SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, please open it to Psalm chapter 95.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we're going to be.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible, we would love to give you one.
SPEAKER_01: There should be a black hardback Bible in the seat in front of you.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to grab that, if you're not familiar with how to navigate the Bible, it is a thick book.
SPEAKER_01: An easy cheat is to go to the middle of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: That's usually where the Psalms are.
SPEAKER_01: And then we are in Psalm 95.
SPEAKER_01: This is a psalm that has no author attributed to it.
SPEAKER_01: But my prayer this morning is that it would point us to the author of all of Scripture, the ultimate author, and that is God.
SPEAKER_01: And more specifically, I pray that this psalm would ignite a fire in your heart for joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're going to talk about this morning.
SPEAKER_01: But first let's read through this.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 95, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods.
SPEAKER_01: In his hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are his also, the sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
SPEAKER_01: O come, let us bow down and worship.
SPEAKER_01: Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand.
SPEAKER_01: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Masa in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
SPEAKER_01: For forty years I loathe that generation.
SPEAKER_01: I said, They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.
SPEAKER_01: This is a message that I had the privilege of sharing with our student ministry.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in a if you're a sixth or twelfth grader who sat through that, or one of our leaders, practice makes perfect, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's good to be repeated.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's no trouble for you, and it's it's or it's no trouble for me and beneficial for you.
SPEAKER_01: Um so uh Psalm 95 is a psalm of joy, and that's what we're going to be talking about this morning, is is joy.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to steal every John Piper quote I can I could find on the internet.
SPEAKER_01: I actually just want to orient our minds and our hearts around this singular psalm, which invites the people of God to gather in worship out of joy for God.
SPEAKER_01: But before we get there, I want you to close your eyes for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: All of you, close your eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, nothing weird is going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: We're not that kind of church.
SPEAKER_01: Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you were blind.
SPEAKER_01: With your eyes closed, that's all you can see.
SPEAKER_01: You're not partially blind, you're not legally blind, you're fully, completely, wholly blind.
SPEAKER_01: Keep your eyes closed.
SPEAKER_01: Think for a moment that the of the things you enjoy looking at most.
SPEAKER_01: Your TV becomes useless.
SPEAKER_01: Your smartphone becomes useless.
SPEAKER_01: Your social media is useless.
SPEAKER_01: If you were privileged to be born in a beautiful place like the Rocky Mountains, such as I was.
SPEAKER_01: Those Rocky Mountains really mean nothing to you because you cannot behold the beauty and splendor of what you see.
SPEAKER_01: Your safety.
SPEAKER_01: Your safety is at risk because you cannot determine what is dangerous and what is not.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot make a decision based off of what you see in order to preserve your life.
SPEAKER_01: Would you be happy if you were blind?
SPEAKER_01: You can open your eyes now.
SPEAKER_01: Now that you can see, that puts everything into perspective, huh?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe one benefit is that you wouldn't be able to see me, right?
SPEAKER_01: You could just come in here, and that's all that's good enough for you.
SPEAKER_01: But if you were born blind, would you be able to be happy?
SPEAKER_01: And many of us, many of us feel sorry for people who are born blind.
SPEAKER_01: According to the National Institutes of Health, a very uh very accurate source of information these days, 500,000 children become blind each year.
SPEAKER_01: 500,000 children are born blind every single year.
SPEAKER_01: And we might be duped into thinking that without the ability to see, these children would not be able to truly experience life and therefore would never be able to experience happiness.
SPEAKER_01: I want to tell you about a child who was blind.
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't born blind, but she was blinded in her infancy.
SPEAKER_01: Her name was Fanny Crosby.
SPEAKER_01: She was born in 1820.
SPEAKER_01: When she was an infant, she had an infection in her eyes, and in short, what we would consider an issue of malpractice, medical malpractice, the treatment given to her because of the infection in her eyes rendered her completely, totally, 100% blind.
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't just partially blind, she wasn't blind in one eye, she wasn't legally blind, she was fully, completely blind from infancy.
