformed Concepts of Biblical Worship. This was actually co-published with our press and Christian focused publications. And I have an exposition here of Psalm 100 that I'm going to look at this morning from a different direction. But there's some very other very fine articles. in here as well as this one's left on the table, but you can order that from the seminary bookshop. As I said, it came out of the conference and Pastor Stovall last night mentioned our conference. We do a conference every spring, the second full week in March and encourage you this year will be a Calvin conference. We were pretty much the first ones to come out with a 500th anniversary birthday anniversary of Calvin. It's going to be a very unique conference. We normally have nine sessions. We'll be having 11 with ministers, theologians from really North America and from Britain. And it's going to be, I think, a great profit and a lot of fun. So you can watch our website for that. There's also on the table with the books. A sign up sheet, if you'd like to get information about the work of the seminary, about the conferences, then you give us your name, address, email, and we'll be glad to send you those things as well. Let us stand and read Psalm 100. This is a psalm for Thanksgiving. Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord Himself is God. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name. For the Lord is good, his lovingkindness is everlasting, and his faithfulness to all generations. Thus far, God's holy word. Let us pray. Our Father, you have been kind and good to us to meet with us in these few hours that we've had together in the instruction from your word. And we ask that you would do so again now So we particularly consider the relationship of the glory of your goodness to our worship, that you will bless these truths to us, that we will have yet a greater commitment to biblical worship and to your honor in worship. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. In reformed circles, Up to about 30 years ago, there was a great deal of uniformity in worship, worship practices. You could go out throughout North America and various Presbyterian or the Dutch Reformed churches and there would be a basic similarity. go to Mexico or Korea or to Britain, and there would be a basic similarity. And we know that today that that's not the case. Today we're involved in what many refer to as worship wars. And the worship wars, I believe, have arisen for theological purposes, because theology is what's going to shape worship, even as Dr. Ware said, a right grasp of the Trinity is definitely going to leave an imprint on how we approach the practice of worship. Make an analogy with which you would probably be very familiar. I can remember, particularly in the South, in the 70s, as the Sovereign Grace Baptist movement began to grow, that one of the differences when I would move in those circles that I saw between what was taking place in Reformed Presbyterian circles and in those circles was worship. Because broader evangelicalism worshiped God differently from Reformed people. And you've come out of that and you know what I'm talking about. I'm thrilled to be here and to see a group that's committed to singing at least one psalm in a worship service. And the selection of hymns is extraordinary and praiseworthy, and that is simply a reflection That as you men have organized this conference on the basis of encouraging each other in being reformed pastors, that your theology is affecting your approach to worship. You're modeling that for all of us as we come together in this conference. Now, particularly when I say that theology affects worship. Our theology of God, obviously, then, is going to have a powerful influence on worship. The nature of worship is going to be shaped by our grasp of the nature of God. And that's what I want to show you this morning, though obviously you know it, from Psalm 100. Now, last night, when we looked at Exodus 34, We saw that God revealed his glory through his goodness, the name of Jehovah, that God is Jehovah, yes, self-sufficient, but personal, covenantal, whose character is marked with compassion, grace, long suffering, loving kindness and faithfulness. so that he covenants to have a people and to pardon our sins and to keep us forevermore. Well, what we see then when Moses responded to that was the very first act was what? Was worship. He bowed low to the earth and he worshiped God. And thus, the revelation of the glory of God in his goodness was the impetus to worship for Moses. And that's what I want you to see now as Psalm 100 sets this before us in a much more structured and systematic way, how the glory of God's goodness is the impetus to worship. This is a liturgical psalm. I read the title, I believe the titles were inspired, it's called A Psalm for Thanksgiving. And it was a psalm to direct the church in her praise and giving of thanks to God. It's also the the final piece of a glorious set of psalms that begin with Psalm 93. I call them messianic kingdom psalms. And the theme that runs through them is the glory of God's Messiah, who is the judge of the world, and this psalm now brings us to that final response to the goodness of God that will be manifested and we know for us has been manifested in the Messiah. Now, I want you to see this morning that when we are gripped with the revelation of the glory of God in his goodness, we will worship God appropriately. When we are gripped with the glory of God revealed in His goodness, we will worship God appropriately. We want to see that the goodness of God inspires worship, informs worship, and enlivens worship. First, as we've already noted with the case of Moses, the revelation of God's glory in his goodness inspires worship. Moses wanted to see the glory of God. God proclaimed his glory to Moses in the personal revelation of his goodness, and that glory drove Moses to his face on the ground in humble obeisance and adoration. Now, that's exactly what we see taking place in Psalm 100. Psalm 100 is structured like a twofold call to worship. And each call to worship is grounded upon who God is and what God does. The first call to worship is in verses one and two. Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. And then the second call is in verse four. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. So we have two sets of commandments here, one and two, telling us that we are to sing joyfully, shout, serve the Lord with gladness. Verse four, a second command that we're to enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise and give thanks to him, blessing his name. But notice that each call is anchored in the reality of God. The first call is anchored in verse three, know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us, not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. The second call is anchored in verse five, for the Lord is good. His loving kindness is everlasting and his faithfulness to all generations. Now, you see a parallel here with what God revealed in Exodus chapter 34. The first ground is the name of God. And here we're told that Jehovah is God. Now, the word God is the plural form of the briefer word El that we had in Exodus 34, but they're quite akin. This is the word that's used in Genesis 1.1, the word here, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And it's the word, as we saw last night, that pictures for us his transcendence. and his majesty and his sovereign power. He is the creator. But once again, when the church is called to worship, they're called to worship because the true God has taken to himself the personal name of Jehovah. Yes, his eternity and self-sufficiency and independence. But in this context and in Exodus 34, his personalness, he is the God of the covenant, the God who took notice of the sufferings of his people in Egypt, the God who intervenes on their behalf, delivering them and making covenant with them, the God who then promises to preserve them and to keep them. So the very names of God that began the revelation of his glory, his goodness to Moses, become here the foundation of a call to worship. We looked last night at God's work, particularly that work of redemption, that he would take the people for himself. He would dwell in their midst because he would pardon their sins. We'll notice in verse three, know that Yahweh himself is God. It is he who made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Now, perhaps the reference to God's making us is a double reference because we've talked about Jehovah Elohim. Perhaps that there is the reference here to creation and we do worship God because he is the creator. We didn't make ourselves. The world didn't make itself. God is the one that made it. But the context particularly focuses again on redemption for this God who made us has made us that we are his people. and the sheep of his pasture. He has redeemed us to make us his own peculiar possession. And so we worship God because of who he is revealed in his name, Jehovah Elohim. We worship God because we are his redeemed people. And he has redeemed us to worship him. That is the chief end of redemption. God didn't redeem us to keep us from going to hell. If he had done that, he'd save everybody. God wanted a people for his own peculiar possession to do what? What does Christ tell the woman at the well in Samaria? That God is a spirit and is seeking a people to worship him in spirit and in truth. He's gathering a people now. What did Moses tell Pharaoh? Let my people go. to a place that I have appointed, that they may do what? Worship Me." Now, was that subterfuge? Was that simply a trick? No. It was the bottom line. This is why God brought them out, constituted them a church nation, that they might worship Him in the way He appointed. Unless He has redeemed you to worship Him. His work of redemption that so wonderfully reveals who Yahweh Elohim is, becomes then the impetus to worship. It inspires us. Notice then that the second call is premised upon attributes, and they're exactly the attributes that we examined last night. In verse five, Yahweh is good. And there is the summary of it all. He said, I'm going to cause my goodness to pass before you. And we saw that that goodness is God's compassion, grace, long suffering, loving kindness and truth. Well, the first three are summarized here. Yahweh is good. And we've looked at that last night. We won't examine that again. His loving kindness is everlasting, his faithfulness to all generations. Our way, who is good, is full of loving kindness and truth. The word faithfulness is the same word. It's the word truth. The psalmist reminds us that God, who is eternal, is eternal in his attributes. In the exercise of loving kindness and faithfulness, he's everlasting. And that was