Journey Through the Psalms: God Reigns

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns." The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the treens of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Psalm 96

This morning, we're looking at Psalm 96. Psalm 96 falls into a grouping of psalms that are referred to as enthronement songs, of recognition of the fact that God... That the Lord is king. Now, in this morning, some that we read, it wasn't until later where it's explicitly said in verse 10, where it says, say among the nations, the Lord is king. But if you look a little further along, Psalm 97 begins with the words, the Lord is king of Psalm 99. The Lord is king.

So Psalms 93, and then 95 through 99 are the ones generally considered these Psalms of enthronement that basically recognize and acknowledge the sovereign Lord, the Creator and Ruler of all things. And so this Psalm begins like many, and there's a lot to be said about it begins with that wonderful sentence, Oh, sing to the Lord, a new song. Sing to Lord all the Earth. Sing to the Lord and bless His name. It's an invitation to join together in worshipping and praising this wonderful... This amazing God.

And the next few verses, we should worship this God, talking about that there is no other God like this God, that all of those other people have their little G-gods, they have their idols, they have their things that they believe in, but this God formed all things. This is the God who spoke and brought all creation into existence, and then we hear a little bit about what that looks like, that we should ascribe to the Lord, ascribed the Lord... Oh, families of their earth then ascribe to the Lord. Glory and honor, and ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name and bring an offering and come into His courts and worship Him, there's instructions about what we should do, but particularly in this psalm, that word as scribes, MNR, SV, it's in the NIV, I believe King James uses the word give, but what does this word describe me, because honestly, it's one that we don't use a lot, very often. In some translations, it uses that word give, but it also seems a little difficult when we think about it. What does it mean? How do we give God glory and honor? How do we give God that which God is due? Because the truth of it is, What do we actually have? That we could give to God that God needs or that God's lacking in.

The answer is nothing. God lacks in nothing, God truly needs nothing from us, and yet God desires our worship, our love. God desires those things of us, and it's our place to ascribe or Give acknowledgment to recognize, to say, You know what? These are the qualities of God. And not that it's gonna amount to a hill beans or change anything, but I'm gonna humble myself and I'm gonna say, Yep, that's Right. God is... Due those things. God deserves those things for me, God deserves those things from all of creation, every person should be singing for the praise of God, because He's good and He's just, and He's fair. In fact, the end of this Psalm talks about God coming, hE is coming in judgment. Now, for most of us, I think judgment isn't something that we get excited about or long for, bring the judgment on, I can't wait. We don't want that kind of judgment to come, and yet this psalmist is saying, You know what, we need to consider who this judge is, that this is the God of creation, this is the God who will come and judge in righteousness. And Judge in His truth, He's gonna be equitable, He's going to be fair about it. So in that regard, what do we have to fear? So this psalm is one in which we're invited to join in this praise of God, the Psalmist declares why God deserves this, and then gives some instructions about what we should do and what it may look like, so how do we today relate to a text like this?