"Praise and Proclaim" (Hitchings) | Psalm 96

Sanctuary

07.19.2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The following resources are from lmbc.org and with the latter to provide it freely to all. If you feel needed to give towards the ministry of Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church, we welcome you to do so at lmbc.org and give a reading from Psalm 96.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

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, and tremble before him all the earth. Say among the nations, The Lord reigns, yes, the world is established, it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it, let the field exult and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, before 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_02 1:54

Well, I do want to add my welcome to that of Derek's. My name is Frank Hitchings. I'm one of the pastors here, and we are glad that you're here this morning to start your week off worshiping the Lord. Whether you're a longtime member or a first-time visitor, we're glad you're here. Before we look at this Psalm, though, let's pause and pray. Lord Jesus, you're the one who said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And the scriptures tell us that the Word of God is living and active, that it can penetrate our hearts and judge the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. It can change us. We know that's true, Lord. You have done that throughout the generations, and we pray this morning as we look at this psalm that the truths that we find in it would be pressed deep in our hearts. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to begin this morning with a question. What is it that you never get tired of talking about? Now don't answer the question out loud, just think about it for a minute. What is it that you never get tired of talking about or hearing about? For some, it may be your favorite sports team. You know all the statistics, you know all the players, past and present, you know the schedule for the upcoming season, and you know the schedules and the scores for the last ten years. For others, it may be you never tire of talking or hearing about your children or your grandchildren. For others, it may be the most recent trip you've had or the one you're planning, or it may be your hobbies, whether that's gardening or golf, tennis or pickleball. Maybe it's the latest book that you've read. You're in a book club and you just can't help but talk about that book, or maybe even it's old British sports cars from the 1950s through the early 70s. You can tell a lot about a person by the things that occupy their thoughts, the things that occupy their conversations. They never get tired of talking about and hearing about those things. And you can tell a lot about the psalmist from what he writes about in the passage we have before us this morning. Scholars believe that King David may have written this psalm. They believe that because David composed a song to be sung for the celebration of the return of the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. Remember the Ark of the Covenant, it had things in it like the Ten Commandments, the tablets of stone, and Aaron's rod. That song of David, it's found in 1 Chronicles 16, and the middle verses of David's song there are a nearly verbatim recitation of this song. The ark had been captured, if you remember the Sunday school stories of old. The ark had been captured by the Philistines, but it turned out they thought it would be a lucky charm, and it wasn't. And they returned it, but it went back not to Jerusalem, but went to the house of Abinadab, miles away from Jerusalem, and it had been decades since the ark had been in Jerusalem. That's the occasion that this psalm was written. It must have been one of the most joyful moments in David's life. Picture this: thousands of Israelites assembled. Hundreds of priests led the line, clothed in white linen, and led the way for the ark. Choirs and musicians attended to the ark's arrival, and as it came through the city gates, rams' horns and trumpets and cymbals were played that heralded the arrival of the ark. It's that occasion that this psalm is written about, this joyful occasion where the people of God are called upon to praise God. And the invitation that we see in the middle, we'll see in a few minutes, the invitation to the nations to praise the Lord and the prophecy of the future day of judgment. This absolutely captivated the psalmist's heart. So let's look at it together this morning. If you look in your outline in your bulletin, you see that we've got three points. And the first is this I want to see the clear call to praise the Lord and proclaim his glory. The first three verses, 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. Did you notice the imperatives? There's six of them. These are the things that, according to the psalmist, these are the things that are absolutely essential. Three times he says, sing to the Lord. He says, Sing to the Lord a new song. Well, there are a couple of things I just want to comment on regarding that because I hear that misused a lot. Whenever we see the scripture saying, sing to the Lord a new song, we have to consider their context. The psalmist is not saying, don't sing any old hymns. He's not saying throw the hymn book out, write new stuff every week. That's not his point at all. I love how simply James Boyce put it. He said this: the emphasis here is not on man's new compositions, but on God's fresh advances in redemption, which warrant a response of praise. You see the difference? It's not on man's new compositions. That's not the emphasis. It's on God's fresh advances in redemption. Advances that warrant God's people to praise him. So I think these are all the way through the scriptures, from Exodus to Revelation. But in Exodus 15, there's a psalm of Moses. Remember the story of the parting of the Red Sea? The Egyptians are barreling down on the Israelites. The Israelites think we're going to die here. They're mad at Moses. Moses parts the Red Sea. They pass through on dry ground. The Egyptian army follows them on their chariots and horses, and then they're swallowed up by the water. Moses writes a new song. It begins with these words. And then he goes and recounts all that happened, all that they saw God do, all the attributes they saw of God, what he revealed about himself. Well, a similar thing is happening here in Psalm 96. The new thing that necessitated the new song is the bringing of the ark back to Jerusalem after decades. The psalmist knows this is so great, it needs to be celebrated in song and in worship. But then look what he does next. He says, Bless the Lord's name, tell of his salvation, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples. It shifts. What's his point? It's simply this. What he's saying, in effect, is this worship is not just a private and personal thing.