expressed in Exodus 34, he preserves loving kindness to a thousand generations, a way of saying God is redeeming a people, keeping a people on this earth until Christ returns and then to be with him forevermore. So you see that the call to worship in Psalm 100 is premised upon the glorious revelation, particularly of the goodness of God. So when we are gripped with the glory of God's goodness, we are going to worship him. We have to worship him. It is the God generated response to the revelation. But we also ought to realize from the enormity of what's being said about God that private worship is not sufficient. Yes, Moses received that revelation and he was driven to the ground before Jehovah. But for whom did he receive that revelation? For the church. It's recorded for us, the revelation and the response in Scripture. As Paul says, it is for our instruction and encouragement. And what we see in Psalm 100, is that the fitting response to this revelation must culminate in corporate worship as it has and will in heaven, it must here as well. For this liturgical psalm focuses, now private worship is very important and I would encourage every one of you to be involved daily in reading and prayer and meditation, the praising of God. Family worship is very important. I hope all of you are leading your families in family worship and you pastor to teaching your congregations to do that. But the highest expression of worship, and we see it in this psalm, is corporate worship. When the church is assembled by her office bearers and she rises up into the very presence of God himself in heaven. Notice the psalm is corporate in character. This is seen by the place of worship in verse four, enter his gates, come into his courts. That's a reference to the temple. But we now are the temple. It's a reference to the church of God assembled in God's special presence. You see, that's where we worship corporately, we're here, but because of union with Christ, we're in his presence. The writer of the Hebrews says that we are there with angels in the souls of just men made perfect. The commands are all in the plural. That's not as clear as we read it in the English, but it's clear in the Hebrew. Every one of these liturgical commands is you all, not you. And the acts are acts that best are performed by a group of people. and not simply by individuals, as we see the joyful shouting and the singing with joy and the blessing of God's name in his holy presence, the giving of thanks unto him. And so, corporate worship is the highest and most fitting response to the revelation of God's glory. Corporate worship is superior to all other forms of worship. It's a great piece by David Clarkson on why corporate worship is superior to private worship. He has 12 reasons. And actually, it's been taken out of his works and made a little pamphlet. I don't know if it's even still in print or not. But the place where corporate worship takes place, the things that we do. Now, we shouldn't do a thing in family worship or private worship that we don't do in corporate worship. But there are things that we do in corporate worship that we can't do elsewhere. We have not been given the sacraments for families and individuals to observe. Those are the means of grace given to the church and the corporate assembly. And although we will preach in other venues, evangelistically or didactically at times, we don't have preaching in family worship. Preaching has been appointed primarily to take place in the assembly of God's people in the context of corporate worship. And preaching is the chief means of grace. By preaching the written word becomes the powerful life changing living word of God. And so corporate worship is the fitting response to the revelation of God's glory. One other thing before we leave this first point, notice that this is the responsibility of all people. Because the psalm begins with all the earth being addressed and in the context of this messianic kingdom psalms, it is quite clear that by all the earth, he's talking about the nations, the islands, which is a Old Testament technical phrase to talk about the Gentiles, the families of the earth. Now, what's important about this is to recognize in your evangelism that the sinner's greatest offense. is not adultery or murder or homosexuality. It is the refusal to honor God as God and to worship him. Because the first table of the law in that regard is superior to the second table of the law. Idolatry, which is the root of all other sins, is the most grievous and heinous. And the refusal to honor God To give thanks to him while there's no more base, rebellious, sinful, corrupt ingratitude than that. And so we put the glory of God before men and women and we seek to press upon their consciences that their refusal to submit to him in Christ Jesus in order to worship him is in itself sufficient to send them to hell forevermore. They might be very moral and upright, but their refusal to worship God because they don't know him. So anyway, we see then that the revelation of God's goodness is that which inspires worship, particularly corporate worship. In the second place, we learn from this psalm that the revelation of the glory of God's goodness informs our worship, that there is a direct relationship between who God is and how we respond to him. I would ask you the question, is there such a relationship between who God is and what we