To the fields, we hope to go back by the end of next month. We were hoping to get back by the end of this month, but our son is having health problems, and he's not quite where we'd like to see him yet. And also, because of the economy, our support's not where it needs to be yet. But we're just hoping and praying that the Lord will bring it in by that time, by the end of next month. And a lot of things are pending there in Horsfield while we're here. We used to work, as I mentioned this morning, with a team of missionaries, and that team is not there any longer. Consequently, when I'm gone, there's no one there to kind of fill in except the people themselves, which is good. I mean, it's not a bad thing. It's good that they have to take responsibility, yet there are some things that they just get and they don't know what to do. So, they are anxious for us to get back to help them out with a couple of things. And also, the ministry needs to continue. So, we're praying Lord will open those doors for us to get you back. Okay, I think I'm wired now. Are we ready? Great. I'd like to call your attention to the reading of God's Word. I found it in Psalm 96. Psalm 96. Let's have a word of prayer before we read God's Word. Thank you, Father, for your Word. Thank you that we can count on it, that it is inherent and infallible. We thank you that your Holy Spirit takes it and uses it in our lives. We pray that you would forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness and by your grace now speak to us and give us hearts ready to listen and to obey. And just make us glad that we have been gathered together with your house, with your people, and have had the privilege of coming before you and hearing you speak. We thank you, Father, for what you're going to do. In Jesus' name, Amen. This is a reading of God's Word. O sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. 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. For 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 splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, 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 holiness. Tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, The Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established. It shall 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 exult and everything in it. Then shall 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. This psalm reflects a very central aspect of missions and that is that the whole world is being called to worship the one true God. He has created us for worship. He has called us to worship and he has called us to go out and to call the peoples of the world to come and bow down before him. And in fact, the only place where any human being will ever be satisfied and happy is when he's bowed down before the true living God in worship and adoration. That was what we were made for. It's very much like a train A train that's running on its tracks is happy. It's like a little choo-choo train that, I think I can, I think I can. When he's on that track, he's going at it. As soon as he gets off the tracks, he's sad. He's useless. We too, as long as we're worshiping God and seeking his face, we're the happiest we can possibly be. Unfortunately, because of sin, we have gotten to the point where all human beings try to satisfy our need for God in some other way. And consequently, we are worshipping idols when we do give honour and glory and adoration to anyone but the Lord, the true living God. And we see this psalmist here calling the people of Israel to a true worship of God in order that they also might then go and call the peoples of all the earth to worship God, the true living God. This song is somewhat prophetic as well, and it has envisioned the coming of Christ. And when the world will be impacted in a tremendous way, like we're seeing in our own day with a gospel that will go out calling people not only to make a decision for Christ, but to come and worship the true living God as he is worthy. In the In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, Adam was created for that purpose, to worship God. And the worship involved two things, at least two things, major things. One was a communion with God. Every day, he spent time in fellowship, in harmony. in that intimate, deep relationship with God. Something that we have through Christ and we have a taste of, but we will know in full when we're in heaven with Him. The other aspect of the worship of God that Adam was to perform was in serving God as His administrator, as His I'm just thinking of the word in Portuguese. I can't think of it in English right now. Of his manager, in essence, you could say, of all of God's creation. He was called to have dominion over, to subdue, to develop, to care for all of God's creation. And that was also considered an act of worship, of giving praise and glory to God in all of the aspects of his life. That same call is upon us all today. The cause of sin, we've all fallen away from that. And we've begun to worship idols, worship other things. Instead of worshiping the Creator, we're worshiping the creature. We're seeking to satisfy our need for God in the creation. And what God has called us to do, those of us who have come to know Him, and comes to know the wonderful experience of knowing this God and personally being related to Him through Jesus Christ and being able to really experience Him personally and enjoy Him in our lives. He's called us to call all the world to come and to bow down before Him. Not only because He is worthy, that is the primary thing, but also because that was what every person I don't care who they are, what kind of race they are, or what kind of background they have, or what language they speak. Every person was created to worship this living God. And we know that most of the people in the world are not worshiping this true and living God. And only those, actually, that know Jesus, are able to worship God. Because only God can only be approached through Jesus Christ. And so that's what we have been called to do