unknown 9:23

Work.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Worship is not just something that's between us as individuals and God. Worship. Praise should always lead to proclamation. Proclamation of the salvation of God found in Christ. Proclamation, he says, of his glory, proclamation of his marvelous works, proclamation of these things to all nations and all peoples. He's saying those two things, praise and proclamation, they go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin. And he's calling the people of God to let both of those things, praise and proclamation, mark our lives. When I was reading and studying it this week, it just made me wonder, are these the things of which we just can't stop talking? Are these the things of which we never tire of hearing? And then I read a commentary by Richard Phillips that he points this out. He says he's always been a bit perplexed when Christians are reluctant to tell others about the glory of God and about his saving works in Jesus. He said, I've always been perplexed by that. And then he talks about how eager we normally are to share good personal news. Maybe it's about a graduation or a promotion at work. Or maybe it's an announcement of an upcoming wedding, a save the date, or an announcement of the birth of a child or a grandchild. We're usually eager to share those things. If our team beats their rival, we're eager to share. If we discover a great doctor, we're eager to let our friends know about him or her. If we learn of an outstanding financial advisor or car mechanic or plumber, we usually want to share that with our friends. But here's his point. He says, how curious it is, then, that we don't make it our first business after worship to tell everyone we know about the glory of God and the greatness of the salvation he's provided in his son. I think he's right. It's curious, it's revealing. The psalmist is pushing back against that tendency as he calls believers to tell of the salvation of the Lord from day to day, to share the good news of the glory of God among the nation. He's calling us to worship the living God while also desiring deep inside that everyone we know and everyone on earth would come to know and be in a saving relationship with God. I love how my friend Ligan Duncan put it. He says, our only concern should not be our soul's communion with the living God. We should also desire that the souls of men and women and boys and girls from every tribe and tongue and nation would come to saving faith in Christ. That's the heartbeat of the psalmist. That we're to worship, but to worship with a missionary desire, that we take it with us when we go back out into the world this week. So the first question is, is that true of us? But let's move to the second point here. The clear call to praise and proclaim. Secondly, look at the compelling reasons for our praise and proclamation. Look at just verses four through six to start with. He says, For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He's 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. He's moving from what he's calling us to do to why he's calling us to do it. And the core reason, he says, basically, is because of the greatness of God. He knows this, that if we don't know and really believe in the greatness of our God, praise won't mark our lives, much less proclamation. We may attend church, but praise and proclamation won't be a part of our lives. And we certainly won't appropriately fear the Lord, as he says in verse 4. He's to be feared above all gods. You know, in the scriptures, there are two different kinds of fear in general that we see, and one is an unhealthy fear that's to be overcome, and one is a healthy fear that's to be cultivated. The unhealthy fear is really more like anxiety or dread. We live kind of expecting trouble and doubting God and his promises, doubting the goodness of God. That's to be overcome. The healthy fear is to be cultivated. We saw it in the call to worship. The fear of the Lord doesn't mean being terrified of him, it means having this profound respect and reverence and awe for God, for who he is, for his holiness, for his power, for his majesty. In the call to worship, the last part of that, Psalm 111, verse 10, says this the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise. He's talking about the healthy kind of fear there. That profound respect and reverence and all that leads to a desire to keep the Lord's precepts and live lives that actually bring him glory. He says the fear of the Lord is where all that starts. Well, why else? Why else are we to praise the Lord? He says in verse 5 that he alone is the true and living God. All the other gods, the little g gods, he says they're worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. And I love it in the in the Hebrew, there's a little play on word that the psalmist is using. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, and the word for idol is Eelim. It sounds very similar and they're night and day different. The Hebrew word literally for idol means a non-entity, a nothing. I was reading on idols some this week, and in Isaiah 44, there's a great passage where Isaiah is actually mocking those who worship the idols, the nothings. And he does it by pointing out how craftsmen use a piece of wood. Listen to what he says. He says, Half of the wood the craftsman burns in the fire. Over it he prepares his meal. He roasts his meat and eats his fill. He warms himself and says, Ah, I am warm. From the rest, he makes a God, his idol. He bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, Save me, for you are my God. He's pointing out the irony of that. He's saying, idols may seem like gods to the foolish, but in reality they're nothing. They have no power to act or speak or save. Now we know that's true in our day, like hand-fashioned idols, we know that's true. But what about our heart idols? The things that we absolutely treasure and the things with which life is not okay if we don't have them. There's a great book put out several years back by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods, and I highly recommend it. This is how Keller defines idols. He says it's anything that's more important to you than God. Anything which absorbs your heart and imagination, imagination more than him, and which you look to for what only God can provide. So back to the question: why are we to praise the Lord? Why are we to proclaim his glory? Because he alone is the one true living God. There is no other. He made the heavens. All the other little g gods are nothing. And then I love verse 6. He says, Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Those are terms of royal magnificence. Those are attributes of God. And I love the resulting call to worship there. Again, we saw Singh said three times in the first few verses. Now the word that repeated three times is ascribe. He says, 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. You know, maybe maybe one of the reasons that our worship sometimes feels flat in our heart is because we've lost sight of the glory of God and the greatness of God and the splendor and the majesty of God. That's why we need to be in his word, not just on Sunday morning, but throughout the week, so that we won't lose sight of who he is in all of his greatness. When we lose sight, what happens to us is our hearts start attaching to what amount to idols, things that sadly give us more satisfaction, more delight, and more joy than the Lord. Those things begin to capture our hearts, and that always ends in collapse and disaster. So the compelling reason really is simply this: the incomparable greatness of God. The clear call, the compelling reasons. Thirdly, and finally, the comforting assurance of Christ's current reign and future judgment. Look at just verse 10. He says, Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established, it shall never be moved. These verses about the current reign of the Lord, the sovereign reign of the Lord, the tenses are so important here. He says, the Lord reigns, not the Lord one day, he will reign. Present tense, the world is established, it shall never be moved. Friends, that's wonderful news. The Lord's reigning. Even as we gather here this morning, the world's established, it will not be moved. We have 24 hours a day, seven days a week news coverage. Wasn't like that with three channels when I was young, but that's what we have today: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Coverage of economic and political instability. Coverage of hostility and chaos and war at home and around the world. And if we're honest, if we soak too much in that, it can lead to despair, to desperation, to depression. If you think about it, most of us probably spend more time reading or listening or watching the news in a given week than we do in the scriptures. But the psalmist is saying God reigns in complete sovereignty over every bit of that. All of his creation. So we need not fear and we need not be depressed by what we see and hear and read. Our catechism. Question 11: What is God's providence? God's providence is his completely holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing every creature and every action. That's what we believe the scriptures tell us about our God. So we need not fear, we need not be depressed by what we see out there or what we see even of the struggles that we have in our own hearts with our own sin. I love the story of Martin Luther leading the Reformation. There was a lot of stress on him, a lot of things to be encouraged about and discouraged about. And he was so depressed at one point in time that even his wife Katie's counsel could not help. He was just depressed. So one morning she put on a black dress before she came down to the kitchen. And Martin noticed it and he asked, Are you going to a funeral? And she replied, No, but since you're acting Like God is dead, I wanted to join you in