Let's open up our Bibles together to Psalm 106. Psalm 106. The text is verses 4 and 5 and 9 through 12. We're going to read the first 23 verses and then jump down to verse 43 and end the chapter. Psalm 106, verse 1. Praise ye the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all his praise? Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people. O, visit me with Thy salvation, that I may see the good of Thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Thy nation, that I may glory with Thine inheritance. We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly. Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt. They remembered not the multitude of thy mercies, but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red Sea. Nevertheless, he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up. So he led them through the depths as through the wilderness, and he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies. There was not one of them left. Then, believe they his words, they sang his praise. They soon forgot his works. They waited not for his counsel, but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request, but sent leanness unto their soul. They envied Moses also in the camp and Aaron, the saint of the Lord. The earth opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered the company of Abiram, and a fire was kindled in their company. The flame burned up the wicked. They made a calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten image. Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. They forgot their God, their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. Therefore, he said that he would destroy them had not Moses, his chosen, stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. Now jump down to verse 43. Many times did he deliver them, but they provoked him with their counsel and were brought low for their iniquity. Nevertheless, he regarded their affliction when he heard their cry. And he remembered for them his covenant and repented according to the multitude of his mercies. He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives. Save us, O Lord, our God, and gather us from among the heathen to give thanks unto thy holy name and to triumph in thy praise. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting. And let all the people say Amen. Praise ye the Lord. Read God's sacred word that far. The text tonight is verses four and five. First of all, although I will appeal to the first five verses, but especially verses four and five. Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that thou barest unto thy people. O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance. And then, verses 9 through 12, He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up. So He led them through the depths as through the wilderness, and He saved them from the hand of Him that hated them and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies. There was not one of them left. Then believed they His words. They sang His praise. Beloved congregation of Jesus Christ, we continue our series on worship this evening with a second great principle of biblical and reformed worship, and that is that biblical and reformed worship is dialogical. Recall that our plan here is to cover three great principles of worship generally, first of all, and then to go through each aspect of the worship service and expound that from Scripture. Last Sunday evening we saw that Scripture teaches that public corporate worship is the covenantal assembly coming together as one to meet with Jehovah God face to face. It is the experience of the covenant of grace. We gather to meet with our God and He comes to meet with us. Tonight, we see how it is that that covenantal meeting actually is carried out. It's carried out as a dialogue between God and his people. That's what the dialogical principle is. It's a big word, but it just means there is a dialogue between God and his people. This truth, we will discover. in Psalm 106, as well as other passages of Scripture. Psalm 106 is closely connected to the previous Psalm, Psalm 105. The two Psalms were written together at a later period in Israel's history, and they represent Israel as she reflects back upon her history and sees God's faithfulness to her in spite of the fact that she has often sinned. The two Psalms, therefore, are a record of covenant history as the Israelites lived their life before the face of Jehovah God. And the psalmist recounts this history for this purpose, in order to call God's people to respond to the mighty acts of God in this history with worship and praise and thanksgiving. And this is the call that also comes to you and to me tonight and in every service of public worship. Praise ye the Lord, for his mercy endures forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord and show forth all his praise? The theme of the series is, O Come, Let Us Worship. This is the second sermon entitled Responding to God's Mighty Acts. Responding to God's mighty acts, the dialogical principle of worship. Let's notice first the principle, second, the proof and third, the practice. The principle, the proof and the practice. The principle of public worship that we discover tonight is that public corporate worship is dialogical. This principle says that public worship is not only a coming together to meet before God face to face, but that in that meeting there is a dialogue that takes place between God's people and God himself. God speaks and his people respond. In other words, when we come to meet with our God face to face, we don't just sit there and God doesn't just sit there and we sit in front of each other for a while. But rather, in this meeting, there is a communication. There is a back and forth communion that