SPEAKER_01: And she was blind until the age of 95 when she went to home to be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And you would think, because of her condition, that she would have a hard time finding happiness in life.
SPEAKER_01: After all, she lived in the 1800s without all the benefits and privileges afforded to blind people today.
SPEAKER_01: There was no braille, there was no elevators that help you figure out where to go, there were no seeing eye dogs.
SPEAKER_01: There was just nothing there for her.
SPEAKER_01: Eight years old.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Eight years old.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to what this eight-year-old blind child writes in the early 1800s.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what a happy child I am.
SPEAKER_01: Although I cannot see.
SPEAKER_01: I am resolved that in this world, contented, I will be.
SPEAKER_01: How many blessings I enjoy that even other people don't.
SPEAKER_01: To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot and I won't.
SPEAKER_01: Eight-year-old Fanny Crosby wrote that.
SPEAKER_01: How can this blind young girl find such joy in life?
SPEAKER_01: How can this woman without the ability to see find so much joy in life that she would go on to write many hymns that you and I sing on Sundays?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, one of them that I love, it's Blessed Assurance.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've heard this, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine, air of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood.
SPEAKER_01: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
SPEAKER_01: Fanny did not feel the need for your sympathy because of her condition, because Fanny Crosby had something that was far more profound than what you and I would consider happiness.
SPEAKER_01: She had a deep-rooted, durable, I would say, indestructible joy.
SPEAKER_01: She had authentic joy.
SPEAKER_01: Do you think there were times of frustration that she had because she was blind?
SPEAKER_01: Probably.
SPEAKER_01: Do you think there were times of discouragement because she couldn't see?
SPEAKER_01: You better believe it.
SPEAKER_01: Yet her entire disposition was that the failure of her eyes was not going to be the deciding factor for her demeanor in life.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, she discovered joy in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Joy in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And I want us to parse out what this word joy actually means because you and I might confuse it for a feeling that we would consider as happiness.
SPEAKER_01: According to one source, joy is the sense or state of gladness or elation that people experience through their relationship with God and through good things in their lives.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to read that again.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is the sense or state of gladness or elation, happy feelings, that people experience through their relationship with God and through good things in their lives.
SPEAKER_01: Although you may experience happiness in joy, happiness is not the sum total of what joy is.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is a state of being rather than an emotion.
SPEAKER_01: And it is inherently linked to our relationship with God and through our experience of his blessings.
SPEAKER_01: We should understand that it is possible to have great joy even through the most difficult of circumstances, because even trials and difficulties are blessings from God.
SPEAKER_01: So when I go back to that definition about the blessings of God, right?
SPEAKER_01: The blessings of God and our experiencing them ought to lead us to joy.
SPEAKER_01: The difficulties and trials and struggles that you and I experience are considered blessings themselves from God.
SPEAKER_01: Consider what James says in James 1, 2 through 4.
SPEAKER_01: Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
SPEAKER_01: And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Your trials, your difficulties, your struggles are gifts from God to form you, shape you, mature you into the image of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Your difficulties are in and of themselves blessings.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is a state of being rather than an emotion.
SPEAKER_01: Emotions come and go.
SPEAKER_01: And emotions are incredibly temporal, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01: Like I am happy, I am very happy on a day when I get to enter into that wonderful place where people laugh and children play, that wonderful place called Chick-fil-A.
SPEAKER_01: And I order my spicy deluxe number two, no pickles, and my sunjoy and my fry, right?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so happy consuming this beautiful chicken sandwich, right?
SPEAKER_01: It makes me happy.
SPEAKER_01: And then an hour later, once the experience is gone, and I get home and my dog has thrown up all over the carpet, that happiness is gone, and that has now shifted and morphed into frustration and anger.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Happiness is fleeting, but joy lasts.
SPEAKER_01: It is persistent, it is durable.
SPEAKER_01: If we direct our attention to finding joy, not just now, but all throughout our lives, we will eventually feel the effects of joy all throughout.
SPEAKER_01: I want to tell you something that we've been studying emotions in our student ministry and their place.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage you, because you might be saying, Pastor Jeremy, I want to feel joy.
