"Praise and Proclaim" (Middlebrooks) | Psalm 96

Fellowship Hall

07.19.2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Please stand for a reading from Psalm 96. Oh sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name. Tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory to his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. Tremble before him all the earth. Say among the nations, The Lord reigns, yes, the world is established, it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let the field exalt and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I add my welcome to David's. My name is Chad Middlebrooks. I'm one of the pastors here on staff. And we are continuing our summer series in the Psalms, and we come to Psalm 96 this morning. And so let's go before the Lord and let's ask him to make this psalm, not just something that we just heard read, but something that actually hits our hearts in ways that are fresh and that are new, that highlight and show the beauty of Christ and his gospel to us this morning. So let's pray to that end. Let's pray together. And Father, we do come before you this morning grateful that we don't have to guess our way through this life. For your word tells us in the scriptures that your word itself is a lamp unto our feet and it's a light unto our path. And so as we open it now, we would ask that you would light the way. Not just for the next few moments while we're here gathered together, but for however you mean to shape us through this living and active word. We pray this in Christ's native name. Amen. I want you to think about the last time you really got into something. A podcast, a new restaurant, a movie, a show. You didn't just enjoy it, did you? You told others about it. You sent them the link. You said, you got to go to this restaurant. You see, you don't have to twist anybody's arm. You don't have to twist the backyard griller enthusiast or the bird watcher or the person who just started making sourdough or the fantasy football commissioner to talk about what they love. The passion does the talking itself, does it not? It shows up at the dinner table, in the group chat, or with the coworker who never even asked. What people talk about without being prompted usually is a dead giveaway for what they love. C.S. Lewis writes about this very thing, but on a much larger scale in the weight of glory. He points out that the happiest, most delighted people are always the ones who are quickest to praise. Like the friend who can't stop raving about the trip that they just took. But it's usually the cynical, joyless people, he says, who hold back praise. Finding something to nitpick in almost anything. And Lewis takes it a step further. He says, praise isn't something that we just tack on after we enjoy something. It's actually part of the enjoyment. You haven't fully soaked in a sunset or a good meal, he says, until you've turned to somebody and you've said, look at that. You gotta taste this. The telling isn't separate from the delight, it's actually woven into it. Our joy feels uncomplete until we've actually said it out loud. And so here's the question that Psalm 96 puts right in front of us this morning. If we can't help but talk about that podcast, or the meat that we grilled, or the new hobby that we've taken up, or our favorite sports team, then surely we can't stop help talking about the God who created the heavens and the earth, and the one who redeems sinners from the pit of hell. You don't have to guess what the psalmist loves in this passage. Just look at what fills his mouth. His words keep landing on God's glory, his majesty, his splendor, his reign. The psalmist's call here for God's people to declare his glory among the nations is never meant to be something like homework to us as believers. But often I think that's how we view it. No, it's supposed to feel like what naturally spills out when something, or rather, someone has captured your heart and your affections. And so this morning we're gonna walk through three things that Psalm 96 confronts us with. You'll see it in your outline. First, we're gonna see the clear call to praise the Lord and to proclaim his glory. And then, secondly, we're actually gonna see the reasons, the compelling reasons behind our praise and behind our proclamation. And then thirdly, we'll see the comforting assurance of God's current reign and his future judgment to come. So, just quick background here, Psalm 96 is part of a smaller group of Psalms, known as the enthronement Psalms, along with Psalm 93 and Psalm 97 through 99. And they're all built around this one refrain: The Lord reigns. And almost this exact wording of Psalm 96, it shows up in 1 Chronicles 16. When David, the day David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. And a lot of scholars believe that Psalm 96, this actually comes from that very moment, or at least preserves it in some way. The ark was where God's presence lived among his people. It was the closest thing to the earthly throne that they had. And so on that day when David's choir sang, Sing to the Lord all the earth, they weren't just singing a nice little religious song. They were announcing that the true king had taken up residence with them, and all the nations needed to hear about it. And so look with me at verse 1. These first three verses here, the psalmist commands us to sing three times. Sing to the Lord a new song. Now that phrase new song, it appears throughout the Psalms and also in the book of Isaiah. When God does something unprecedented, something that the people didn't expect or they had not witnessed before. It's not just merely a fresh song, it's the only fitting response when we come in contact with God's grace and his mercy in incredible ways. And notice too that phrase, bless his name. That's a posture. That's not just a sentiment that we're called to have. In the Hebrew, Barak, that Hebrew word for bless, it carries this image of kneeling, which is the body following the heart into worship. It's a posture of worship. It's not detached admiration from a distance. It's the kind of