Thank you, Jim Johnson, for singing in a way that I think Luther, who wrote that hymn, probably preached it before he turned it into a hymn. Thank you. If you have your Bibles with you, you can certainly open to Psalm 34. If you do not, the text will always be available for you on the screens in front of you. Our text this morning, Psalm 34. Hear now the Word of God. I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him. He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see. that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, my children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever loves Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil. to cut off the memory of them from earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. He protects all his bones. Not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems his servants. No one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. Will you pray with me? Our Heavenly Father, Show us through Your servant David what it means to know You. You are good. Help the teacher. In Jesus' name, amen. I don't see a clock, but I may assign my daughter a task. Yes, she's thumbing up right there. So, Kate, just give me a little. Thank you. To the powers that be, whoever can get me a clock. at the back someday would be great. Thank you. This sermon is the first in a series. What we're going to be doing from now until Advent is a six-part series on Renew Vision. Renewing our vision as a church here at Columbia Presbyterian Church. It is our purpose as a church, and it is this, to know Him, to know our hope, and to know His power. The Him and the His is God Himself. As He has revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ, through the power and presence of His Holy Spirit, our purpose as a church is to know Him, to know our hope, and to know His power for a purpose, to make Him known. But what does it mean to know God? What we're going to do is spend two weeks on each of those points. Two weeks on knowing Him, two weeks on our hope, two weeks on His power. So this morning and next week, we're going to be spending time in the Old Testament. For in this passage, I think we learn very well what it means to know God. And if there's something that I want you to see, that so often when we talk about the idea of knowing God, it is very easy to think about it in abstract ways. But one of the most beautiful things about this psalm is it is so incredibly grounded in the practical, in the material. Knowing God, I think David would want us to see, is knowing His goodness, not as an abstraction, but in our experience. And so you will, if you will, you'll see there, we're going to be looking at this text, worthship, verses 1-7, pivot point, verses 8-10, wisdom, 11-18, and finally, rescue, verses 19-22. Let's look first then at this idea of worthship. What I want you to see in this text of Psalm 34, you'll see in verses 1 through 3, what do I mean by worth-ship? It's really taking what eventually would become the word worship. Worship is an English word which has its history in the idea of giving something its worth. So it's bound up in the idea of worshipping something is giving to it, calling out on it, giving It's either thought or reflection or verbal profession, what it is really worth from our estimation, our understanding of it. And what you see is it has component parts, and I've laid that out in the outline in your bulletin. You will see there are so many things that we could say about this idea of worth-ship or worship that David gives in this psalm, but just two, you will see in the opening verses, verses 1 through 3, I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. In these words, glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together." The first component is most certainly adoration. You hear it in David's words, I will extol. In other words, I will give great extent of praise. I will try to stretch out with my words, to whatever extent that I can, I'm going to call out the singular glory of all that God is. I want to adore Him. And to adore something is to marvel at it. For to take your breath away and to be remarkable means you have to do something worth remarking about. Right? And if anything else, the word adoration, which is not a word we use in everyday language, right? We do use the word remarkable. Some of you see it on the football field. Some of you like seeing it on the soccer field. Some of you like seeing it in art or in photography. Regardless of what it is, if something is remarkable, we can't help but remark about it. And that is exactly what David is doing. He is adoring. He's marveling. He's praising. And do you hear what he does? He moves from, I will extol the Lord, I will give Him praise, to what? He moves down deeper. He digs deeper into the bag of adoration and giving worth to his very soul. What does he say? Okay, not only is God worthy of my adoration, he says this, my soul will boast in the Lord. Meaning, giving something its worth adoring something to such a degree, he recognizes what is at the heart of worship. That whatever I worship, I'm connected to. And he shows us in this psalm, my soul does more than just give verbal praise to a God who is worthy to be remarked about. I will say that this God is not only worthy of my adoration, I want to link the state of my soul. I want my soul to be on the foundation. I want my heart to be linked to what? To