SPEAKER_01: I want to have joy, but I don't feel it.
SPEAKER_01: A constant refrain that we've been repeating to ourselves in the student ministry is that the heart follows what the mind knows.
SPEAKER_01: If you know the truth of God's word and who you are in Christ, eventually your heart will follow.
SPEAKER_01: That joy is going to be there no matter what, but you will feel the effects of joy the more you fill your mind with the knowledge of who you ought to have joy in.
SPEAKER_01: So how do we find joy?
SPEAKER_01: To discover joy this morning, I want us to consider three sources of joy in Psalm 95.
SPEAKER_01: And it's important to keep in mind that these three sources of joy do not stand independently of one another.
SPEAKER_01: They are actually interconnected, they are linked to one another.
SPEAKER_01: If you remove one source of joy that I'm going to give you in the equation, I'm going to draw out for us, then your joy will be lacking and incomplete.
SPEAKER_01: And with that said, I want us to consider the three sources beginning in worship.
SPEAKER_01: Consider with me verses one and two.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.
SPEAKER_01: The psalmist is calling God's people together and worship.
SPEAKER_01: And in their worship, in their expression of worship, they are expressing joy.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a joyful noise.
SPEAKER_01: Joyful noise is repeated twice.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the first word, let us sing, indicates joy in and of itself.
SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk about that in a minute.
SPEAKER_01: This is a call to joyful worship because joy can be found in worship.
SPEAKER_01: But before we go any farther, we have to define another term.
SPEAKER_01: We've already defined joy, but if I'm going to say joy is found in worship, we then have to define worship.
SPEAKER_01: Because my concern is that you and I, gathering here today, might come to the conclusion that what we do on Sunday in singing songs and hearing me yell at you for 45 minutes is somehow considered worship, and it's not.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is far deeper than just a once-a-day event.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 12, verse 1 tells us what worship is.
SPEAKER_01: If you want a definition of worship, the Bible gives us one.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 12, verse 1, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
SPEAKER_01: This is your worship.
SPEAKER_01: Presenting yourself, the entirety of your existence, over to God.
SPEAKER_01: That is your spiritual worship.
SPEAKER_01: It is complete, total, 100% surrender to Him.
SPEAKER_01: That is your spiritual worship.
SPEAKER_01: Now, something happens when you do this, when you surrender your life to God, when you give yourself over to Him and present yourself as a living sacrifice, writing God a blank check saying, You can do with my life whatever you will.
SPEAKER_01: When you do that, something happens.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit of God begins to indwell in you.
SPEAKER_01: You begin to change, you begin to do things that you never thought you'd do before.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 5, 18 through 19 tells us this: that the Spirit of God comes and fills our hearts, and this is what happens.
SPEAKER_01: Being filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making a melody to the Lord with your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Singing and worship is a symptom.
SPEAKER_01: Singing as an expression of worship is a symptom of true worship.
SPEAKER_01: You will worship God in singing, in song, when you give your life over to God as a living sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: When you worship God by giving him your all, by giving him your entire the entirety of your life, you find joy, and that joy is expressed in the words that come out of your mouth.
SPEAKER_01: I want to make a quick point about joy and misery.
SPEAKER_01: Because both joy and misery are connected to what we worship.
SPEAKER_01: Both joy and misery are connected to what we worship.
SPEAKER_01: You might not be experiencing joy right now, but maybe the reason for that is because you're worshiping the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_01: Let me explain myself to you.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 1, verses 21 through 25.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of the condition of the human heart, the natural condition of every single person who's ever lived.
SPEAKER_01: Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
SPEAKER_01: Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.
SPEAKER_01: So what happens in the natural condition of our lives is the glory of God gets exchanged for what we can see.
SPEAKER_01: We can see people, we can see technology, we can see our careers, we can see our money, and we exchange the glory of who God is for these things that are tangible to us.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator.
SPEAKER_01: This is the condition.