goes on between God and us. The principle that in public worship there is a dialogue between God and his people arises out of the nature of the covenant itself. The covenant, as you know, is a bond of structured fellowship between God and his people, where God has bound himself to us in sovereign grace. He says to us, I am your God and you are my people. And in this covenant, God and his people live their life and interaction with one another. There's an actual relationship that takes place between God and his people. There's communion that takes place in this covenant as it's lived out in history. We see this covenant relationship recorded for us in all of Holy Scripture. All of the Word of God is this. It's a record of the history. of God interacting with his people. That's what the Bible is. It's a history of that dialogical principle so that this dialogical principle, first of all, is not just a principle of worship, but even more generally, it's a principle of the covenant itself. It's a principle of Christianity. The covenant is God speaking. were God acting, and it's His people responding to Him, to His words and His acts as they live their lives. Sometimes down through history, God's people respond sinfully. Sometimes they respond in obedience. Nonetheless, this is what the covenant is, and this is what the Bible is. It's the record of God speaking and acting, and His people living their lives in response to the God who communes with them. Therefore, when you pick up a psalm like Psalm 106, a psalm that records a large section of that covenant history, what you find is a God who speaks and acts, and a people who respond. Psalm 106 reads just like you would expect a recounting of covenant history to read. There are two main characters in Psalm 106. There is God, And there is his people. And after the introduction in the psalm, there is an interaction there that is recorded. There is a call and response. There's action and speaking on God's part and his people's response. For example, the psalm begins in verse six with God's people saying, We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly. And then in verse eight, nonetheless, God responds by saving them. Nevertheless, he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. This is the history of the covenant. This is the history of the word of God, this relationship. Psalm 105, the psalm that I said is joined to Psalm 106, does the exact same thing, although from a more positive point of view. So that when you take these two psalms together, There is a recounting of covenant history here, a history of God and his people as they live out this relationship of friend sovereign to friend servant. There is communion, call and response. And this is God's covenant relationship with you and me. Yet today, is it not? There is a communication. There is a dialogue that takes place between God and his people in the covenant. It's impossible to have a relationship or friendship without this. There has to be communication. There has to be some sort of fellowship. There must be a sharing of thoughts, a sharing of intentions of the heart. Covenant life is a life of communicating. It's not for us as individual Christians as we live our day-to-day lives. The Christian reads God's Word, and he reads that Word as God speaking to him personally. He reads the promises of that Word as God speaking those promises to him. He reads the commands of that Word as God speaking those commands to him personally. And then that individual responds. He prays to Jehovah God in response to His Word. He speaks to God of his cares. He speaks to him of his sins, of his joys and of his sorrows. He lives his days then, conscious of the fact that he is living before God. There's a life of dialogue that takes place in the covenant as we go about our daily lives. But this covenant life of dialogue is experienced in the highest form in the public worship of the church. Here in public corporate worship, in meeting with God as the covenantal assembly, God speaks to us in the most direct way in his word, and we respond most directly together in prayer and praise to him. there is this life of response, call and response, dialogue. In the worship service, God tells us we are His beloved. He speaks to us of His mighty acts and of His promises in the preaching of the Word. And together as His people, we respond to that. We sing songs that adore Him and that praise Him. We pray to Him in response for what He tells us. This, beloved, is what a biblical, reformed worship service is. It has God speaking to us and us responding back to God as his people. So that you see, in the actual worship service, there is a relationship being lived out. There is this actual communicating life happening in the public corporate worship service of the church. That is the dialogical principle of worship. This dialogue is always initiated by the sovereign God. God is sovereign in all of salvation and therefore also in the highest experience of salvation in this covenant life that we actually have and that takes place in the worship service. God is sovereign. It's he who calls us here to worship. He initiates worship, therefore, with his call. It's he who engages his people in communication and fellowship so that even our worship, which is speaking to him, is in response to the fact that he first speaks to us. The dialogue that takes place is not between two equal parties. God is the God of heaven and earth. He is majestic and glorious, and we know our place here. were safely kept in his arms. We know that, but yet we know we are sinful creatures of the dust. Therefore, with reverential love, we respond to him as he first speaks to us in the service. The fact that he calls us into this dialogue, initiates this holy