this kind of God. So he moves from there and he says, not only do I worship God, worship Him with me. I love the turn there when he says, Glorify the Lord with me. Let us extol His name together." What he's meaning to do is, this is not just a private prayer closet kind of psalm. He actually intends for God's people, when they gather for worship, to use it as a means by which we give God His worth. He moves from the I to the we. and there's something very subtle. At least, whether David meant it to be or not, I believe God, by His Holy Spirit, guiding David in the midst of his circumstances, leads me to say this, that when David says to this people, this is what I say of the Lord, Now, join me to do the same. He's opening wide the door now to show us what it means to know God, and that is to begin opening yourself up to the reality that if this is what God has done for me, He has done this for you. is God is worthy to be remarked about by the likes of me, young David, then he is worthy of your remark as well. This is a soul pouring out praise. And isn't that what you do when you get excited about something? Right? I mean, isn't that what the whole thing about going viral is all about on YouTube? We watched this last week, a video that went viral. I mean, I'm so late to the party on this one, it's ridiculous. But I'm like 35 million people late to the party. But the point is, it was a three-year-old girl who's so, for three years old, is so in love with Justin Bieber. She's crying. You've seen this, right? If you haven't, you see the power of worship. She's sobbing, and the parents are asking, why are you sobbing? Because I love Justin Bieber. Why do you love Justin Bieber? Because I love his singing. I don't know Justin Bieber, but she's like crazy drama, right? Folks, why I love children is because they put out in the open what we as adults so easily dress up into suits. What's going on in her heart is coming out. What's going on in her soul is coming out. What it is, that's worship, folks. She's wanting to say, I love Justin Bieber. It's tearing me up. You watch the video. If you don't think her soul is not tied to that in that moment, let's forget what you think about that or not. Forget it for a moment. It's a picture of what David's doing. And he's saying, Let us extol the Lord together, because when we give something its worth, and we do, we're giving it our soul. We are connected to it. And David is saying, this is a God worthy of remark, worthy of adoration, worthy of worth, and if he is for me, come and worship the Lord. Quickly, he also does the second part of worship, he recalls. Look at verses 4 and following, he says, I sought the Lord and He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. Those who looked at Him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him. He saved him out of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them. You see what he's doing? He's specifically recalling how God has worked. Abstractly in his life? No. Practically. I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. And then he gives words to what he is doing by writing the passage. Listen, those who look to him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. Do you see it? What I want you to see is this. Here's a man so bound up, and I'm going to get to in a few moments, what Pastor Dan just read a few minutes ago, Psalm 56, is the psalm that chronologically comes before this one. in his experience. I'll get to that in a few moments. But what he's saying is that he has so seen how God has delivered him, and he's remembering that, that the glory and the presence and the faithfulness of God in his life so shines that he can't help but talk about it. And he says that when we do this, it will be like Moses going before the Lord. And though he only saw the hind quarters of God back there when he did, In Exodus, I almost forgot where he did, but in Exodus, his face shined so much that the people of God could not even look at him. David is doing that this morning. He's shining forth. There is no shame. And he says, this poor man, the Lord heard him and he saved him out of his troubles. He's bringing a God that can be known, and He's showing us and inviting us. Do you see? Can you recall? Can you find where God is saying to you, I am your God? I'm not just worthy of remark, I'm worthy of remark because I love you. But from worth ship, I want to transition into the pivot point. And as we do so, I want you to see what David has just done by showing us God's worth. He's saying he's a God who is known personally, but he turns from a God who is known personally to a God who is personally known. You're like, what? Let me repeat. He tells us in verses 1 through 7 that God is known personally in the midst of his stuff, in the material parts of his life. Now He's going to show us that He's a God who's personally known. I'll explain it in just a minute. Look at the pivot point, verses 8 through 10. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. What is He saying? He's saying, feast on the Lord. You see, it's because of this. What does it mean to know God? What it means to know God is to recognize He is a God who has made himself known. And what he's saying here, taste and see that the Lord is good. What he's asking us to do is to consider God and literally to understand that to invite God into your life, and when you do, The things that I have just recalled, the things that I have just brought adoration to, God will show you. He has been good to me, and He will be good to you. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him." And do you know why it's so incredible that David would say these words? If you're not familiar with the background, the direct background out of which this psalm was written is taken from 1 Samuel 21. And here you have young David. If you're familiar at all with the story of David, he was not king, but the king was Saul. But what happened was, you'll remember, if you know nothing about David, you will certainly know that David was successful, though he was rebuffed at first, he was successful at destroying and killing Goliath, the great enemy of the people of Israel, who were the Philistines, and Goliath was their best warrior. And David was successful. in destroying Goliath, though he was the smallest, youngest, he was successful. And as it happened, that enabled him to be respected among the people of Israel. And he also became a warrior. He became part of the people's army. And what he did was he was successful in slaying tens of thousands. And Saul became jealous. You recall, if you're familiar at all, With the story of David, you'll be familiar with the song that would ring out through the land of Israel. Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. This made Saul burn with jealousy and envy. And he sought David out to kill him. The king of Israel is seeking you out to kill you. and he will marshal everything at his ability to seek you out and to kill you. And this caused David, in more than one occasion, to flee. And on this occasion, out of which this psalm comes, this idea. That day that he had to flee, David fled from Saul and went to Achish, king of Gath. But the servants of Achish said to him, Isn't this David, the king of the land? Isn't he the one that they sing about in their dances? Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. So now watch this. He pretended to be insane in their presence. And while he was in their hands, he acted like a madman, making marks on the door of the gate, letting saliva run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, look at this man. He is insane. Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you would have bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man even come into my house? Do you see what just happened there? Where this psalm came out of is that David so feared and recognized that he was going to be killed by Saul unless he fled, He ran to Gath. Now, I don't know if you've looked up your biblical history. Gath is the hometown of Goliath. Not exactly the foyer of welcome. And he gets there to hide from his own king. And recognizing that they were going to take his life, David humiliates himself by acting like a madman. David, about whom the scriptures would say, a man after my own heart. David, the one who slayed Goliath. David, the one who had slain tens of thousands. David is on the city gates acting like a drooling, insane madman. It is this man who turns to us in this psalm and says, taste and see that the Lord is good. It is not a trite thing. This is a man out of his own experience saying, if this is what God can do in me, who has saved me from my enemies, even though I've had to act like a madman, God has rescued me from my foes, those who are bloodthirsty after me. God has rescued me. Do you know what he's saying? God can rescue you. If this is what God can do in David's life, this is what he can do in your life. Now, I don't know if anybody's seeking you out to murder you. And I don't know when the last time it was you had to flee for your life to act like a madman. But this I know. If this is what God can do in his life, he can do it in yours. Beyond, he says, fear the Lord rather, yeah, fear the Lord, you saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. He's saying not only do I want you to see that the Lord is good, I want you to be satisfied in the Lord. Satisfied. Because why? It is not about our trying to know God. It is that God has made himself known to David. It's not about what does it mean for us to know God. It means to recognize the beginning of knowing God is to acknowledge that he's made himself known. And for some of you, the idea of that may be difficult to consider. But what I want you to see is that the inner logic of where we've so far been in this psalm is David moves from personal praise to collective invitation for us to praise God, for us to see that God is good. And that is the foundation of all of his praise. And he's satisfied in it. And what he's saying, he's moving from praise to enjoyment of God. And that's exactly what he invites you to do. The question is, do you enjoy God? Do you find the praise of God an odd thing? C.S. Lewis, and we have a quote I recognize that is out of order, but see if you can find it. I want you to hear this quote. This quote comes from C.S. Lewis just as he's talking about, after he became a Christian, how hard praising God was. In fact, he stumbled on that idea of praising God because it seemed like God was selfish until he realized these words. He says this, I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise. Lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. Praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians, and, oh, the lowliest of the lot, scholars. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. I'm going to make a statement. The question is not whether you worship something. The question is not whether you adore something. The question is not whether you recall whether something is valuable to you. The question is not whether you taste something and try to see and wring it out of all of its goodness. The question is not whether you seek satisfaction. The question is, ladies and gentlemen, is what are you worshiping? You may not use the word worship. You may use a word like fantasy. One of my mentors taught me that we all worship something, whether we call it that or not, It may just be fantasy. And the question is, what do you fantasize about when you have a spare moment? What do you fantasize about in the midst of stress that it might give you an escape? Is it a spouse that you don't have that you want? Is it a different spouse that you want from the one that you have? Is it respect? Is it success? Whatever you're fantasizing about, whatever you're seeking find a way to escape through, I'm going to say to you that you're trying to wring it out of all of its goodness, because you desire and long for satisfaction. You desire to worth-ship something, because that is what God has made you to do, and you will not find a home until you give Him His worth, until you taste that He is good, and you will never exhaust His goodness. That is what David wants you to see. taste and see that he is good and be satisfied in him. Didn't Bob Dylan, that great lyrical theologian, once say, everybody serves somebody. Who do you serve? Wisdom. He moves from worship and this pivot point of finding that God is good to the wisdom. And here he says to them, he says, come, my children, it sounds like the Proverbs, come, my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil. and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it." I'm thankful for the great Old Testament commentator, Derek Kidner, who gives us the inner logic of what David is doing here. If you will, the first 12 verses, he's going from praise to enjoyment of God. Now, in the next verses, he's going from, if that is what you find enjoyment in, enjoyment in God, then you find your enjoyment in God by doing what is good. Let me say it again, the good you enjoy goes hand in hand with the good you do. So that God is good, He's trustworthy and faithful, and will rescue you, and He is good, but He also intends for you to also do good. Not as a means of pleasing Him, because remember who's writing the psalm. It is said of David that he was a man after God's own heart, and it was David who so publicly sinned before God and murdered a man by putting him in the line of fire because he had an adulterous relationship with that man's wife. This is David. The good you do does not earn you favor before God, but God's favor and goodness finds its expression in doing good. And so David says, keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. There is that God is not only making himself known by his goodness that you may know him. He also shows you how to live. And he gives us this instruction. We hear it echoed in the words of James, how wild a fire the tongue can be. And then we also learn that not only is the tongue a great fire in the body that can set a whole life on fire, it comes from a very deep place, a deep place of our motives and desires. David is laying the groundwork for what the Scriptures openly express. Our greatest problem is not the enemy without, it's the enemy within. It's not the evil that is against us. Oftentimes, that is the greatest. It is the evil within. And he says, if you turn to the Lord, the Lord who is good, who loves you, that that is what he's done for David, not because David deserved it, but because of God's goodness and love. He recognizes this is what God has done for me. It's so good. May God, by his grace, enable me to keep my tongue from lying and to keep from evil. It is so easy, it is so easy to turn that word fear into something that just means awe and reverence. It means that. But I want you to know that David, even as he's calling out to God, he announces God's goodness, but he also doesn't fear to remind us that God also will condemn evil. And His instruction, the wisdom is saying, find your home in the goodness of God. Walk in His ways, for in His ways there is no condemnation. That is what Paul was picking up and he says, in Christ there is now no condemnation for those who are in Him. That is what David is saying here. For those who are in God, there is no condemnation if you walk in His ways, because He has revealed Himself to us. he would want us to not only taste and experience the goodness, he would want us to walk in it. But here I want to take you to verses 19 through 22. David takes us from instruction to taking us back to where he started from. He opened this psalm by saying, I will extol the Lord at all times, praise is always on my lips, He recognizes that God has answered his prayer, that it has delivered him from all his trembling, his fears at those who are outside him who seek his life. But now he returns there after the instruction and he brings us to God's rescue. Hear these words. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. He protects all his bones. Not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems His servants. No one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him." He's telling us about rescue. That word redeem is rescuing out of. And there's a present reality and a future reality. And I want it to be very clear that remember the context out of which this psalm was written. There's a present reality to God's rescue, but perhaps it doesn't look like the way which we would want it to look. The present reality of God's rescue does not always mean an immediate change to our external circumstances that oftentimes threaten to undo us. I can say that on good authority because David, after this situation in which he had to act like a madman and escape those who were pursuing him, Those who had given him refuge, those who had given him a weapon, were called before Saul, and the priests of the Lord were murdered at Saul's direction. Do you know why? Because they had given aid and help to David. Let me put that in a finer point. God's present reality of rescue will not mean the immediate change and the removal of enemies or things that threaten us. But the present reality is his goodness is so good, he is so involved and personally known and reveals himself and hears our cries for help. We can say with the psalmist, as David says, all the righteous, A righteous man may have many troubles, not if, but may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. Well, the deliverance may not always be out of the immediate circumstances, but it may be the grace to walk through them. God's goodness is not always the removal of the enemy from without, but the grace to face them. And that is exactly what God gave to David. But I want you to see something even more beautiful that is buried here in this text, which I believe points us to the future reality for David, but a present reality for us. Look again. Verse 20. He protects all his bones. Not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems his servants. No one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. I believe what David is referring to is the greater David. David's greater son. I don't know how often you've enjoyed taking the Lord's Supper if you were a Christian. But so oftentimes I've heard communion taken up as we break the bread. This is the body of the Lord which is broken for you. But Jesus' bones were not broken. This is His body which is given to you. Jesus on the cross, though suffered many troubles, a righteous man, the only true righteous man, as David says here, he had many troubles. And did the Lord deliver Jesus from his troubles in the resurrection? But He did not rescue Jesus from the cross. In fact, He gave His Son to the cross that you and I might escape it. and his bones were not broken. He was laid and buried with those who are condemned that we might not be condemned. And he was rescued from that grave and he was raised to life. He was delivered from his foes, the ultimate foe, which is death. Jesus was victorious. The greater David, David's greater son, I believe, is what this psalm is pointing us to. And what was for David the future reality, is for us a present reality, here and in this moment. What does it mean to know God? It's that He knows you, and He is good. And He knows your every thought, He knows your every circumstances, He knows the troubles that you've brought into the doors this morning, and He doesn't ask you to leave them. With the psalmist, he would say, bring them to me, but if you do not know me, taste and see that I am good. I want you to hear this from Christopher Wright, great theologian in his own right and great writer about the Old Testament. He says this, it is not through the process of speculation about what God may or may not be like, nor is it a matter of merely checking off doctrinal checkboxes about God's attributes. God the Son was not content either merely to discuss with His Father possible strategies for amelioration of the human condition or to send a cosmic sympathy card telling us, I share your pain. He came and died to save us. Knowing God means knowing what God has done, knowing it was done for me, and knowing the response I should make. I want to ask you where you are seated in your own minds to respond by asking the question. The question about what it means to know God is really the question, do you know that God has made himself known and is making himself known to you this morning? No sin, no difficulty, no reality that you face is too great for a good God who gave his son, the only righteous man, The same God who rescued this David would send a greater son through the line of David, who would be the true King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The only real righteous man, whose bones were not broken, but who was condemned that we might be saved, but who was rescued and raised to life that we might have life and have it to the full. Do you know that your God is good? If you know that God is good, what are you worshiping? Let's pray. By your Spirit, Lord, come and help us to worship you aright. And to worship you aright is to begin by saying, O Lord, It's you. Father, there are many here this morning who perhaps could check off boxes rightly about your attributes, but who may be tempted to worship other things, who are finding their satisfaction in something other than you. Lord, I pray, rescue them. There are those here this morning who've never tasted of your goodness. I pray, Lord, by your goodness and your spirit and your word, show them this morning that you are worthy of trust and praise. You are good. Make your goodness known to us. In Jesus' name, amen.