do? And as I've already said, the answer is yes. Think about our relationships. If you had the privilege to meet the President of the United States, you would respond to him and relate to him differently from the way you respond to the man or the woman that lives next door. A few years ago when the Atlanta Braves won the World Series and they went to the, invited to the White House to meet with the President, There were posters in their locker room. You're going to see the president. You are expected to wear a coat and a tie. You see, they recognize, better than a lot of Christians today, that when you're coming into the presence of someone who is greatly superior to you by office, that there are things that are appropriate and the things that are inappropriate. Our behavior, our demeanor, our dress. I'm not talking about a Saturday morning conference like this, but I'm talking about how you dress for corporate worship. These things should have a direct correlation to our realization of where we are and whose presence we have come. This is what I mean in the revelation of the glory of God and his goodness informs worship, that what we do should be directly shaped by the one to whom we do it. What we see here is that because of who God is, we serve him in his special presence. We serve him in the work of worship and adoration in his special presence. Notice the commandment in verse two, serve the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful singing. The word serve is very important as we think about a theology of worship. In both the Old and New Testaments, there are three primary terms that teach us about worship and what we do. The broadest term is the term that we had last night when it says that Moses bowed his face to the ground and worshipped God. Both in the Hebrew, shecha, and in the Greek, proskuneo, we have these verbs that capture the concept of humble, obeisance, and adoration. As a subject would bow to a king, perhaps some of you saw the The John Adams HBO series, we rented that because I think it was on Sunday. We wouldn't watch it. We rented it. We've been watching it. But it's very amusing seeing when he comes into the presence of King George because they taught him he had to bow three times and exactly how he had to do it because he was coming before the presence of a king. And so he was to show obeisance. And both of these words had to do with actually showing proper obeisance and honor to individuals. But they're particularly used for this attitude of humble adoration and obeisance that we show God. Now, on the other end of the spectrum of the three words is a word that has to do with liturgical acts. And shirach, in the Hebrew, it has to do with the service of the Levites and the various things Levites and priests did, ministering before God in the tabernacle and the temple. In the New Testament, you'll hear a word with which you're familiar, liturgeo. And that was to serve God with these liturgical acts. Understand that liturgy is not wrong. We have good liturgy and bad liturgy, but the most free flowing, charismatic church still has liturgy, just bad. Because liturgy is simply the acts that we offer to God in our worship. But there's a middle term that relates the obeisance to the acts, and it's a term that we have here that is used for service. I know Dr. Ware last night used this in its broadest sense. It is the word that has to do, actually has to do with the service of a servant. And both the verbs and nouns in both the Old and New Testaments have to do as well with servants and their service. Obviously, it is the service that we render to God in all of life. But in this context, it's obviously liturgical. And this word is used in both Testaments as Hebrew and Greek to talk about the acts of worship, liturgical acts that we do to God in order to honor him. That's why for decades we've talked about a worship service. Because it is the service that we render to God of corporate worship. And notice where it takes place in God's special presence. Come before him. Enter his gates. Come into his courts. So we serve God in all of life. We live for his honor and glory. But on the Lord's Day, we put on our best clothes. and come into the court, just as if we were servants of a king or a queen and we had particular jobs in the court and we would obviously be serving them as we did those jobs. But then if the king or queen had a weekly time where the servants of the court would come in a special and formal manner into their presence. That would be different service, but yet a different quality of service. That's what we do on the Lord's Day. We come into the special presence of God to serve him. There's a lot of implications. I said that this informs worship. The first one simply is that worship is not a passive activity. If it is, you're not worshiping. You see, one of the one of the things that's driven the innovations of what we would call contemporary worship is that the congregation has been too passive and they need to get more actively involved. Well, if you understand that worship is serving God, there's not a thing that you can be doing in worship and worship rightly. There's not an act in which you must be consciously participating. In fact, the Confession of Faith and the Baptist Confession, I assume that they would agree here, when it lists the elements of worship, one of those things is the conscionable