I do want to welcome you on Sunday mornings at 9.15 to the Bible study hour next door downstairs. We're going through the book of Mark, coming toward the end now, but all of you are invited every Sunday morning and we'd love to have you come and be with us for that hour of study of God's Word. So let me say one more brief prayer and we'll get right to this morning's Bible preaching text. Lord, help us now, please, to worship you, engage our hearts. As Eric has just prayed and as we have just sung, you are so worthy of our praise and our thanksgiving, and you are worthy of our attention, our careful attention in this hour to the scripture and the exposition and application of it. So help us, God, to honor you by that. And I pray that by the work of your spirit, that we will love Christ more when we walk out of this room than we do even now. Help us, Lord, to honor you in that way. Amen. Questions for everybody to answer, but nobody to answer out loud. You ever said something and as soon as you said it, you wished you hadn't? Have you ever been in the process of saying something and while you're talking it occurred to you, I shouldn't be saying this? Have you ever had the opportunity to say something and didn't say it and later you truly wished you had? At times, what we say or don't say can be very important. It might make a significant difference in somebody else's life, or maybe your own life. Here's something you will probably never, ever hear anybody say, not in this life, not on their deathbed, and not on Judgment Day. I regret that I spent too much time praising God. The fullness of the praiseworthiness of God will never be reached. Not by all of creation put together. And that may be one reason why heaven is never ending because we will never fulfill the act of praising God as much as He ought to be praised. And praising God Not only is it a job that will never be completed, it is a joy that will never be completed, and a joy that will never be diminished for those who love Christ. I want to ask you to join me now at Psalm number 145. If you did not bring a Bible with you and want to use the Pew Bible, it's on page 524, Psalm 145. And our focus this morning is really gonna be on the first 12 verses, which is way more text than I usually preach from. But all these words seem to fit with today's emphasis, so let's put this portion of God's word before our eyes and before our ears and before our hearts. Psalm 145, verses one through 12. David, He says, I will extol you, my God, O King, and I will bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will praise you. I will praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts, and I will declare your greatness, and they shall utter the memory of your great goodness and shall sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. slow to anger, and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all of his works. All your works shall praise you, O Lord, and your saints shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and talk of your power to make known to the sons of men your mighty acts and the glorious majesty of your kingdom." Wow! What a song! What a God. This morning, I'm using a four part outline. If you're a note taker, here's outline point number one, introduction. And part A of outline point number one is some biblical information about word use in general. The title of the message is, what are you talking about? So we need to talk about what we talk about. And there's way more to say in one sermon about what the Bible has to say about how Christians should talk. I just don't have time to cover all of it. And so I'm gonna kind of narrow it down to what we see in this psalm and in the matter of praise and thanksgiving. But I feel compelled to at least bring in a few other verses, some powerful and pertinent tongue verses to kind of set our remembrance about the use of the tongue. And in case you weren't here last week or you don't care to make connections, last week's sermon was What's On Your Mind. Today's title is What Are We Talking About? And so there's an obvious connection between thinking and talking. Now one of those connection verses is in Matthew 12, 34b, where Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The same author of our focus song for today, David, wrote in Psalm 19, in which he offers this prayer to the Lord. He says, O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Hear the interrelationship there, the internal and external words of my mouth and meditations of my heart. Again, what's in the heart often does come out of the mouth. And if what's in the heart is right, it should come out of our mouth. So if you or someone you know is often talking negatively or critically or crudely or using ugly language, that's probably a good indication of what's in their heart, what's on their mind. Most of you know that the book of James in the New Testament has a lot to say about the tongue, words that we use, power of the human tongue for good or for destruction. Especially when James tells us in chapter 3 verse 8, no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. Yeah, your tongue, my tongue can be that way. Two verses later, James tells us, out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. Those things ought not to be so. It shouldn't happen that way. If that is the natural inclination of the human tongue, then we Christians must work at controlling our tongues. Amen? We have to work at doing that. We must discipline ourselves in the power of the Holy Spirit to speak ways that are honoring to God and blessing and building up to other people. Which is why one of the key verses about the tongue is from Ephesians 4.29 where Paul says, let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. Rather, what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. You see both sides there. Not