praise that bends the knee in humility to the God who is worthy of our praise. And then the psalmist calls the people to tell of his salvation from day to day. This isn't a single one-time announcement that we make. It's meant to become an ongoing habit in the life of the believer. Something declared not just here on Sunday morning, but on Tuesday and on Thursday. Because his salvation doesn't lose its wonder to us that we've been saved from our sins, from the destination we were intended to go, to be with him for all eternity. And this proclamation was never meant to stay within Israel's borders either. When the psalmist commands us to declare the glory among the nations, he's signaling that this praise belongs to all the earth, not just the covenant people of God. Catherine Hankey, I think, knew this kind of praise and proclamation maybe better than most of us. In 1866, when she was in her early 30s, she came down with a very severe illness and was bedridden to recover for many months. But with nothing much else to do while sitting in bed, she spent that season writing this poem of 50 stanzas entitled Tell Me the Old Old Story. And part of that poem eventually made it into the hymn that you and I probably grew up singing. I love to tell the story. She says, I love to tell the story of unseen things above. I love to tell the story because I know it's true. It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. She had every excuse, lying in that bed, helpless, scared, to go quiet. But yet the gospel became the one thing that she could not stop writing and telling about. That's exactly what verse 3 is calling us to. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples. The word marvelous there describes something that's far outside the ordinary, leaving us stunned and in awe at God's work. Hanke got stunned by God's amazing grace from a sickbed, and it came out as praise to God rather than complaining about her circumstances. It came out as proclamation rather than silence. And for those of us here this morning who are in Christ, we know that Christ has rescued us from slavery to our sin and he has adopted us and made us his children. But let me ask you this morning, what has God done in your life, even just this year, maybe even this month, that you've never told anyone about? Maybe it's a prayer that you prayed that God answered. Maybe it's a sinful habit that he's broken and given you freedom from. Maybe it's fear that he's calmed in you. If we can text a friend or family member about the meal or the podcast, surely that we can tell them about God's work in our lives. But maybe the reason that we don't tell of his works is because we've stopped looking for it altogether. I think it's a question worth asking corporately this morning. Has our worship here at LNPC, has it grown a little stale? Not because God's not doing work among us, but we're too busy to notice. A new song is only sung by those who are paying attention to see God at work among them and those around them. So which is it for us? Do we have a worship problem? Or do we have an attention problem? Or maybe a little bit of both. This matter of declaring his glory among the nations, it was never meant to be a special assignment for missionaries or a few especially committed believers while the rest of us just come on Sunday mornings as consumers for an hour or two. Would you say that missions and outreach here at LNPC, does it feel like a fruit of our worship? Or just something that's kind of tagged along to the side of it? We give up to 30% of our annual budget to home and world missions, which is a real and costly commitment to reaching the nations with the gospel. It says something true about us as a congregation. That when it comes to giving, the instinct for the gospel to go to the nations is alive and well here. And Psalm 96 doesn't want us to downplay that, it wants us to build on that. Because giving is worship that is expressed through our wallets. But proclamation is worship expressed through our mouths. That same conviction that moves us to fund a missionary halfway around the world has got to be the same conviction that causes us to open our mouths to our neighbor, our coworker, our family member that we see every single day. And so the question this morning isn't whether we're willing to give towards the nations. We've already proven that generously. The question is whether or not we're gonna let that same instinct cause us to engage the gospel with the person that is sitting three feet across from us tomorrow or next week. What would it look like to take the generosity that we already practice with our wallets and extend it to our mouths? Think about if there's a coworker that you work with, or classmate, or a neighbor, someone near you, where silence is felt safer than actually speaking the words of truth. Could this be the season where that silence finally breaks? Not because we've been failing, but because we're ready to say with our mouths what we've already been willing to say in our giving. Because once we see the Lord is worth this kind of praise and admiration, then silence actually starts to be the harder thing to explain to those around us. Next, in verses 4 through 6, notice the psalmist gives us the reasons not just to command to praise and proclaim. He says, For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Notice he doesn't just say the Lord is great, he says he's greatly to be praised. Doubling that word for emphasis. It's the Psalms' way of saying the Psalmist's way of saying that our praise should be sized to match the greatness that we're praising, not just squeezed down to a little compliment to God. And then comes the actual reason for our prayer and our praise. The Lord made the heavens. Every rival God in creation in the ancient world had an origin story. It was carved by a craftsman, it was made of stone or of wood. But this God has no origin story. Because he's the one who gave everything else its origin. And that phrase, worthless idols, it's an insult in the Hebrew. Because that word for worthless idols is very similar to the word for God, Elohim. But it literally means the opposite. It means not gods, just nothings. The idols can't make anything because they aren't anything. And then the psalmist lays out God's actual resume. Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Splendor and majesty, that's the same language used for the high priest's garments back in Exodus. And the king's robes elsewhere as you read throughout the Psalms. God's pictured here is both a king and a priest. But notice the second couplet: strength and beauty. Not just raw power, not just decoration, but both combined. He's not a God that you only turn to when you need power. And he's not a God who's merely nice to look at. He's strong enough to hold up whatever you and I are carrying this morning, but also beautiful enough to actually satisfy us when he does so. That's what makes him worth praising and proclaiming over everything else that's vying for our attention and our worship this morning. And here's why this matters, because our idols today are a lot more subtle than they were in the ancient Near East. Our idols today is the career that has to work out. It's the relationship that has to affirm me. It's the followers and the likes on social media. It's the tireless energy and money that we spend into our bodies to make them feel young again and try to hold on to what we can. And in a world of competing idols that promise everything and deliver nothing, singing to the one true God is a declaration about where our hope and our worship truly lives. Think about the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre. Millions and millions of dollars to ensure this painting. Thousands and thousands of people go and visit it, take pictures, look at it every single day. And yet she is unavailable and unable to do anything for anyone who stares at her. That's what the idols are. They are great to admire and look at, but they can't cause a sunrise. They can't hear or answer your prayer. They can't hold up a galaxy like this true God can and does. Name one thing right now in your life that you're looking for for security outside of Christ. If splendor, majesty, strength, and beauty belong to God alone, what would it look like this week to redirect your focus and your gaze from those earthly things into his presence? Verses 7 through 9 actually show the natural overflow of what verses 4 through 6 have just revealed. Again, if the Lord alone made the heavens, if splendor and majesty really do belong to him alone, then this praise cannot just stay up here in our heads. The psalmist is actually dispelling the theology of a me and Jesus kind of theology. It has to become gathered and embodied worship together like we're doing this morning. He says, ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory that is due his name. Three times he uses the word ascribe, which means to hand it over, to give it up. And notice that phrase, families of the peoples. That's pulled straight from the table of nations back in Genesis 10. Every family tree on this earth gets invited into this one act of worship and praise. And then the psalmist gets specific in verse 8. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Showing up here on Sunday morning, that is coming into his courts. But verse 8 actually asks for more than just our presence here on Sunday morning. It asks for our attention, for our honesty, for our vulnerability, for our tithe, not just our attendance. And then verse 9 says, Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. That same word, splendor, that we just saw in verse 6 is now describing the worshiper instead of just God. Tremble before him all the earth. That's not trembling with panic, it's a posture of someone who's stopped pretending that they have nothing to confess in the presence of God. Real worship walks into his courts honestly about what we're bringing to him. Not just we're bringing our praise, but we're bringing our sin that we need to repent of, and we're coming with our need of his grace afresh. And at the risk of making us a little uncomfortable, I think this verse actually pushes us into it. All the earth and families of the peoples together means every single family in this world, not just those who look like us, who live like us, and who vote like us. And so, who is it specifically for you? That it's hard to even imagine that you could stand shoulder to shoulder with them singing the same. Songs to the same king. Because let me assure you that the kingdom of God looks a whole lot more diverse than what we have this morning. And so whoever those people are that you struggle to think about worshiping alongside of, let this psalm shape how we see those people and they cross our paths the next time. Because the kind of praise that this psalm is calling us to only holds together if the king that is being praised is actually still on his throne. And that's where the psalmist turns next. Lastly, in verses 10 through 13, that's the tone shifts. It shifts from a command to now comfort. Say among the nations, he says, the Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established, it shall never be moved. Now that phrase, never be moved, that's not a promise that nothing bad is going to happen in this life. No, it's a promise that nothing can happen to dethrone the God who is over this world. No crisis is going to catch him off guard. No uprising is going to overthrow him. Nothing in your life or in the headlines is actually going to shake loose what he has established. And then verse 10, he will judge the peoples with equity. That should bring great assurance and comfort to you this morning if your faith is in Christ. With all the injustice that we see every day of our lives. Because equity means impartial, uncorrupted judgment, the kind that we don't get from human courts very often, or from our bosses, or even from those closest to us. And then he doubles down. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth. This isn't a cold legal standard that he's talking about here. It's the character of a judge who cannot be bribed, who cannot be deceived, but every wrong will be made right. Not just noted and filed away somewhere. That's what makes this a comfort to us this morning instead of just mere information. A throne that cannot be moved and a judgment that cannot be corrupted means that the world's outcome is not in question. The whole of creation, the psalmist says, gets swept up into this praise. The heavens, the sea, the fields, even the trees are pictured singing and crying out to the Lord. This is what Paul talks about in Romans 8. Creation is groaning for the day of redemption. Just like you and I groan every single day, Lord, come back. This text wants our vision to reach further than our living rooms. Out into the whole, hurting, waiting world that is waiting for the judge to come and make everything right in the way it's supposed to be. And this is where this Psalm, I think, really lines up with the New Testament. Because in Acts 17, it tells us God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And he's proven it by raising that man, his own son, from the dead. Psalm 96's promised judge has a name, and he has an empty tomb. And Philippians 2 tells us this same Jesus that's already been lifted up, given the name above every name, so that at his name every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The reign that the psalmist is announcing here is not waiting to begin, brothers and sisters. Christ reigns right now, seated at the right hand, sovereignly over all things, over this world that you and I woke up in this morning. And he's coming back. He's coming back to bring the reign under his bring everything under his reign once and for all in the new heavens and the new earth. Or Revelation 7's multitude from every tribe, nation, and tongue around the throne, singing forever what this psalm was pointing to. And I get it for a lot of us this morning, the world's version of success, whether it's whoever's winning right now culturally, politically, economically, that seems a whole lot more believable and convincing on Monday afternoon than to shout the Lord reigns. But verse 10 isn't blind to that tension that you and I feel living in this broken world. It wasn't written for a moment when God's reign felt obvious to everyone. It's a defiant declaration, shouted precisely when the news headlines say otherwise. And so ask yourself this morning: what is more convincing to you right now than the truth that the Lord reigns? And whatever that thing is, let this verse speak back to that. And this is where the comfort lands hardest. Because verse 10 was written for people who struggled at times to always see that God is on his throne. There's a story of Martin Luther. He was sitting in his house one day, and his wife, Katarina, comes walking in. She's dressed in all black and mourning attire. And she comes walking in and he says, Who died? And she said, No one. But since you're acting like God is dead, I assume that I should wear something for his funeral. He got the message. The Lord reigns, whether or not our feelings have caught up to that fact yet. Verse 10 isn't describing how things feel, it's describing and declaring how things actually are. Let that be spoken over every discouraging headline that you and I read. Over every terrifying diagnosis that we receive. And over the grief that we experience, where it feels like that God stepped off his throne. Paul and Silas figured out the same thing from inside of Philippian jail. Their backs were bleeding, feet in the stocks at midnight. In Acts 16, we're told that they were praying and they were singing hymns to God. Their situation hadn't changed. They're still in prison. But they sang not because their chains felt light, but because the king on the throne outweighed their chains and they knew that he was over their circumstances. That's the same defiant hope that Psalm 96 was teaching Israel to sing centuries earlier, and then is inviting us to sing this morning, regardless of what we're walking through. John Piper famously said, missions exist because worship doesn't. Not yet, not everywhere. But it will. Every tribe, every nation, every tongue, every false idol exposed and abandoned, and the real king acknowledged for who he really is. But until that day, we're living between the reign that has already come, it's already established, and the judgment that is yet to come. And so that's why we don't need to wait to sing out and praise and proclaim this God who is at work and who's coming again. Where in your life right now do you need to remember? Not just believe in your head, but say out loud, the Lord reigns. And what would it cost you to say it even today before your feelings catch up to it? Just like Paul and Silas. Say it anyway. Say the Lord reigns. Say it over the diagnosis of your failing health. Say it over the empty chair that's sitting at the dinner table. Say it over that phone call that you are dreading to receive. And say it over the headlines that make your stomach drop. The Lord reigns whether we feel it or not, and our saying so is not being naive, it is being defiant. It is worship. And so sing a new song. Sing, even if your voice shakes while you do it. Bring your whole life into his course, not just here on Sunday morning. Go tell somebody who needs to hear the mercy and grace of our great God and King, the Lord Jesus. Because your joy and my joy, like the psalmist says here, is not meant to stay ours alone. And so let the glory, let us glory and let us sing of our Redeemer until his face forever we behold. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this psalm, for the reminder this morning that you alone are worthy of our praise. And you're the one who created all things. Lord, thank you that your reign isn't in question and your judgment isn't in doubt. Even when our circumstances want to make us be convinced otherwise. To tell someone what you have done in our lives. And Lord, would Christ alone become our treasure and become our boast more and more? Lord, we do ask this for your great glory as our risen, our reigning King who is coming again. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.