listening to the Word of God preached. Now, conscionable means with diligence and care. So that actually, how you listen is either an act of worship or irreverence. If you worship with faith, love and submission to the Word of God preached, then you are worshipping God actively. If you become a passive recipient and your mind wanders and you're simply there to be entertained, then you are worshipping God irreverently. If you understand that worship is service, you understand it's a work to be done and every one of us must do all of that work. It matters not if one person leads in prayer or we pray in unison. If we all sing in unison, but we listen to the Word of God read and preached, we're all participating in worship. Well, that's the first implication. The second thing, and a number of things will flow out of that, that when I say that the revelation of the glory of God's goodness informs worship, Then we must see that because we serve him, we must seek to do that which is appropriate. And there's going to be some things inappropriate, appropriate elsewhere, but inappropriate in the presence of God, because we've come into his presence who has revealed his glory to us in his goodness. First thing this informs us of then has to do with attitude. We're to worship him with reverence and awe. That's expressed, isn't it, in Moses's falling on his face to the dirt of the ground and worshiping God. And we don't prostrate ourselves in the public assembly, but our hearts are to be prostrated in the presence of God. And simply by implication, this is not time today to develop this. It is. I have another chapter in this book on liturgy. And posture. And I'm so glad to see the practice of some of these things, such as standing and reading the word. Standing or kneeling for prayer. Now, I don't know if a Baptist could kneel for prayer any more than a Presbyterian can lift his hands above his shoulders. But it is something that the Puritans did. Calvin did it in Geneva. To kneel for prayer, he just put those little kneeling racks in the back of these pews. And we are by our bodies expressing reverence, which God's word teaches us. That's why we stand for reading the scripture and we stand or kneel for prayer. And then such things as the corporate amen after singing, shouting, there's the shout to the Lord as well as after prayer. And I can't get anybody to do it. But the corporate lifting of hands, not individualistic, we're worshiping corporately. But as clear commands and patterns in Scripture, the people of God lifted their hands. They did it as a congregation, not all the time, but at appropriate times, such as the singing of the doxology or the opening prayer of adoration and confession. So you see, that puts me kind of outside the camp of traditionalists at that point, trying to be biblical. with respect to worship, so reverence and awe expressed in attitude and in posture. Second thing that this informs us with respect to our worship is that we are to worship God as he reveals to us, because we are coming to serve him. He's the Lord and master. We are the servants. Now, does it not make sense that the Lord would tell the servant, how he wants to be served. It's not service if we come and serve him the way we want to serve him. I'll give you an amusing illustration of this. Think of a young couple and they're courting and the young man has come to the point where he wants to express his true love for this beautiful young lady. And so he's thinking now, what is it I can show her that will show her how much I love her? He thinks, he thinks, well, he's a cat lover. Now the world is divided between cat lovers and cat haters. And cat lovers obviously think everybody else has to be a cat lover. So he could think of nothing better to give her than a sweet, cuddly kitten. So he went and he shopped around all the pet shops and he found the perfect kitten. It reminded him of her and he got it and right before he went in he put it in a special box, had some air holes but all wrapped up and he rings the doorbell and she comes and her heart's fluttering and he's already three shades of red. He says, I want you to know how much I love you. So with great anticipation she takes the box, she unwraps it, she pulls off the lid and out comes this monster. The sweet, cuddly kitten fastened himself onto her chest and she fainted dead away. She hated cats. She'd been really mauled by one when she was a child. She'd break out in hives. It was the end of that relationship. Because he thought that he could show his love to her on the basis of his character. Rather than her character. Now, husbands, we know how hard that is, don't we? How many times we've blown it? Well, if we blow with one another, how in the world do we think that we can come and serve Jehovah God, who is infinite, eternal and unchangeable, who is transcendent as well as imminent? By our imagination. If it makes me feel good, it must please Him. How stupid. And so when I say that the revelation, the glory of God in all of his attributes here in his goodness informs worship, it teaches us that we must worship him according to his dictates. It's what we call the regular principle of worship. It's simply a biblical common sense principle that if worship is service to the Lord and master, it must be regulated by his will and not by ours. And so we see all the various things that are being done in this psalm. So