to do that, but I think it will be worth it. So let's start with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be together tonight. Thank you for the truth, the power of your word. I pray that, Father, as we consider your word tonight, it would speak to our hearts. And Lord, as these passages give to us a vision of your holiness, I pray, Lord, that we would also see that vision and that would impact our lives. Pray this in your son's name. Amen. All right, Psalm 96. Psalm 96. I want to read. I'm gonna read all 13 verses. So please, please stick with me as we do this. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name, show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among the people. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth. Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. The world also shall be established that it shall not be moved. He shall judge the people righteously. Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar and fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth. My mic is, I think so. Yes. Yep. Anime, you're very important. Don't feel embarrassed. You're fine. Maybe it's a little too loud, huh? Sounds like a stadium now. Starting, starting, starting. Can you hear me now? Hello, anime. Hello, anime. All right. Don't worry, we'll... We apologize. We do work on this. Try, try to do it. So Alex, turn me down just a little bit. There's a little ringing there. All right, so we just read Psalm 96. Just read Psalm 96. And I want to just point out a couple of things, and then we're gonna continue on to Psalm 97. But before we do that, I want to just call out a couple of ideas. One is, as you start verse one, the command or the instruction is to sing unto the Lord a new song. Now, when we see those words, sing unto the Lord a new song, we obviously immediately register in our mind as this is a human singing unto the Lord. This is the human voice singing a song. And what I believe follows in Psalm 96 is not, in fact, a human singing a song. Rather, it is the earth. Okay, look at what he says, singing to the Lord, all the earth. And the idea that we're gonna look at now is that all of creation, right, creation, even though we live in a sin-cursed earth, And creation obviously has suffered from the fall. Still, all of creation, all of the earth, sings forth the glory of God, the praise of God, that it shows forth His holiness, okay? Now, as you start to work through these verses, from that perspective, some of these things may mean something a little different. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name, show forth His salvation from day to day. declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all people, okay? Now, imagine the forest, okay, declaring the glory of God, the firmament declaring the glory of God. Imagine the waterfalls and, you know, the human body, okay? Everywhere you look, you can see the earth declaring the glory of God, okay? In the day, you see the sun. In the night, you see the stars. And when you don't see either of those, you see the clouds, right? In every way, in all scenarios, everyone can see and witness the glory of God. And the earth is ringing out His praise if you are willing to see and to hear, okay? I believe this is why he says, declare among the heathen, right? And in my mind, and I admit that I think in pictures, but you almost see a forest trying to declare the glory of God to those, right, that pass by. It's the beauty of a flower, right, is in its creation, is a declaration of God's holiness and God's glory. All right, now I want to jump down to verse number 10. Say among the heathen. So here, God's instructing creation. Say among the heathen, the Lord reigneth. And doesn't creation declare that very thing? Because it declares his creation. And if he is the creator, then he is sovereign. He is the one who reigns over all things, all right? Look at verse number 11. Let the heavens rejoice. And that's talking about the celestial heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon, okay? Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar. and the fullness thereof. Imagine hearing the waves crash on a seashore as applause for God. Imagine the sea trying to bring forth as loud praise as it could. Think about that sound. Now you think about it as white noise and puts you to sleep, relaxes you. but imagine it from the perspective of the waves trying to bring glory to God. What a picture that is. Verse 12, let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Recently we were in, well, when we went to New York a few months ago or so, maybe six weeks, I can't remember. We went to New York a little while ago. They were just starting to harvest the wheat. And I took a picture of a sunset on this wheat field, and it's gorgeous, just stunning, the gold of the wheat. And the picture that comes to my mind is this idea is let the earth, let the field be joyful, right? And it's almost as if the field is being joyful about bringing forth its fruit, right? It's showing forth to its creator, okay? And then it says, and all that is therein, then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice. Is that interesting? You know, we don't think about the creation itself glorifying God, and yet here it is. Verse number 13, for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth, he shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with truth. Okay, so now we're getting a picture of the creation and how creation, all of creation is responding or viewing or lifting up God. And now as we enter Psalm 97, which is what I really want to talk about, but as we enter Psalm 97 now, what we have is we start to understand what it is that they are so excited about. Okay, so, okay, creation, you're raising up God, you're glorifying God, but what is it that you're so excited about? And here in 97, we see a picture of what that is. Starts with verse one. The Lord reigneth. Let the earth rejoice. Again, we see that. Let the multitude of the isles be glad. And this, I believe, is David's understanding of the way that the earth was structured or formed at that time. Okay, I don't think he had full comprehension of the seven continents and the, you know, 42 million square acres of you know, dry ground upon the earth, right? It wasn't that. So this is sort of his declaration of that, but it's the idea of the whole earth, all that's there, the sea and the ground, all of it, all right? He says, now describing the presence of God, clouds and darkness are round about him. Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before him and burneth up his enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened the world. The earth saw and trembled. Isn't that an amazing picture? The lightnings. So you have a throne that is founded on righteousness and justice, and you have round about it clouds and darkness, and out of that come lightning, right? And the lightning is so great and strong, it lightens up the whole earth. I'm sure you've all seen lightning that does that, right? Out of a pitch dark. A bolt of lightning comes, a flash of light. My one experience with lightning that was terrifying was I was out jogging in a rainstorm and I waited and I stopped. I was in downtown Bristol. I waited underneath one of the little overheads because I didn't want to run in the rain. It was torrential rain. And then it ended up getting so bad, so bad, and I said, okay, forget it. I'm just gonna, I gotta like try and get home. And halfway up Prospect Street, about, it felt to me like it was, you know. within three feet of me, but it was probably like 50 feet, a lightning hit the ground right near me and knocked me off my feet. I fell down and it was terrifying. So bright, so loud. I ran home faster than I've ever run before in my life. And I run to the door. I'm like, Katie's like, what is wrong with you? You know, like she was expecting me to say something like someone was chasing me or something. Lightning. It was terrifying. But, you know, we've all sort of seen the power. Verse 5, the hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. And the idea there is I think if you imagine the earth and all of its mountains, these are huge, right, pictures of strength and complete stability. Right, when you see the Rockies or the Swiss Alps, boy, those are unmovable. And so what the psalmist is doing is he's picturing, excuse me, he's taking a picture of something that we would view as strength and stability, and he's saying the very presence of the Lord, not the word of the Lord, not the work of the Lord, His mere presence makes the mountains, right, to be like wax, just to pass away. That's the greatness of the Lord, the glory. Verse six, the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see His glory. Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols. Worship Him, all ye gods. Imagine the fact that in order to come up with a graven image, you have to use something that God himself created. All right, so if I wanted to, many religions will make idols or figurines that they will actually pray to. It's very common in like a Hindu type of a religion. And they'll carve wood out of it. Well, where'd that wood come from? God made these things, gave man their creative energy and power, gave them all of this, and they use it to, make a graven image and worship that. Isn't that amazing, the irony, the foolishness, when you really think through that? And that's what he's saying, how this is foolishness. Verse eight, Zion heard and was glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord. Verse nine, for thou, Lord, art high above all the earth. Thou art exalted far above all gods. Ye that love the Lord hate evil. He preserveth the souls of his saints. He delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked. Verse 11, Light, capital L, Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart. And then verse 12 says, So verse 10, 11, and 12, you see the shift. So if Psalm 96 says, is the declaration of the whole earth giving up glory to God. And then in Psalm 97, you see a description of God and of His righteousness, of His holiness, of His justice, of who He is, of His glory. Then the application then, the conclusion is, verse 10, ye that love the Lord hate evil. Now, isn't it interesting that the theme that we see over and over and over again, 96 and 97, and the prevailing characteristic of God that the psalmist is raising over and over again is His holiness, right? Righteousness, holiness. He reigneth in righteousness. He ruleth in holiness. Over and again in these passages, you're seeing that declaration. The heavens declare His righteousness. And so then he says, ye that love the Lord hate evil. He preserveth the souls of his saints. He delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked. And obviously this is a, our response is to love the Lord. His response is to care for us, to provide for us, to protect us, to lead us along. Verse number 11, light is sown, and we understand that as holiness or righteousness, and the idea of sown is the seed, okay? So God, as we even looked at on Sunday, God in His holiness gives us that light, okay? Light is sown for the righteous. and gladness for the upright in heart. Now, this is obviously a promise and a statement of fact that when you live right, when you live according to the principles of God, when you obey his word, you are going to be glad, you are going to be joyful, okay? There is so much misery in the world because people are not following God's word. There is peace, there is joy in following his word. It's very simple. And then verse 12 is what I wanna kinda key in on. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. So we have two directions for us. Rejoice in the Lord and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. So rejoice and give thanks. And the idea that we sort of arrive at is that if you know the Lord, if you are saved, then you should see creation and you should see all that is around you as instruments of praise to God. And the idea here is that as you progress throughout the day in your day-to-day life, you should be constantly being confronted with the holiness and righteousness and glory of God. And our response is, rejoice in the Lord. The first response is, I'm rejoicing in the Lord. Boy, I look out over this view and I see the great mountains. And Lord, those are unbelievable mountains. What strength, and yet compared to you, they are like wax. Do you see that? When you are driving and you see a field of corn, you say, that corn is even itself is waving, right? And rejoicing, the fruit of that field is bringing glory to God. And I can say, God, thank you for providing. This is your provision. When I see the forest, I can see the great trees, right? And they make me what? Look upward, don't they? They point to God. In all of these ways, we should be not blind to the creation that's around us, but rather using it to rejoice in, rejoice in it. Now, I know about myself. is that something will happen in my life and I can find myself having complete tunnel vision, right? Have you ever driven from one place to another and you pull in there and you go, what happened? I mean, where did this, like what happened here? That happens way more than I'll admit publicly, okay? And you realize, well, I was just, I was in thought, right? I was deep in thought. Rather, I think the experience that God wants for us is to be present to what is happening around us and to be able to, in all of these scenarios, give glory to God. And we live in an area where we are confronted with the beauty of creation on a daily basis. And we are about to enter what I think is the most beautiful time in the whole year. on the whole globe, okay? It's an amazing time. And when you see those leaves changing, you have an opportunity to rejoice in the Lord. And the second thing he says is give thanks. at the remembrance of His holiness. So the second thing that should happen is first we would rejoice in the Lord, and then the second thing is we give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. And I think what he's trying to say here is that when you are confronted with the beauty and glory of creation, it should cause you to stop and consider and rejoice and thank God for His holiness. for who He is, for His righteousness, right? The righteousness of God is of great value to all of us because it's the only way that He could give it to us. If He was not holy, He could not give us holiness. And therefore, we could not be possessors of eternal life. We could never go to heaven. His holiness is fundamental in understanding that it is the key characteristic in His ability to convey life. And so therefore, when we see creation, we rejoice in the Lord for it, and then we also have to recall His holiness and His glory, and it should cause us to thank Him for it. So as we progress through the next couple of weeks, I thought that this passage was was pertinent, was relevant. And I trust that as you encounter creation, you will take time to consider his holiness and to thank him for it and to rejoice in the Lord in all of these ways. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this time of devotion. Thank you, Lord, for the teaching of your word And Father, it is just so evident your working in creation. And Lord, your creation is perfect. And it is beyond our comprehension. Lord, even just how a seed comes to life, how a seed other creatures would feed upon and get life from. And Lord, just the whole work of creation is a thing of unbelievable wonder. And Lord, as we have found out tonight at all points, Father, I pray that as we go through the next few weeks where we will be confronted with the changing of the leaves, Lord, and just the beauty of fall time here that we are blessed to encounter. I pray that, Father, our hearts would be turned to you. I pray that we would give you the glory due unto your name. I pray that we would respond, Lord, with remembering your holiness. And Father, we would be quick to praise you and to thank you for it. I make this my prayer tonight in your son's name. Amen.