speaking corruptly. And by the way, here's some synonyms for corrupt speaking. This is the translation of the Greek word there. Unwholesome, foul, putrid, rotten, worthless, disgusting. I didn't make those up. That's what the Greek linguists tell me. The Bible instruction not recommendation, but instruction from God is don't let any of that kind of talk come out of your mouth, not ever. Don't talk that way, Christians. Instead, this kind of talk, the kind of talk that builds up others and imparts grace to those who are hearing you, that kind of talk will, of course, be acceptable to God, pleasing in His sight. And it's here if we say it sincerely. So let's be reminded of these basic, very important biblical instructions about how we ought and ought not to talk to one another. But still in this introductory section, the second part of it is just some general information about today's focus psalm number 145. If you'll look at it, right above where verse one starts, immediately above that, there's a little short phrase in most of your Bibles that says, a psalm of praise of David. My research tells me there that the original reads most literally, a praise of David. And that's the only psalm that begins precisely that way. The New King James and the LSB have it that way. A praise of David. And though it's not identifiable as such in our English translation, Psalm 145 is an acrostic psalm, if you know what that means. Verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in succession. You could see it if you read Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible. We don't really care. It doesn't change our meaning of the psalm that much or our understanding of it, but it does point to the skill of the author in his construction of writing. I also learned that in Jewish practice, this psalm that we number, number 145, was used three times a day, twice in the morning, And then again, once in the evening services. So it was very common to Jewish people to know what this was all about. And as you notice, as I read through those verses probably, there's several synonyms there for praising God, for using words to express praise to Him. Our English versions have praise, bless, extol, declare, speak, sing, utter, make known, We'll talk a little bit more about that later in the message. But before all that, we should remember that the main thing in any Bible portion that we read is about God Himself. What's revealed here about God? That's what we must not miss. And Psalm 145, especially the verses we read this morning, presents much about God to us. Here is outline point number two. Some praiseworthy particulars of God's divine being and doings. Some praiseworthy particulars of God's divine being and doings. As you know, what God does emanates from who God is. His doings, his actions are in character with his divine nature, which by the way is perfect. So everything God does is perfect. And we can scan through the verses and list these God things and I don't want it to be just mechanical and structural only. The reason I want to take time to do this is to spotlight the goodness of God and the glory of God so we can see again, here are some of the reasons, not just a few, we sang a song of 10,000 reasons, but here's a few right from the Bible from today's passage of why we should praise God and give Him thanks. And in the outline point sentence, I've distinguished between the being of God and the doing of God, His outward expressions. As we go through the list, I'm not gonna make those two column distinctions. You could do that if you want to and take in your notes. And some of our translations have little different wording. I might mention some of those in particular, but one more thing about this. I'm gonna do it kind of quickly. But even just in saying these things aloud, It ought to be worship to us. It ought to be worshipful. And I hope, I hope even in the moment, right here in the room as I go down this list, we get caught up in worship of God. And the good news is you have a Bible. You can go home and read them again this afternoon and this week and see these wonderful things. Okay, so let's get going. I want you to follow along in your Bible and see these praiseworthy particulars of God's divine being and doing. We're in Psalm 145, page 524 in the Pew Bible, verse one. He is God and King. Verse three, He is great. Indeed, His greatness is unsearchable. It's so vast, it's so deep, no human can possibly comprehend it. Verse four speaks of His mighty acts. No details given there, just kind of a categorical and collective statement. In verse five, the first part talks about the glorious splendor of His majesty. Isn't that a fabulous phrase? The glorious splendor of God's majesty. Oh my. And the second part of verse five speaks of His wondrous works. And again, in the first part of verse six, the might of Your awesome acts. Those deeds are done in might or power. The second part of verse six, again, God's greatness. Verse seven, they show utter memory of your great goodness, your abundant goodness and God's righteousness. Then we come to verse eight, and there are four of these in one verse. This is so amazing. The Lord is gracious. full of compassion and slow to anger and great or rich or abounding in mercy. Now that last descriptor there from the Hebrew is the word hesed, H-E-S-E-D, and I know you've had that explained to you before. It's a word that's so rich, so pregnant and deep with meaning that no one English word can really describe it adequately. The King James translations most often render hesed as mercy. The NAS most often uses loving kindness. The ESV most often uses steadfast love. And I'm sure there's some Puritan somewhere that's written an entire book just on that one verse about God being gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and abounding in mercy. I look at that and