SPEAKER_01: And when you look out onto the landscape of our country right now, and our culture and our world and everything wrong that you see going on, it's not a matter of who's in office, it's not a matter of where you send your kids to school, it's not a matter of your social media.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that you see that is bringing chaos and disorder and destruction to this world is a matter of worship.
SPEAKER_01: People are choosing to exchange the truth of God for a lie, and they worship what God has created rather than him.
SPEAKER_01: And for this reason, verse 26, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
SPEAKER_01: Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and likewise the men gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
SPEAKER_01: And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
SPEAKER_01: So here's the implications of what we worship.
SPEAKER_01: Worshiping the wrong things, this is what's going to what it's going to eventually lead to.
SPEAKER_01: God is going to hand you over to what you want to worship, and here's what it brings.
SPEAKER_01: You will be filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
SPEAKER_01: They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
SPEAKER_01: They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, that doesn't sound like happiness.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds like misery.
SPEAKER_01: And it all comes down to what we choose to worship.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a hard time finding joy in your life?
SPEAKER_01: Joy in God?
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a hard time finding joy in your family, in your marriage, in your job?
SPEAKER_01: My friends, maybe it's because we are worshiping the wrong things.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's because we are exchanging the truth of who God is and what God wants you to be in your marriage, in your family, in your career.
SPEAKER_01: We are exchanging the truth of God for lies and we are worshiping things we can see rather than God.
SPEAKER_01: And rather than finding joy in what we choose to worship, we find utter, complete, total misery.
SPEAKER_01: Misery.
SPEAKER_01: Both joy and misery are inherently linked to what you worship.
SPEAKER_01: And if you find yourself in misery and not in joy, my encouragement to you is to evaluate what are you worshiping?
SPEAKER_01: What are you giving yourself over to?
SPEAKER_01: What is consuming all of your time, your energy, your attention?
SPEAKER_01: What are you worshiping?
SPEAKER_01: Psalm chapter 30 tells us Sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You, his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
SPEAKER_01: Come and worship God.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you worship God, it doesn't mean everything's going to go your way and everything's going to be hunky-dory.
SPEAKER_01: Everything's going to be great and grand.
SPEAKER_01: You won't have any problems.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to what the psalmist says.
SPEAKER_01: He says, His anger is but for a moment and his favor for a lifetime.
SPEAKER_01: Weeping, weeping may tarry for the night.
SPEAKER_01: But joy always comes in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because the people of God do not give up in their worship of God.
SPEAKER_01: Weeping will come in the night.
SPEAKER_01: Hardship will come, undoubtedly.
SPEAKER_01: But joy always remains close by for those who choose to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: Joy and misery are both found in who or what we worship.
SPEAKER_01: And joy is found in our worship of God.
SPEAKER_01: And joy generates authentic expressions of God.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what verse 1 says.
SPEAKER_01: Come, let us sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to pause right there that I'm going to defer to my CSB here that says, Come, let's shout joyfully to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason I'm going to do that is because this word sing is a translation from the Hebrew word ranan.
SPEAKER_01: And that means, some of you won't like this, make loud noises.
SPEAKER_01: Make loud noises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Leave your decibel meters at home.
SPEAKER_01: Come make loud noises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Come worship him loudly.
SPEAKER_01: Don't just sing softly and quietly and like a docile person.
SPEAKER_01: Worship God loudly because joy that you find in God produces loud and authentic expressions of joy and worship.
SPEAKER_01: Does your joy in God create in you shouts of joy?
SPEAKER_01: Do you find yourself singing loudly to God, trying to make loud noises unto him because you want to worship him out of the joy you have for him?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you find yourself worshiping quietly because you're afraid that your voice might crack and others might hear you?
SPEAKER_01: But then look at what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Following that up, says, Let us make joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm going to have to defer to my CSB translation, which says, shout triumphantly, because again, the Hebrew there comes from a word that literally means war cry.
SPEAKER_01: So as you're reading this, it's saying, Let us war cry to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make a war cry to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: The people of God shout triumphantly to the rock of their salvation because he is the rock that cannot be moved.
SPEAKER_01: He is the rock that they find shelter in.