to go out and to call people to worship him. That's what missions really is all about. Missions is in a simple way is simply for us to go out and proclaim the gospel that people might come and worship the true and living God for he is worthy. But in the first three verses here, we see what we are to be proclaiming. I'm not going to go into everything that this psalm has to say, and maybe Andy can do that or Calvin can do that someday. This psalm is extremely rich, but I'm just going to touch a few points here. We see in the first three verses, O sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all of the earth, sing to the Lord, bless his name, tell of his salvation from day to day. declared his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. That's the message that we have to proclaim. We proclaim his salvation. which we know in a more full way now that even the psalmist knew at that time is the whole plan of salvation how God from all eternity chose his son to come and to die on the cross live a perfect life to die on the cross to be risen from the dead again to reign over all things to call people to himself and to satisfy the righteousness of God in our behalf. That's the message of good news of salvation that God has established for all who will believe in Him. Now we know that those who believe in Him are elect. But the Bible presents it that way, very broad way, that all who will come and bow down before Him and worship Him and receive Him will be saved. We know that God's going to save a people for Himself. And that's an exciting thing. But we're to proclaim the salvation of God And we're to proclaim His glory and all of His marvelous works. You can't separate those two things. Those two things are very integral. God's glory, in a great respect, is the fact that He is a gracious God. That's one aspect of the glory of God, that He is a God of grace. But we are to also proclaim the true and living God in a world that a lot of people don't even say they don't believe God. A lot of people have gods of all sorts. And only truly those who have the scripture and know that the living God of the scripture can know this true and living God. The car that I'm driving, we bought, so we have to buy a car every time we come home. It's always a problem to find a car when you come back. It's one of those things you wish you didn't have to go through. But the Lord leads and works out things, provides. And we were looking through, this was the first time we had gone through Craigslist trying to find cars to buy. So we drive out to meet this fellow that's got a car that we wanted to buy. He's Hindu. He's on his way back to India. And he, on the dash, he had his god, one of his gods, attached. And so this day, that car has a scratch. It cut some scratches up there because I asked him, I said, now, are you going to be able to get your god off of there for me? I don't really want your god along with me here. I try to use that as an opportunity to share Christ, but he didn't open up too much. He was OK with it. And he said, yeah, I had no problem. But unfortunately, he left a lot of scratches there getting it off. But anyway, it's just a dead thing. It's just a piece of plastic with chrome over it. It was ugly, horrendous. But the true and living God is a sweet, marvelous thing to know. He's personal. He's real. He's not something that we have to detach from our car or carry around in our car or care for. He cares for us. But it's amazing how people in our generation, this man was intelligent. He was college educated, very highly intelligent. But how can people and people like that still believe in I's and things like that? But that's been a problem in every generation. As we go out to proclaim, we're going to encounter that major problem. And that is that really, in essence, everybody believes in an I. We are a creation that needs God. We have to worship something. There are some people who say, I'm not religious. It's not really true. Everybody is religious. Everybody has some religion. They're depending on something. Some people depend on themselves or they depend on other people. the atheists of our day and agnostics of our day depend on science. Science has become sort of a god to them, to the extent that even when scientists lie, people believe it and go with it and will make changes in their lives and demand that everybody else make changes in their lives on the basis of what scientists say. Let's become a god. Everybody has an idol or worships the true and living God. That was no exception back from all generations. Actually, verses 4 through 6 speak of that. It says, For 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. Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Here he contrasts the true and living God. He's full of splendor and glory. The psalmist hadn't experienced this possibly, but the view of the way that God manifested his glory in the tabernacle, in Solomon's temple, and in leading the people out of Egypt, the wonderful way that God has manifested his greatness and majesty and power and beauty. And yet he contrasted here with the people's idols. They're worthless. In other Psalms, I think it's 35, maybe 115 or somewhere in there, it speaks of the fact that a man will take a piece of wood and chop it up and carve himself an image and bow down and worship that. and throw the rest of it in the fire and make himself a fire to warm himself with. And that image can't, it has eyes, but it can't see. It has a mouth, it can't speak. It has nostrils, but it can't breathe. It has to be carried around. It has legs, it can't walk. It's useless, completely useless. It has to be helped by you. And yet, people bow down and worship idols to this day, such as that. Christians. As I mentioned this morning in the presentation, Mariolatry is a very central aspect of the Roman Catholicism in Portugal. If you look at the statistics, people talk about the number of Christians in the world today. If you look at the statistics, basically Portugal is considered a Christian nation. And yet people are