say, what a verse! What a God! Oh, but there's more. Verse nine, the Lord is good to all. And His tender mercies are over all of His works. All that He's made is covered with His tender mercies. Again, in verse 10, it speaks of His works. In the first part of verse 11, the glory of Your kingdom. And then again, in the second part of verse 11, it will talk of Your power. God's power, and remember we know from other texts that how powerful is God? He's all-powerful, omnipotent, unlimited in power, is our great God. Verse 12a, again, His mighty axe. And the second part of verse 12, the glorious majesty or splendor of your kingdom. Now remember from verse 11, it said the glory of your kingdom. And here in verse 12, it's kind of magnified the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Franz Delitzsch, the old German, calls it the stately glory of God's kingship. Isn't that great? I love that. Now, that's our core text. But since this stuff about God is so good, let's steal some more from the following verses. Verse 13, God's everlasting kingdom and his dominion that endures throughout all generations. You know why God's kingdom is everlasting? Because God himself is El Olam, the everlasting God. You see that name in Genesis 21, 33. Verse 14 says, God upholds all who fall and raises up all of those who are bowed down. And the next verse says that all of our eyes look to God and He gives food in due season. Verse 16, He satisfies the desire of every living thing and then pertinent to all who call upon Him in truth. Verse 18 says, the Lord is near to all who call upon Him. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, lives, dwells inside believers. You can't get any nearer than that. Aren't those God realities glorious? Doesn't just the reading of them and seeing of them cause you to just want to rejoice in your souls? That's just one soul and all that stuff about God. So we have this list and it's powerful and impressive and I hope spiritually moving to you. But the question is, what are we supposed to do with this information? How is knowing these things about God supposed to affect our lives? The answer is in multiples of ways. It should affect us. All of this should engender in us comfort and confidence and hope and rest in God and joy. And thinking on these things ought to motivate us to praise God. to thank God, to express that to Him. Yes, to feel those things, but more than that, to express it to Him. So, thus the next two points of the message, extolling God to God Himself and extolling God to others. So this is outline point number three, extolling God to God Himself. extolling God to God Himself. As I read these expressions of David expressing himself, it seems that any of them could be done to God Himself directly as our praise and our private praise. Or they could be done publicly in the hearing of others. Some of these seem to clearly be meant to be public, like in verse 4 when it talks about praising from one generation to another, one generation commending God and In verse 12 it says, make known to the children of men these things of God. That's human to human communication, obviously. But some of these others could be speaking or declaring maybe primarily just from us to God's own ears. I don't want us to be too dogmatic about that, even though I'm dividing it into two outline points. I will say this, though. For every one of us, every day there should be a significant component in our lives of praising God directly to God. Part of your prayer time, and I hope you do pray every day, part of your prayer time every day should be spent praising and thanking God. Now, remember this heart and mouth connection. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so there's the words of our mouth, meditations of our heart, both being acceptable to God. And on that connection, Charles Spurgeon said this, it is to be lamented that so much of the conversation of professing Christians is utterly barren. because they take no time for contemplation and meditation on God. If the subject of our meditation is choice, then our talk will be edifying. Meditation on God makes for rich talking. Amen. What are you talking about? Colossians 3.16, the apostle Paul exhorts us to be teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And then he says, with grace or thankfulness in our hearts to God. See the internal part? With grace in our hearts to God. And on that last part about what's in our hearts, A.T. Robertson says, without this part in our hearts, There's no real worship to God. It is all for naught if the adoration is not in the heart. So what that means is, brothers and sisters, what's more important than us being good singers is that we be good hearters. Is there grace in your heart toward God? Is there thanksgiving in your heart toward God? Is there in your heart faith toward God? Is there true faith in your heart toward Jesus Christ as the Savior of your soul? So just for a moment here, while we're talking about our hearts and faith, by the way, if there is, if you can say, brother, thank the Lord, there's faith in my heart toward God, that's because God gave you the faith. You didn't whip it up. You didn't come born with it. God gave us the faith to trust in Christ. But if you're not sure that faith is in your heart, if you're not sure you're trusting Christ as your Savior, or maybe you know you're not, I want to encourage you, do serious business with God very soon. Your eternity depends on it. Ask God to give you the faith to believe in His Son. Ask God to give you the ability to repent of your sins and that He would bring you into eternal relationship with Him savingly. Only God can save us from an eternal hell to which we all deserve to go. Only God can bring us from death unto life and that comes by God's grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, who alone is the Redeemer of sinners. So please, call on Christ today. Salvation is only in Him, and only through Him can you have an eternity in heaven. So, for those of us who are faith followers of Christ, who are true believers by the grace of God, we know, don't we, that God is worthy to be praised. 