SPEAKER_01: And he has provided salvation for his people, and that is the basis for them to build their lives upon.
SPEAKER_01: We shout in a war cry because there is nothing, as we read in Romans 8 earlier, that can ever come against us.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we go through life and we we find joy in God and we express ourselves in worship, we are essentially heading into battle with a confident war cry that nothing can touch us.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing can touch us.
SPEAKER_01: Joy generates authentic expressions of worship.
SPEAKER_01: And if I could just summarize both of those points, it's loud and it's confident.
SPEAKER_01: I was a Marine for four years and I've heard many a war cry.
SPEAKER_01: And I gotta tell you, no one is intimidated by a soft mellow.
SPEAKER_01: Usually the war cry is instigated when you are charging into a situation that you have no idea what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what's on the other side of that door, on the other side of that hill.
SPEAKER_01: But you have confidence.
SPEAKER_01: You have confidence that I'm going to go there.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do what I've been commanded to do.
SPEAKER_01: And because I know that I have been given everything I need, I'm going to enter into that situation with absolute confidence.
SPEAKER_01: It is a cry of boldness.
SPEAKER_01: It is a cry of courage.
SPEAKER_01: And brothers and sisters, when we gather here on Sunday mornings and we sing in worship, we are crying out with confidence and boldness that God is the rock of our salvation who provided a way for us to be reconciled to Him through His Son, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is a war cry, and it is loud and it is grateful.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2 also says, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Giving thanks is the only appropriate response for being invited into the court of the king of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: Joy generates grateful worship.
SPEAKER_01: It's not something we do because we're obligated to.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship because it's what we've always done.
SPEAKER_01: We do it because we are grateful for all that God has done for us.
SPEAKER_01: Joy generates authentic expressions of worship.
SPEAKER_01: Because joy is found in worship.
SPEAKER_01: Second point, second source of joy this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is found in God.
SPEAKER_01: That seems like a no-brainer, but look at what, look at what the psalmist says.
SPEAKER_01: He says, For the Lord is a great God.
SPEAKER_01: So he's given the reasoning, okay?
SPEAKER_01: The reason that we should come and make loud noises to God, the reason we should come and war cry to the rock of our salvation is because the Lord is a great God.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord himself is generating joy within his people when they come and express that in worship.
SPEAKER_01: So joy in and of itself can be found in God.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.
SPEAKER_01: In his hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are his also.
SPEAKER_01: The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we don't have to be, we don't have to be confused or wonder where we came from.
SPEAKER_01: Three of life's biggest questions typically tend to be: where did I come from?
SPEAKER_01: Who am I, and where am I going?
SPEAKER_01: The Christian does not have to ponder those questions because we know where we come from.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord made the world and everything in it.
SPEAKER_01: He is the God who created all that is, because he is a great God.
SPEAKER_01: He is a great God.
SPEAKER_01: And he is a great king above all gods, all other gods of the human imagination pale in comparison to what God is and who he is.
SPEAKER_01: God is great.
SPEAKER_01: He is a great king, he is a great God, he owns everything.
SPEAKER_01: Again, think about what we read in Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: If this omnipotent, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, completely just God, if this God is our King, if He is for us and who could be against us, doesn't that instigate joy within you?
SPEAKER_01: If God is great and this is the God you serve and worship, and this is the God who has called you into his family, doesn't that generate joy within you?
SPEAKER_01: Joy is found in God.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, joy is found in submission.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is found in worship, it's found in God, and it's found in submission.
SPEAKER_01: Again, verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.
SPEAKER_01: Again, a call to worship.
SPEAKER_01: Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
SPEAKER_01: God has made Himself exclusive to a people.
SPEAKER_01: That's what verse 7 starts out with.
SPEAKER_01: He says, For He is our God.
SPEAKER_01: He is our God.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't belong to anyone else.
SPEAKER_01: He is our God.
SPEAKER_01: God has made himself exclusive to a particular people.
SPEAKER_01: Consider what the Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2, verses 9 through 10.
SPEAKER_01: You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
SPEAKER_01: Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
SPEAKER_01: You are God's people.