your mourning. I love that. And Martin got the message and snapped out of it. Some of us need to get the message too. God is sovereign, He's in complete control of all things. He currently rules and reigns. It's the comforting assurance that he gives us in his current reign, but also, lastly, here in his future judgment. Look at verses 10 through the end. He will judge, and look at the tenses too, he will judge the people with equity. Let the heavens be glad, let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar in all that fills it, let the fields exalt and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. He's encouraging us here to not only worship, not only sing the praises of our God, not only do that because he currently reigns, but also because in the fullness of his reign to come there will be perfect judgment and righteousness and faithfulness. And I love how striking it is that creation here, that the people seem to be actually looking forward with great joy to God's judgment. I was struggling with that a little bit, and I was reading and I came across C.S. Lewis and what he wrote in his work, Reflections on the Psalms. This is what he points out about the ancients, the days when these were written. He said, the ancients lived in a world where judges needed usually to be bribed. And right judgment was hard to come by, especially for the poor, the weak, and those who were disadvantaged in some way. Those people longed for righteous judgment because it meant that a day was coming when evil would be punished, and those who sought righteous living according to the word of God would be vindicated. The psalmist is comforting God's people that that day, the day of vindication, the day of judgment is coming, and the psalmist never got tired of hearing about it or talking about it. So let's go back and consider the question we started with. What is it that you never get tired of hearing about? You never get tired of talking about. The psalmist would say this at the at the top of the list, it has to be Jesus and the message of the gospel that folks like us, sinners like us, can be reconciled through faith in him. We can be reconciled to God and that he reigns even now, when it doesn't feel like it some days. He reigns over all his creation and he is coming back. We're going to close with an old hymn that was written by an English lady named Catherine Hankey. The hymn is entitled, I Love to Tell the Story. I can remember as a child, my grandmother would play this along with the old rugged cross. She would play it on her piano when we'd spend the weekends with her. She would play it and sing it. Catherine was an Anglican missionary, and she was also a nurse. She was a really good nurse. She served in the 1860s in South Africa, and she shared the gospel every chance she got with everyone that she got a chance to care for. At one point in her early 30s, she fell desperately ill and spent months and months in bed recovering, and she started writing poems. This hymn that we're about to sing in a minute began, you'll be glad there's only four verses of it, it began as a single 100 stanza poem. We'd be singing till evening church, wouldn't we? But what struck me when I was thinking about what is it that we should never be getting tired about, never be getting tired of hearing about or telling about, I remembered verse 4. Listen to verse 4. She says, I love to tell the story, here it is, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. And when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song, twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long. I love that those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting. They need to hear it again. They want to hear it again just like the rest. She knew that if we're going to truly understand the greatness of God and the beauty and the wonder of the gospel, then we'll be hungering and thirsting to hear that message afresh. We'll never get tired of hearing it and never get tired of sharing it. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the gift of the Psalms and the time we have this summer to spend in them. They indeed, Lord, teach us so much about you and they point our hearts to Jesus who fulfills them all. They inspire us, Lord, as the psalmist has this week, to praise you, to grow in our knowledge of who you are and how you work in creation and to share that message. We thank you for this psalm, Lord. We know that, truth be known, we all have a tendency to set our affections on things that ultimately will never satisfy our hearts. We all need the reminder that praise and proclamation go hand in hand and really should mark the lives of all of us who name the name of Christ. And we ask that you would press these truths into our hearts that we would grow in our faith, deepen in our repentance, and live lives, Lord, full of joy, lives that better reflect you to a lost and needy world. And we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.