many of these other psalms in this little section, singing, praising, praying, bringing offerings, proclaiming the gospel and preaching. These are the things that God has revealed to us. This informs us. Now, two other implications grow out of this. When we say that the revelation of the glory of God and his goodness informs worship, we'll say applications and grow out of this. The first one is our worship must be God centered. See, here's one of the difficulties with, quote, contemporary worship. Obviously, if I'm worshiping God tomorrow, it's contemporary. You know, I'm doing it now. But we know what is meant by this phrase, trying to bring in these innovations. Well, one of the things is that people have got this consumer mentality and they want to leave church feeling good about themselves. They want to be moved. They want their emotions to be moved. But if we if we realize. That the character of God revealed in scripture is what inspires and informs worship. That he must be the object of our worship and not we. Again, illustrated in our marriages, if you enter into a marriage relationship seeking your own emotional fulfillment, that is a prescription for disaster. If you enter into that relationship seeking to fulfill the other. That's the recipe for joyful marriage. But when you fulfill the other, what happens? You are fulfilled and you're moved deeply in your own emotions. We don't seek God to be moved in our emotions or to feel good or happy. We seek God for his glory and honor, but he will fill us with himself and we'll be moved to the depth of our being when we seek him as we ought. Second application that grows out of our worship being informed by God's character is that it is covenantal, family oriented and not evangelistic. This is the other great problem that is made today. People are approaching worship, but how can I reach my neighbors? And it's a genuine motivation. It's a praiseworthy motivation. It's just wrongheaded because the purpose of worship is not evangelism. It is to serve God. Now, that isn't going to be a byproduct and will be, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. They'll come in and because God is present, they'll fall on their faces before him. But that's not what we're seeking. We're seeking the presence of God to honor and serve him. A few years ago, I was in Israel. And the first night there, I stayed in the home of family members of the church there where Baruch Moaz is. I'm sure you all know about his ministry. And they were Israelis, Christians, but Israelis. They were some of the few native born Israelis that are actually in that congregation. And in God's providence, the day I was there was the day of birthday of one of their sons. And so they would have a birthday party that night and a lot of friends were going to come. And it was a big deal. You know, they had all this Hebrew food. And they sang Hebrew songs and they played Hebrew games. Of course, they invited me to the party. So that presented a bit of a problem. I didn't know what some of that food was. I didn't understand the games and the songs. So how are they going to solve that problem? They could say, well, Pipe is here, so we better, we'll just have American food and we won't play our distinctive games or sing our songs. We'll just do those things he understands. Now, if that happened, whose party would it become? It would become my party. But it wasn't supposed to be my party. It was a party for their son. And so what they did was simply come alongside me and explain things to me as different things. And it was good. I had a good time. So whose worship is it? Is it God's or the unconverted? You see, we're making it the party for the unconverted. It's supposed to be God's celebration. And if we celebrate God in the way that he wants to be celebrated, and we come alongside the visitors and the unconverted, or those from weak Christian backgrounds, and we explain to them what we're doing and why we do it, then perhaps God will be pleased to manifest his glory to them and they'll fall flat on their faces before him. But I can tell you one thing. If the unconverted person leaves our worship service, Happy, copacetic, feeling good about themselves. We know who has not been present. And that's God. They'll have to leave smitten, angry, but not happy. Not if they've come into the presence of the holy God. And so the character of God inspires worship. The character of God's goodness informs worship. And then we see the character of God enlivens our worship. Now, I'm sure this part's easier for Baptists than it is for Presbyterians. Shout joyfully to the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. You see, what's being described here is exuberant worship. Exuberant worship because the heart has been gripped with the beauty of God. Again, one of the issues that people are bringing in evasions, they're addressing the fact that worship is boring. And frankly, a lot of reformed worship is dull and boring. I agree. And that is as bad as boring preaching. It's a sin, it's reprehensible. that we would make God's worship dull and boring. But you see, the solution begins not with innovations. A saxophone and a drum set is not going to make worship any more joyful than a piano or an organ or no musical instrument at all. We're looking for fixes in the wrong places. The solution begins with our heart, the heart of the worshippers. For if