2 Samuel 22, verse 4 says, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. If you didn't know it before this morning, now you know it. And in Revelation chapter 4, verse 11, we read, you are worthy. our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. You're worthy to receive this praise the Bible says. Here today from Psalm 145 we have this saturation of instruction by divinic example in the practice of extolling God. Now why am I using the word extolling? In verse 1 in my translation it says, I will extol you my God, O King. Some of your translations have, I will exalt you. An old dead guy named Philip Power wrote this, to extol is to set preeminently on high, to exalt above all others. It is the expression of the greatest possible admiration. In that case, I should extol Janice, because I have the greatest possible admiration of her, but not as much as I do for God. And you see, that's how we ought to think about God, that He's worthy of our greatest possible admiration. And that's what we express to God from our right hearts, the greatest possible admiration and praise and thanks and love. And so David says here in verse one, I will extol you, my God, O King. For how long, David? Verse 1b, forever and ever. Verse 2b, and I will praise your name forever and ever. Well, David, with what consistency will you do this? Look at the first part of verse 2. Every day I will bless you. And I trust and hope that all of us here who are followers of Christ, we do pray every day. And I'm going to ask you again, do you spend a significant time of your prayer in praise? Some of you may remember years ago, I haven't heard this lately, but we used to hear that people would say, well, how do you pray? They would say, well, there's four basic categories of prayer. There's adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. You use it a little acrostic, remember that? A-C-T-S, acts, and praise. I like to switch it around, C-A-T-S, confession, because I think before you start talking to God about anything else, we ought to get our confession out and get our sins forgiven and cleansed by God. I don't want to be too adamant about that, but I think it's important. But notice that even that perhaps oversimplified breakdown of the prayer components, half of them have to do with extolling God. Adoration, thanksgiving. And I just want to encourage you, if your prayer habits don't already include healthy portions of praise and adoration and thanksgiving, start including that. I know you feel like, I just got so much time to pray and I've got so much stuff, things to ask God for, but give Him more time to praise. And David instructs us well here by his example in verse two, every day I will praise you. So remember the title of the sermon is what are you talking about? And one of the things we ought to be talking about is God himself, how wonderful he is, rehearsing the names and attributes and character and nature of God himself as God and Be praising Him and thanking Him and talking about these wonderful things that God has done and is doing on our behalf and behalf of our church and behalf of people we know. I want you to look down at the first part of verse 7. The New King James has it there, they shall utter the memory of your great goodness. The ESV renders that, they shall pour forth the fame. your abundant goodness. I just ask you, in your prayer times do you ever pour forth God's fame back to God Himself? It's a very worshipful thing to do. And then notice there at the end of that phrase in verse 7 about God's great or abundant goodness. You know, God's goodness is an aspect or dynamic of his divine character, but it can also refer to his expressions of goodness toward us. Let me ask you, was God good to you yesterday and last night? Some of the heads are bobbing. Every head should be popping. In what ways was God good to us just yesterday? We need to think, in what ways was God good to us? Faithfully, consistently, maybe even lavishly. Did we extol him for being those ways? Well, you know, he knows I appreciate it. Well, really? Why don't you tell him that? Might God have been rightly extolled for supplying the air that we breathe? Might God have been extolled that when we woke up this morning we could still hear and see? Might God be extolled that we had a warm bed to sleep in? That we have a Bible? That we had the freedom to be here this morning without fear of being arrested? We had a choice. Everybody in the room had a choice of clothes to put on this morning. All of that is ours by the gracious provision of our good God. And He is worthy to be extolled for those things, even in detail, even in particular, even for the consistent ones, He's worthy to hear us say, God bless you and thank you for this, that, and the other. And I chose not to put this as a separate outline point, this that I'm about to say, but I think we should very briefly consider why. Why should we do this extolling of God? And because as we already said, just several reasons. One is He's worthy of it. First part of verse three, great is the Lord, greatly to be praised. The second reason is, because we're commanded in the Bible to do so. were commanded to do so. And I don't want to take time this morning to list a bunch of verses that Old Testament Anne knew that we are instructed to praise God, but let me just give you one reference. In Romans 15, 11, Paul cites the first verse of Psalm 117. Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. Let all the peoples praise Him. And in the Greek text, that word praise there is an imperative, which means it is an instruction expected by God to be obeyed. So praise Him because we're supposed to. And another reason why praise God, because doing that helps keep our focus more on Him than all of the lesser distracting things of life. Things that we do have to tend to, But boy, they can bog us down, can't we? And if we look at the harsh things and the unsettling things of life, we can get withered in our emotions before long. And I don't know about you, but for me, taking some time to focus on God and praise Him and thank Him, it starts getting my heart tuned right. And I begin to be encouraged. And I begin to rest more in the goodness and the all-powerfulness of God. and it wells up joy in my soul to the part that I come to where I'm just overflowing with a good theme. That's where I want to live. Now, one example. How does this work, this meditating on God and proclaiming Him? How does it work? Let me give you an illustration. Back on You don't know this, but you heard it, but back on page four, remember when you went down verse by verse and listed all those things we see in the psalm about God's character and nature, this particular praiseworthy things? All of that is on page four. I think I typed this on Tuesday of last week. And a little later that day, I went back in my study and I said to the Lord, Lord, I want to praise you now, and I want to use the things that I saw here in Psalm 145, and I want to offer them as David did, as worship. And then I said to myself, Now I'm not going to just sit here and read this. This is more than just reading off the paper. I want to sincerely offer this as praise to God. So I sat at my study desk and I picked up this sheet just like this and I started and I read. He is God and King. And I'm just thinking involuntarily. My right hand went up. And then I start reading. He is great. His greatness is unsearchable. I praise you for your mighty acts and for the glorious splendor of your majesty. And I read on down, and I got down to this thing about God's wondrous works. and His goodness. And then I just stopped for several minutes and I just started rehearsing some of the goodnesses of God that I'd seen recently in my own life. And I'm going and I'm telling you, I got carried away. I got deliciously carried away with rehearsing some of the fresh blessings and goodnesses of God. And I want to tell you, I didn't even get halfway down the page and I had to lay it down and put both of my hands up and I was weeping uncontrollably with joy for the goodness of God. That happens to me sometimes. Does that ever happen to you? Over the goodness of God? Oh my! That kind of experience alone is enough to propel me to want to praise Him some more and to extol God. But let's go on now to outline point number four. Extolling God to others. I mean, we might say it this way, extolling God in the presence of others. I want you to look again at verse four. One generation shall praise your works to another and declare your mighty acts. So these mighty acts of God could be declared, that's communicating, right? One person to another. And then take note about that part about one generation to another. How might that work itself out? Well, you know, older people to younger people, or maybe younger people to older, telling about what God is doing. And I just thought of an application in particular, parents, grandparents, maybe for some of you, uncles and aunts. Think about ways you can communicate God to the younger people in your life. perhaps by connecting God directly to things that they can experience. For example, families riding along in the car in the evening, and they look up and there's a beautiful sunset, and you could say, children, look at the beautiful sunset. Or you could say, children, look how God has caused the colors of the sky to be so beautiful tonight. See, just putting his name, because he did it, right? Connecting them with God. Here's another illustration I thought of. I don't remember my own father ever doing this. And by the way, when I give the illustration, I know most people are paid nowadays by direct deposit. But let's say the father comes home at the end of the week and he has his paycheck. And he could gather the family around and say, children, this is dad's paycheck, and they don't have to know the amount. But you could say, dad works hard, and God gives him the energy to work hard and do a good job, and the place where I work, they pay me to do that job. But what you need to understand is, children, God has provided this money for our family. God has given us the money to buy our food, and to make our house payment, and to buy the clothes that you're wearing, and to give our tithe to the church. This is money that we have been provided by God. The illustration point is that God be directly connected on purpose with the blessings that we enjoy, and thus God is praised from one generation to another. But of course, it's not limited to generation to generation or in the family. Wherever we go, we can actuate this matter of extolling God to others. Look again at verse six. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts, and I will declare your greatness. Speak and declare, it says. Another translation is tell and proclaim. So this is out loud talking in the hearing of others. maybe even more obviously so in verses 11 and 12. And they shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and talk of your power to make known to the sons of men, that's to other people, God's mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. You can do that in non-scripted conversations, what we call casual conversations. Hey, can I tell you something wonderful that God did for me recently? Hey, listen to this. I want to tell you what I heard in our Sunday school lesson yesterday. Can I tell you something interesting that God reminded me of or taught me this morning while I was doing my daily Bible reading? See, we can and we ought to be talking about God to other people and all sorts of other people, right? Sometimes you start talking about God to a stranger and it may open up an evangelistic conversation. But also, we need to be doing that, we believers, in the presence of one another. King David wrote this at Psalm 22, 22. I will declare your name to my brethren. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. Isn't that great? In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. That's the gathering of God trusters. Wow, how might that look? How would you do that? Well, one way is like this. This is a past Thursday night at the beginning of our elder deacon meeting. Soon as the meeting officially came to order, the first thing out of Eric's mouth was, what did you see God do today? And several of the men began to tell, now they fudged a little bit on the today part, but that was okay, because it was recent stuff. And they reported, and I believe it honored God for us, seven or eight men sitting in that room to tell each other what we'd seen God doing. It might look like this. This past Wednesday night at the church where I'm a member, the opening of the prayer time was used by reading Psalm 98.1, which says, Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things. And the leader said, okay. I want some of you, without previous instruction, to tell me right now, what kind of marvelous things has God been doing in your life? And I've had you for about 25 minutes, different ones here and there, begin to say things that God has been powerful things, intriguing things, fascinating things, sweet things, very intimate things some people shared, one right after another. talking about the marvelous. And after that, we prayed for a few minutes, and there was more of this praising God for His marvelous doings. And you say, well, okay, so what happened? Big deal. I want to tell you, for the people that were there, it stirred our souls to say those things out loud. It bolstered our faith. Hearing one another talk about what God was doing helped us. Those extolations of God, I believe, also worshiped Him. And at least for one person, the next day, when they reflected back on that evening stuff and began to rehearse what this one had said, it caused that person to worship all over again. I know it did, because it was me. We're still considering ways. I'm almost done. We're considering ways to extol God in the congregation. Now in the book of the Revelation in chapter 5 verse 12, we read that this myriad of heavenly beings there cry out with a loud voice. Now this is a good illustration so y'all listen carefully to all the parts of it. They cry out with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb. who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. So if you notice in that list, one of the words that those beings say loudly is glory. Some of you here had the privilege of knowing Deb Esty's husband, Ken, who's now with the Lord. I had the privilege of being Ken's friend. And for a couple of years in another church, I had the privilege of being his preacher every Sunday. Ken Estes loved the Lord. And he loved worshiping God through singing. And he loved verbally worshiping and agreeing with the truth of the God that was proclaimed And one thing that Ken would do, almost every Sunday, at some point during the preaching of the truth, Ken would shout, glory! And he would do it worshipfully, clearly, loudly, stimulatingly to some, encouragingly to the preacher, Glory!" Ken would shout to some truth from the Bible. I want to tell you, Ken was extolling to God in the presence of the assembly. Wednesday night passed at my church as I just told you. A lot of the believers there extolled some of the marvelous works of God in the congregation. Thursday night your elders and deacons extolled God to each other about some of His recent displays of His goodness. And God, through the quill of David, is telling us here that we ought to use all of these expression verbs, speak, declare, utter, make known, sing, extol, bless, praise, use them about Him as His divine nature is God and is about His wonderful, wonderful, awesome, mighty deeds. And God has told us, do that every day and do that forever and ever. What are you talking about? Remember that inward and outward connection? What's on your mind and what are you talking about? That biblical interrelationship that the words in my mouth and the meditations in my heart both be acceptable to God. Words we say being acceptable to God. What are you talking about? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. See that interrelationship between internal and external? I want you to look one more time at verse five from today's psalm. David says, I will meditate, think deeply on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works. what we have in our hearts and our minds. If it's things about the glorious splendor of God's majesty and His wondrous works, if that's what's in our hearts, that's what ought to be coming out of our mouths to God and to others. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Lord, I bless you for giving us this time together. And I pray that maybe not me alone has been reminded, maybe convicted of some of the things that we talk about that are unnecessary. Some of the things we talk about, though maybe not sinful in their essence, we would do better to talk about things more related to you. to other people than just trivial things. I pray that some of us for sure, Lord, have been stimulated to be more conscious of you and your great glory so that we will more often say to you words of praise and adoration, that we will extol you sincerely for your marvelous greatness. God, please stir us. Change us, grow us in this way. For the glory of Christ, in whose name I pray.