conversation, tells us something. about the uniqueness of our God. There is no God like the triune God of heaven and earth. The false gods of false religions are impersonal deities. The only relationship between the false gods and their worshipers is one where the worshipers are trying to appease their God with their worship. That's the only relationship that there is there. worship in these religions, and Islam is included in this as well, is based only upon terror. The worship of the people is always to try to get something from their God. They come in order to get Him to do something for them that He does not want to do, perhaps, or that He hasn't said He's going to do. It's always to get something. It's not simply to come and to celebrate the God whose grace is there. It's not simply to come and experience a relationship between God and his people. In other words, the worshiper in false religions comes based solely upon law and never upon gospel. There is never peace, never assurance. There is no covenant. There is no dialogue. There is no true communion there. There can't be, do you see? Because in false religions with false gods, part of the way that sin is actually dealt with is by the payment of the worship that the people bring. But this God, The true God, the triune God of heaven and earth, beloved, is a relating God. He is a personal communicating God. He is a God of grace. He is the God who has opened the way for us by sending his son to die upon the cross so that God views his people as spotless in Jesus Christ. He sees his justice satisfied in Jesus Christ when he looks out upon his people. So that when you and I approach Him in worship, we don't come to worship Him with the reason why everybody else comes to worship their false gods, which is to earn something or to get something. But rather, we come to simply celebrate Him. Simply adore Him for who He is. We come because He has earned everything for us already in Jesus Christ. We come because He loved His people so much that He took away all barriers once and for all in Jesus Christ and opened up a way of life, a way of fellowship, a way of faith, a way of trust, a way of reverential awe, a way of dialogue, do you see? He is a personal kind of God. He is a communicating God who fellowships with the people that he loves. This unique and true God we experience most fully in the public worship of the church. We don't come here to try to get something from him. We don't come here to try to get him to do something that he hasn't already done or that he hasn't already promised to do. We are here because of what he has done. and what He promises to do by His sovereign grace alone. We're here to fellowship with Him, to adore Him, to celebrate that He is the God that He is, the God who keeps covenant with His people. And here He speaks to us, beloved. He tells us the things that He has done. He tells us the things that He is doing. And He tells us the things that He will do. And here we respond with adoration and praise and Thanksgiving. There is a life that's lived out here in the worship of the church. Let's take the time to look now into the record of Holy Scripture and see this truth arise from the worship that God's people bring themselves in the record of the word of God. We've said to this point that the dialogical principle arises out of the covenant of grace generally. And therefore, when we look into the record of the covenant of grace, covenant history here in the scripture, what we would expect to find is God's people carrying out this covenant dialogue in their own worship as that's recorded in the scriptures. And that is, in fact, what we find. The record of worship in the scriptures is that of God's people responding in worship to God's acting and speaking in history. And that's why our worship, too, is a dialogue, a response to the God who speaks and who acts, as that's told to us in his word. There's many instances of this in the scriptures, but let's look at a few key passages together. A moment tonight, first of all, turn with me to Genesis chapter eight, verse 15. Genesis eight, verse 15 and following. This is a record of the first worship of God after the world has been destroyed by the flood. God has destroyed wicked men from off the face of the earth. And now, after the waters of the flood recede, God tells Noah and his family to exit the ark. Verse 15, Genesis 8, 15. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife and thy sons and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee. In the following verses, Noah does that. He exits the ark. And thankful for God's mighty act in delivering him and his family through the flood upon the ark, Noah responds to that mighty act of God in verse 20. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord and took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings upon the altar. Noah, with his family around him, which at this point is the entire church, of course, upon the face of the earth, they gather together and they worship Jehovah God publicly in response to the fact that He has just delivered them with a mighty axe through the flood. It's a response to God's mighty axe. And then notice that God, receiving Noah's worship, Himself responds to Noah in verse 21. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor. And the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake. And then if you keep reading into chapter 9, God gives Noah covenant promises. So that what you have here, you see, is worship in a dialogue. There is a dialogue taking place in this covenant history. God acts in delivering Noah. Noah responds in worship. And God responds again to Noah's worship. A dialogue. Genesis 12 now. Turn with me. Genesis 12 verses 7 and 8. Jump ahead to the record of Abram. Abram here in this passage, worshiping God with his family after God brings him into the land of Canaan. Genesis 12. At the beginning of this chapter, God tells Abram to gather his tribe, his people, and to leave the land that he is living in and go to a land that God will show him. Abram does that. And then in verse 7, Abram is in Canaan. When he gets into Canaan, God speaks in verse 7. And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land. That's a promise. God speaks a promise to Abram. And then Abram responds in the very next phrase of verse 7. And there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him. God speaks and gives a promise. Abram responds with worship. And then verse 8 carries on Abram's response of worship. And here he moved from Thessalonians to a mountain on the east side of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east. And there he built an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord." That last phrase there in verse 8, called upon the name of the Lord, indicates that Abram held a worship service there in response to God's promise, giving him the land of Canaan and to his children. Abram responds with worship, public worship, He gathers his 318 servants, according to Genesis 14 verse 14, and those who are in his family, and they publicly there with that body worship Jehovah God in response to what he has done. So that again, you have God here acting and speaking in covenant history and his people responding to that with praise and worship. There is this principle then, All throughout covenant history, that worship is always a response. You find this. If you watch for it yourself as you read through, you'll find this. The worship of God's people is always a response to what God does or speaks. Now turn with me to Second Chronicles 29. Second Chronicles 29. Verses 27 and 28. Second Chronicles 29, where here we see that Israel's temple worship is also dialogical worship. It's also a dialogue here in the official worship of the temple. This is the time now when Israel is a kingdom. And official worship is a part of their regular life. We find here that in their official worship that's now scheduled official worship, there is also embodied this dialogical principle. King David of Israel was the one responsible for setting up the worship services of the temple. If you recall your history, he wasn't allowed to build the temple himself. His son Solomon had to build it, but he made preparations for the building of the temple. And one of the preparations was he set up the order of worship for the temple. And now in observing David's temple worship, We see this dialogical principle again, but we see it in a way that's most instructive for us in the New Testament, because here what we discover is that God's people are now not responding to God speaking to them immediately or directly in visions or in appearances, but rather we see God's people responding to God as he speaks to them in his recorded word and in the acts that he has set up for them to carry out. In other words, as they're actually carrying out their service now in the official temple worship, God's not directly communicating to them. But yet there still is this dialogical principle because God speaks in his word and they respond in praise. In his word and acts, he speaks to them. And that's from that point of view, just like our worship today. Second Chronicles 29, 27 and 28. This is during the reign of King Hezekiah, who restored Davidic temple worship to the nation. Verse 27, and Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar. This is God's side, this is God speaking, this is God's act in the offering upon the altar. And when the burnt offering began, Just after the offering begins, then this happens. The song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and with the instruments ordained by David, king of Israel, and all the congregation worshiped and the singers sang and the trumpeter sounded. And all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. The people respond in praise and worship. Hezekiah understood the dialogical principle when he reinstated Davidic worship. There is now here an institutionalized dialogue where God's promises are recounted in the sacrifice and the people respond in worship. And beloved, this is still God speaking and acting. Do you see? God was the one who commanded this sacrifice and the way it would be carried out. God is the one who told them what this sacrifice promised. This is God's voice then that they hear in the sacrifice and they respond in song and in praise. And all of this takes place in the official actual worship service of the temple. Finally, now let's go back to our text for this evening, Psalm 106. Psalm 106, where in verse 2, the psalmist looks back upon the history of Israel and calls to Israel's mind the mighty acts of God all throughout covenant history in the Old Testament. When he says this in verse 2, Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all His praise? And then, beloved, the psalmist goes on to list some of those mighty acts of God and the people's response to them. One of these mighty acts is the deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea that the psalmist records in verses 9 through 11. Let's read that. He rebuked the Red Sea also when it was dried up. So he led them through the depths as through the wilderness, and he saved them from the hand of him that hated them. and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies. There was not one of them left. And then notice, as the psalmist reflects back on covenant history, he notices something. The people respond to God's mighty act, verse 12. Then they believed his words. They sang his praise. And if you go back to Exodus chapter 15, where this historical