our hearts are inflamed with the beauty and glory of God, our worship will be enthusiastic and exuberant. And that's why I say that the revelation of the glory of God and his attributes of goodness enliven our worship. Why did the psalmist say, shout before the Lord and sing with joy? Because of who God is. Because of the realization of his grand attributes, of his goodness, his loving kindness and his faithfulness. Because he's redeemed us. And so we must begin with ourselves individually and in our families and corporately. The primary key to joyful worship is in the heart prepared for worship. If, in fact, these attributes enliven worship, we must enliven our own hearts with these attributes. Thus, the necessity of preparation. Most of us too often come into God's presence with hearts unprepared. We get up. We rush around the house to get out the door. If we have children, Shoe elf has been there the night before and hidden one shoe and and thus, we're all late getting to church and and dad's upset. Mom's harried and. You see, we have to we had to change our whole approach to how we come into the assembly of God. It's not just that we take a bath on Saturday night. And put on our Sunday finery. But we've got to have our hearts prepared. And what we see here in the psalm is our hearts will be prepared by meditation on who God is. As we meditate on his name and titles and attributes and linger there until we begin to get a sense of the one in whose presence we're coming. We meditate on his works, the great objective works of God, the power and beauty of creation, the unbelievable wonders of incarnation and redemption. But we don't meditate on those works merely abstractly, but we do so experimentally. We are involved. Yes, even in the historical works, we need to recognize that we have a role in them. We see this in Psalm 66, another psalm that calls us to praise God. Verse three says, How awesome are thy works because of the greatness of thy power, thine enemies will give feigned obedience. All the earth will worship thee. Look at verse five. Come and see the works of God, who is awesome in his deeds toward the sons of men. He turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot there. Let us rejoice in him. Have you seen this? It's quite remarkable. The psalmist calls us to worship. He gives us the ground of the great passing through the Red Sea. He begins by saying, come, let us see. He says there, he says, come here and stand in your imaginations, stand on the bank of the sea and joyfully participate in the reality of what God did. And we should take each of the great works of God as they're revealed in scripture and personalize them for As they were done for our ancestors, they were done for us. And we ought to rejoice in them. So meditate on God as he's revealed in names, titles, attributes. We meditate on his works, not just abstractly, but experimentally. But we also ought to meditate on his works subjectively in our own lives. The psalmist goes on in this psalm. And he says in verse 16, Come in here, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. That's foreign to so much of our experience. That we're thinking about what God does for us. Our stories, our redemptions, as parents, we should be speaking to our children and grandchildren about our stories, because our stories are about God, what he's done for us. It's a great thing to do in the Lord's Day afternoon. You need to get your children some exercise or go for a walk and tell them because they they love to hear. Tell me a story about when you were a girl, mommy or a grandmommy. And we got to start thinking about God's great works in our lives and and review them for every one of us has this great tapestry of special, wonderful providences and All designed by the loving God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, purchased for us by Him, applied to us by the Holy Spirit. And so we meditate. As we meditate on these things, our hearts will become inflamed and we will approach worship like a thoroughbred trying to get into the starting blocks. And you've seen those horses, you know, they just all they want to do is run. You have to restrain them. Wouldn't it be great if we came into the house of the Lord's people, having to be restrained for the joy that is filled us? I fall so short, so short in this. I know, though, I know from Scripture and from some experience that this is what will enable us to worship God in a way that is joyful and exuberant and pleasing to him. And remember that all of this comes to the wonderful focus in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, your Savior. And so gripped with the revelation of the glory of God and His goodness, we will worship Him appropriately. You see then how a grasp of the nature of God is going to influence and inform and enliven your worship. Now may God give us grace to worship Him accordingly. Amen. Our Father in heaven, we thank you again for the revelation of your word that is so full and rich, profound, as you set yourself before us and the remarkable revelations of your name and titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works. And as you teach us how to respond, cause us increasingly to know you better and to respond to you more appropriately. Make us even now grow keen with anticipation for the service of the Lord's Day. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.