SPEAKER_01: He is our God.
SPEAKER_01: Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine being a slave in the first century, and someone asks you, who do you belong to?
SPEAKER_01: You would reply, I belong to my master.
SPEAKER_01: But that implicates your master then is also attached to you in some way, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: God has so attached himself to you and I that we both belong to him and he has made himself belong to us.
SPEAKER_01: He is ours.
SPEAKER_01: And not only that, but he's not ruling like a ruthless dictator.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, he is a great king above all gods.
SPEAKER_01: He's not a ruthless dictator just sitting there trying to micromanage your life.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what verse 7 says.
SPEAKER_01: We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.
SPEAKER_01: Sheep need to be cared for quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you knew this, but sheep need to be sheared at least once a year.
SPEAKER_01: The excess wool impedes the ability of sheep to regulate their body temperatures.
SPEAKER_01: Unless there is someone who is going to cut the wool off a sheep once a year, that sheep is going to eventually overheat and die.
SPEAKER_01: Not only that, but urine, feces, and other materials become trapped in the wool.
SPEAKER_01: It attracts maggots and flies and other pests.
SPEAKER_01: It causes irritation and infections and endangers the health of the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: Sheep with large amounts of wool can also become immobilized by physical obstacles in their path and are more susceptible to predator attacks.
SPEAKER_01: Not only that, sheep have very little ability to defend themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Even if a predator does not kill a sheep, they can still die by sheer panic.
SPEAKER_01: It just, the predator doesn't need to get you.
SPEAKER_01: The sheep just might fall down and die because they have a heart attack.
SPEAKER_01: Sheep are such unique characters, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01: I love sheep.
SPEAKER_01: I often wonder, God, why do you compare us to sheep?
SPEAKER_01: Scratch that.
SPEAKER_01: I know the reason.
SPEAKER_01: We are the people of his pasture.
SPEAKER_01: The sheep under his care.
SPEAKER_01: And like a loving, gentle shepherd, he takes you to himself.
SPEAKER_01: He cares for you.
SPEAKER_01: He nurtures you.
SPEAKER_01: He provides for you.
SPEAKER_01: He is not a negligent shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: He is not a shepherd who forgets you.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a sheep under his care, then you can be assured and have joy in the fact that you are always, always thought of in the mind of God.
SPEAKER_01: God's people are in the care of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, who says in John 10, verse 11, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: And what does the good shepherd do?
SPEAKER_01: What does the good shepherd do to care for his sheep?
SPEAKER_01: He goes so far as to lay down his life for the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: The sheep who are incapable of defending themselves or caring for themselves, the sheep who, if God had never intervened, would be doomed for God's judgment and wrath.
SPEAKER_01: Those sheep, Jesus Christ lays his life down for them.
SPEAKER_01: I am the good shepherd, he would say again in verse 14, I know my own, and my own know me.
SPEAKER_01: You can have great joy in submission to God because God is a good shepherd to you.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is actively caring for you right now.
SPEAKER_01: Again, you may not feel it in the moment, but it's true nonetheless.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is actively caring for the sheep of his pasture.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to close out with this, with the rest of it.
SPEAKER_01: There's a bit of a change in tone here in this psalm.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 7, there's a change.
SPEAKER_01: The psalmist states, today if you hear his voice, as if he's still speaking to the people of God, but then there's a change in that it seems like God takes over and he begins speaking for himself.
SPEAKER_01: And it says, Today if you hear his voice.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting that the psalmist says, if you hear his voice, the if is not whether or not God is speaking, it's whether or not you can hear him.
SPEAKER_01: God is constantly, actively speaking.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, all flesh is like grass and its glory is like the flower.
SPEAKER_01: The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord is constantly, actively speaking to you and I, even today.
SPEAKER_01: And the question is not if God is speaking, the question is whether or not you are listening.
SPEAKER_01: And if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Masah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
SPEAKER_01: He's referring to a particular generation of the Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: Those who were in Egypt as slaves, not just doing house chores, but hard slavery, abusive slavery.