not centered in Christ there. They're centered in Mary. in idolatry. Their primary focus, as I mentioned this morning, is Fatima. Fatima is a place where Mary supposedly appeared in 1917, and they give her that name. And like in France, Lourdes, you may have heard, is what they call her over there. And Nossa Senhora da Aparecida is in Brazil, and Mexico has a place where she appeared. And they bow down and worship Mary, basically. they think it's not really married. It's really as the Apostle Paul says in 1st Corinthians 1020 really it's something demonic. Demons are behind that. It's something very real. That's why people are attracted to that. Because they are seeking something that is material and something that is concrete that they can put their fingers on and Satan loves to satisfy that. He loves to appear as something that will attract people and people who seek after the enemy in that way, even though they think they're not, are often satisfied in a temporary way. But it's something that will come back to bite them, something that will come back to destroy them, because that's not God. That's just Satan that's attracted them to death. I was mentioning to Greg earlier, as we went out for lunch, that when the appearance apparently happened in Fatima, some reporters went up, some journalists went up to just check out and see what happens. So they interviewed a lot of different people. And some people, at first, on May 13th, let me get this story straight here, May 13th, she appeared in 1917 to three shepherd children. But then subsequently, every month on the 13th of the month, up until October, she appeared again. on the 13th of that month. And every time she appeared, more and more people came. And so there were thousands of people that were there, and they saw this appearance. And so these journalists were interviewing these people that had experienced this. And some of them said, oh, it was the most wonderful experience. It was so beautiful. She was so beautiful. It was just fantastic. Other people said, I saw the most horrendous thing I ever saw in my life. I never heard of any, never heard anybody describe anything so horrible. I was scared to death. Satan is behind all that stuff to deceive people, to lead people by a twisted truth to deception and away from the true and living God. And that is a lot of what we're facing in Portugal is trying to bring people back to the scriptures so that they can see the truth. But Satan has a stronghold. on that culture and on those people. And we really need people to pray that they be set free. And the wonderful thing is that they will be set free, those who God has chosen from before the foundation of the world. He will be worshipped. He will have a people to come and bow down before him. The situation, though it seems dire, is not hopeless. There is always hope. because God is sovereign. He does reign over all things and He will have a people to come and bow down before Him. And we see in verses 7 through 10 that He calls not only the Jews but all the peoples of the world to come and give Him worship and to worship Him. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, 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 holiness. Tremble before Him, all the earth. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established. it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Here we see a call that is basically the call that we're to go out setting forth before the people to give glory to the God who is, who reigns, who lives. And that simple message, the simple message of the gospel, God says is his power unto the salvation of his people and all who will believe. That is His power. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to invent ways of trying to manipulate people, trying to entice people, trying to draw people. But the thing that will draw people is the Spirit of God. And He draws people through the truth that is proclaimed. And so we're not called upon to invent new ways of reaching people with the Gospel. We're called to be faithful. to proclaim the gospel, to proclaim it and proclaim it and proclaim it with empathy for the people. We know what it's like to be lost. I was raised in a Christian family, but I know what it's like to sin and to have a sense of lostness before God, even though I've known Christ all of my life. I know that I am only saved by His grace because I know by evil heart the corruption that is hidden within me. And so we can empathize. We know what people are going through out there. And we should go out and proclaim that gospel with that hope and that confidence that God will save. God will save a people unto himself. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The situation is not hopeless. Sometimes it seems that way. It seems like the whole world is going to hell in a basket. And we can't do anything about it. We proclaim and we proclaim and people couldn't care less. They don't want to hear what we have to say. But that's only half of the story. The other half is that God has chosen a people unto himself and he will have a people to come and worship him. And we have been given the privilege of being participants with him to that end. He doesn't need us. He could save a lot of money and a lot of time. If He just set us apart and just go and save those people, He's going to save them. But what a loving God we have that would give us, who are simple clay, the privilege of going in His name with a precious gospel in jars of clay, as the Apostle Paul says. To take it and be used of God that people might come to Christ. and come bow down and worship him, and find that joy, that fulfillment, and be able to glorify the God who created them, who deserves all glory, praise, and honor. We see that it's necessary, absolutely necessary, that people come and bow down before him, but that can only happen as people are born again. Jesus said they've got to be born again. And we see in John 3, 3 and then in Romans 10, 13 through 15, we as reformed people have to be reminded that God uses means to