event is recorded, You find that's exactly what took place. The Israelites on the safe side of the Red Sea stood there and watched as Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the Red Sea. And right there, in that very spot on the banks of the Red Sea, they sat down and Moses wrote a song. And with two million strong, they sang it in praise to God in response to what he had done. I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and the rider hath he thrown into the sea. Do you see, beloved, what the psalmist is doing here in Psalm 106 by recording this again for the people of God? He is actually teaching the Israelites the dialogical principle of worship, and he's doing it the exact same way that I'm doing it in this sermon. He's recording times in Israel's history where God's mighty acts are shown and his people respond to them and praise and worship. And the psalmist is using that for a lesson, just as it's being used for a lesson in this sermon. He's saying to the Israelites there, this is the pattern of how worship is supposed to go. Keep carrying this on. We hear God recount His mighty acts, His promises as He has revealed them in His Word. And then we praise Him in response. We adore Him. See, Israel, this is how it goes. This is how His people have worshipped Him all the way throughout our own history. Keep doing this. And now, Israel, As I lead you in worship by writing this psalm, and I recount these acts and speech of God for you again in this psalm, respond to them again in praise and in worship. This is how worship works. God meets with His people. He speaks. He declares His mighty acts. And then His people respond in praise. It's on this basis The basis of the dialogical principle, as the psalmist himself expounds it, that he calls the people to worship in verses one and two. Do you see that connection? Verses one and two. Praise ye the Lord. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all his praise? The psalmist is saying, praise the Lord, Israel, and keep praising the Lord in response to His mighty acts as they are recounted in the Word, as they are set before you. Because you can never exhaust them. You can never exhaust the praise that's due them. Let's keep recounting them. Let's keep hearing God speak them. And let's keep responding to them in adoration for what He has done. Come, praise Him now in this way as His church always has. Beloved, we carry this command of the psalmist on today as well in our worship. We come here and Jehovah God speaks to us. He tells us of his mighty acts. He speaks to us his promises. Some of them are the exact same acts and the exact same promises that he gave to Noah, that he gave to Abraham, that he gave to David. They saw them and they responded and worshipped. And we do as well. We hear him say these things to us. In the salutation, he calls us his beloved. In the reading of the law, in the benediction, and especially in the preaching of the word, God speaks and we respond. But then he also speaks of the promises that Abraham and Noah and the others never saw. The fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises, as we have them recorded in the New Testament, these, too, God speaks to us. The fact that he has fulfilled all promises in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the sacrifice of his son upon the cross He tells us here in the service that He has intervened again in the history of the world by sending His Son to break into time and space and to take us back to Himself. He tells us of the forgiveness of sins, of the more abundant life. He tells us of the promises of His faithfulness to His Church. We hear His mighty act He tells us of the sending of the Holy Spirit and the fact that that Spirit will dwell in us and consecrate us to Jehovah God. He speaks to us of the promises of His providence in our lives. He tells us in the worship service that there's going to come a time where He intervenes immediately, directly in history once again. He's going to send His Son a second time He tells us of the hope that is ours then, of his faithfulness to his church, that he will take us to himself. In all these things, beloved, Jehovah God speaks to us. He does. It's not the minister that says these things. It's God's Word being expounded. And therefore, it is God directly addressing Himself to us as His people. His voice speaks these truths. His voice speaks these acts. His voice declares these promises to our hearts. And we respond to them as He speaks them to us personally. When in the service we hear God speak, We respond not to the minister, not to the other people around us, but to him. We're singing to him. We're praying to him. So that our worship service here, do you see, is a dialogue that takes place between God and us. We're speaking to him in response to what we hear as he speaks to us. The early church set the pattern for us in the New Testament by themselves responding to the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in the gospel and the apostolic doctrine. When in Acts 2, verses 46 and 47, it says that they continued daily with one accord, breaking bread with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, they responded to God's mighty acts And as those acts were spoken to them again in the apostolic doctrine, they responded again day in and day out. And this we carry on as well, beloved, in the New Testament and the services of the church. That's why our order of worship is the way that it is. The Reformed saw this dialogical principle in the covenant itself and specifically in the worship that took place in covenant history. And they sought to capture this dialogue in the order of worship of the church and truly reformed churches carry this on today as well. Our order of worship