SPEAKER_01: There was genocide in Egypt to try and control the population growth of the Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: And God, like the good shepherd, he hears the cries of his people and he acts on their behalf.
SPEAKER_01: He sends his servant Moses to go and release them, and through a series of ten plagues, God brings the most powerful nation in the world at that time to its knees.
SPEAKER_01: Through these things that just cannot be explained.
SPEAKER_01: And when the people of God are finally let go, completely untouched by all the plagues that came through Egypt, God's finale was that he lets them through a sea.
SPEAKER_01: He parts the Red Sea, so much so that the Bible says it's as if there's a wall on either side, and they don't walk through on muddy ground, they walk through on dry ground.
SPEAKER_01: They get to the other side in the desert, and what's the first thing out of their mouth?
SPEAKER_01: I'm hungry.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thirsty.
SPEAKER_01: God, where are you?
SPEAKER_01: God's not providing for us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thirsty.
SPEAKER_01: You parents of toddlers, you know this, right?
SPEAKER_01: You get it.
SPEAKER_01: Are we there yet?
SPEAKER_01: This generation, though they had seen everything God had done on their behalf, their hearts were hardened against him.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than submitting themselves to him, and rather than finding joy in the fact that God had done so much on their behalf, they hardened their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: God still provided for them in that moment, but they would not enter into the promise that God had given to his people.
SPEAKER_01: The promise of a land flowing with milk and honey where they would no longer be slaves, but they would be able to enter into a time of rest and prosperity.
SPEAKER_01: Those who hardened their hearts, they didn't get to enter into that.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they had to wander a desert for 40 years.
SPEAKER_01: Out of judgment for their hardness of heart.
SPEAKER_01: God swore in his anger, they shall not enter my rest.
SPEAKER_01: We can find joy in submission because those who submit themselves to God can find rest in his promises.
SPEAKER_01: God promised them, I'm going to take you to a land that you don't deserve, and frankly, you're not going to get it yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give it to you.
SPEAKER_01: But they refuse to find rest in the promises of God.
SPEAKER_01: They refuse to find joy in the promises of God.
SPEAKER_01: Because we are a people who constantly grumble and complain against God when things are not going our way.
SPEAKER_01: The first moment that our throats get thirsty, we begin to cry out, God, where are you in all this?
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
SPEAKER_01: Life gets hard.
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to have joy, especially when you come to church, and everybody puts on the happy face.
SPEAKER_01: And it's supposed to seem like everybody has their lives put together, right?
SPEAKER_01: How can we have joy in all of this?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going through some difficulties, I'm having some hard times, but my friends, you can still have joy in your submission to God, that God is actively caring for you.
SPEAKER_01: He loves you, and he provided a way not for you to enter rest into a particular land, but so that you would enter the rest of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Consider the joy of Christ done for you so that you could enter the rest of his promises, that having salvation for your sins, the eternity of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says, Hebrews chapter 12.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, since we have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.
SPEAKER_01: Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
SPEAKER_01: For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, the joy that lay ahead of Christ to redeem you.
SPEAKER_01: Everything he had to go through, the scourging, being spit on, being beaten and hung naked on a cross with all his friends completely abandoning him for the joy that lay before him and redeeming for himself a people who may enter his rest.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, I pray this morning you would find joy in worship, find joy in God, and find joy in submission to him, because for the joy of Christ that lay before him, he gave himself over for you.
SPEAKER_01: He gave himself over for you.
SPEAKER_01: And now he calls to all of us, Matthew 11, 28 through 29, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_01: You pray with me.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray that we would find joy this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Not superficial joy where we just put on a smile and try to perform for the sake of other people, but true, authentic, lasting joy.
SPEAKER_01: Joy that is found in our expressions of worship, in our worship of you, joy that is found in who you are.
SPEAKER_01: You are a great God, a great king.
SPEAKER_01: You are the God who cares for his people.
SPEAKER_01: You are the God who actively, actively sent your son, so that those who would harden their hearts towards you could be redeemed for the joy that was set before him.
SPEAKER_01: May we find our joy in Christ this morning, I pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.