accomplish his end. We believe in the sovereignty of God and that God has elected a people unto himself and he will save those people, but we forget quite often that he uses means. And he's chosen not to do it any other way. He's chosen to do it through you and me. Through the proclamation of the gospel. To the point where Paul says, how else can they be saved if we don't go? If we don't proclaim the gospel, how else can people be saved? The implication is that they will not be saved unless we go. Obviously, if I don't go, somebody else will. I can be unfaithful. The Lord is not bound by my unfaithfulness. So he's going to save those people. But I've missed the privilege and the honor and the joy of being used by the Lord. Also in verses 9 through 12, excuse me, it's 11 through 12. We see that God and His grace is coming to reign and He is going to have a people to come unto Him and the impact that it has in all of creation. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let the fields exult and everything in it. Then shall 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. We see here that the fall of man, as the fall of man impacted all of creation. The Apostle Paul says that all of creation groaned waiting for the day of redemption. Our salvation, when Christ came to save a people unto himself and to call a people to come and worship God, he had envisioned also the redemption of all of the earth, of all of creation. God will lift that curse that he set upon all of creation through Christ. In a sense, he's already done that, but we'll see the fulfillment of that when we see the new heavens and the new earth. God is about the business of redeeming his creation, all of it. And we see here all of creation, joyous, happy, because this God reigns. When it talks about judging, it's not talking about just coming and separating the goats from the sheep. It's talking about reigning. about ruling over all of creation. He's going to come and rule in righteousness. And we know that Christ has come. The King has come. And He is ruling at this time. And He will one day come and reign in fullness over the new heaven and the new earth. But we see a picture in Revelation of the results of what God is doing, and what he basically was prophesying in the Psalms, and is still prophesying to some degree in Revelation chapter 7 verses 9 through 12. Can somebody read that for us? Revelation chapter 7 verses 9 through 12. to these things I looked, and behold a great multitude, which no one could count, of every nation, and all tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the brotherhood of oil, and clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands. And they cried out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God, who sits on the throne of the land. Amen. There we see a picture that God gives us. of the future and the present. I believe that my mother and those of you who have loved ones who have gone on to be with the Lord, that they're already experiencing all of this with multitudes of people. And there are going to be more multitudes of people. You and I are going to be there one day. And those who we have shared the gospel with and they've come to Christ are going to be there one day. And we see that God is going to have a people who worship Him here and for all eternity in heaven. It's God's desire that we enjoy Him. That all of creation, in a sense, rejoices in Him and enjoys Him. And that's what missions is really all about. It's not about the number of notches we can get on our belt for people that we've seen come to Christ. It's not seeing a great ministry developed with a wonderful church with thousands of people. It's all nice, but that's not really what it's all about. What it's all about is that God is the only true and living, majestic, glorious God who has made a creation that he has created in human form, reflecting his own image that he wants to commune with. He doesn't need us, but we desperately need him. And all of the people of the world need him. And there's nothing more important while we're here on this earth than going out and proclaiming the gospel. in order that people might come from every tribe, coming nation to worship this true and living God now and forevermore. Brothers and sisters, God is so wonderful. Not just in our own little personal experience, He is. I know you've experienced Him in a wonderful way personally. But He has given us as a people the privilege of participating with Him in something much bigger than anything we can imagine. Sometimes we think, you know, the United States is big, or going to the moon, that was tremendous, or, you know, all these feats of man, which are tremendous, but they pale in comparison to what God has given you and me the privilege of participating in. calling of people throughout the world to come and know and worship, adore, glorify, and enjoy the only true and living God. Father, we thank you for your words. We thank you for this picture that you've given us of how you are at work in all of the world to call people unto yourself, to enjoy worshiping and commuting and fellowshipping with you and serving you. And we pray, Father, that you would not let anything get in our way, but cause us to go out in the power of your Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel to our neighbors and to friends and family and whoever, Lord, our neighbor that you put next to us in whatever capacity, Lord, whatever situation. And we pray that You would take our meager efforts and do your glorious work and call people unto yourself that we might rejoice with you in what you have done. We thank you for Jesus. We thank you for the wonderful message that you've given us to proclaim. Help us to proclaim it in its purity without our additions, without our intelligence getting in the way. But Father, just the pure, simple gospel of Jesus Christ, which is your power unto the salvation of everyone who will believe. And we praise you and give you all the glory and the honor. We thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.