is a dialogue. It's a dialogue between God and his people. God speaks and we respond. There are two types of elements in the reformed worship service. There are those that come from God's side where God speaks to us, and there are those that come from our side as we speak back to God. While there are certainly other ways to order those elements, ours is not the only way to order it. The order itself is not inspired or anything like this. There are other ways to order this dialogue, nonetheless. What we have in our worship service is, for the most part, what the Reformed have always had in their order of worship. When we go through each element in this series, I will expound this and explain it more. But for now, let's get the overview of our own worship service and see how the whole service is, in fact, a dialogue between God and his people. If you have your bulletin in front of you, take that out for a minute and let's look at the order of worship as it's printed on the front. Notice that God speaks first, calling us to worship in the call to worship, And then we, as his people, respond in prayer, silent prayer, and in song, the doxology. And then God speaks, responding to us. He speaks again in the salutation. Beloved congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ. And then we respond to that in the vodum. Our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth. And then God speaks again by giving us his benediction. And then we respond again in song. God speaks to us again in the reading of his law, and we respond back to him in song and then in prayer. And then God speaks to us in his word and in its exposition. And then we respond again in prayer and in song for what he has declared to us. And then finally, God dismisses us with his personal blessing. It's a dialogue, do you see? between God and his people. And this is again, beloved, why it is so important that every aspect of the worship service takes up the actual word of Jehovah God. So that when the element of the service has God speaking to us, it really is God speaking to us. And we can be confident that it is God speaking to us because it's the word that's being used. It's his voice. It's what he wrote with his own finger. It's not the minister's words. It's not a showman up here trying to manipulate you in a certain way. It is God that is addressing you in his words, speaking directly to us. And therefore, when we respond, we respond back to him. It's not to make worship very appealing to us. We are actually coming here to hear God speak to us and to respond directly to Jehovah God in prayer and in song. We ought to have the desire, beloved, for this, to come hear God himself tell us of his acts, tell us of his promises, tell us of his salvation that he has purchased for us. The psalmist certainly has this desire. The psalmist in Psalm 106 has this personal drive, desire for this, to experience this. Verses four and five. The psalmist shows us that not only does he grasp this dialogical principle with his head, not only does he understand that this is supposed to be the way that worship is carried out, but he loves it. And he sees it as a loving condescension of the great God to him personally in the Church of Jesus Christ, he expresses that it's his personal desire. This is what he wants to be in the worship of God, to hear God's voice, to hear God speak to him and to respond in praise with God's people. This dialogical principle has driven him to fervently love this God who will give him his own voice. Verses four and five, the psalmist says, Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people. Oh, visit me with Thy salvation, that I may see the good of Thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Thy nation, that I may glory with Thine inheritance. The psalmist desires personally to hear God speak in the service of the church. Oh, visit me with Thy salvation, he says. Speak that salvation to me. Visit that to me. In the worship, I want to hear thy voice, O God. And he desires to respond to that in worship, that I may rejoice, he says, that I may glory and that I may rejoice in glory with thy people. Notice what he says, that I may glory with thine inheritance. that I may, as an individual, be a part of this body and hear this and experience this as God speaks to us and speaks to me personally, and I respond personally with the body of Jesus Christ. Do you say this? Is this your desire? As you come to the worship service of the church, this is the way, beloved, to prepare your heart and the hearts of your family for the public corporate worship of the church. God, speak to me. Tell me I am your beloved and the salutation that you give. Tell me of your salvation and the preaching of the word. And with thy inheritance, I will respond in praise and adoration and thanksgiving to thy glory. Let's come to worship in this frame of mind, beloved. Our God calls us to dialogue with him in the worship service. We are coming here, meeting with him face to face. to hear Him speak all of His mighty acts, declare to us all of His promises. And we are coming to offer praise in response to Him, to adore Him and to thank Him for what He has done and for what He is doing and for what He will do. If we are aware of this, if we are conscious of this as we come to the service, It's going to make our worship so much more meaningful and so much more beautiful. God will meet with us and He will dialogue with us in covenant love. May it be so for us as a church. Amen. Let us pray. Father, what condescending grace Thou dost give in coming to meet with us, to fellowship with us. And we come with this understanding and tremble before Thee with holy fear and also with holy joy. This Thou dost give us in worship of the Church. In Jesus' name, Amen.