Magnify God

I want to share a picture with you.

This is the Arnhem Skate Hall in Arnhem, Netherlands. In the past it was known as the Church of St. Joseph and at one time the sanctuary was filled with nearly 1,000 people offering prayers and worship. Now, it is filled with the noise of skate boarders.

The Church of St. Joseph is one of hundreds of churches, closed or threatened by declining membership, that exist across Western Europe. According to a Wall Street Journal article, “The closing of Europe’s churches reflects the rapid weakening of the faith in Europe, a phenomenon that is painful to both worshipers and others who see religion as a unifying factor in a disparate society.”

47,530 churches across 41 States make up the Souther Baptist Convention. Between 2018 and 2019, Southern Baptist Churches lost 287,655 members, which was the single largest drop in membership in more than a century. 7,000 fewer people were baptized in 2019 than they were in 2018. Church attendance, Sunday school and small group attendance, and giving were all down across the board in 2019.

It is believed that 88% of churches in South Carolina, including 64% of Southern Baptist Churches in Greenville are either in decline or spiritually dead.

The Wall Street Journal article I quoted earlier also says, “the declining number of American churchgoers suggests the country could face the same problem in coming years.”

While there are many reasons for the decline we are seeing in our churches, I believe one of the most common reasons is because so many of them have lost their purpose. For one reason or another, they have turned their attention away from following God’s purpose for them, being intentional about making disciples, and sharing the Gospel with people who are far from God. Instead, their meetings and programs are focused on large crowds, large budgets, and large buildings. In other words, they have lost their way because they have lost their purpose.

Someone once said, “When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's difficult to keep your mind on the fact that your primary objective is to drain the swamp.”

When churches allow themselves to become distracted from God’s primary purpose for them, they will suffer and in many cases they will die.

British historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle once said, “A man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder--a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.”

Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Imagine people going to work day after day without knowing their company's business, yet that's exactly what happens when church members don't know what their church is trying to do.”

Over the last several weeks, there is one theme I’ve heard over and over from many of you and it’s that over the years Monaghan Baptist Church lost its way, lost its purpose.

Beginning today, and continuing through mid-November, we are going to discuss where I believe God is leading Monaghan Baptist Church as we move from where we are today to where I believe He wants us to be in the next five years.

Our purpose statement at Monaghan Baptist Church is “We exist to Magnify God, Multiply Disciples, and Mobilize for missions.” But what exactly does it mean to Magnify God, Multiply Disciples, and Mobilize for Missions? Over the next three weeks I am going to go in depth regarding each of these and how they are going to define our vision for the future, and every single ministry that we have here at Monaghan now and in the future.

Today, we will look at what we mean when we say that “We exist to Magnify God.”

To help us gain a better understanding of what we mean by Magnifying God together, Please turn with me to Psalm 96.

Earlier, our Student Pastor Chip Lang, read from 1 Chronicles 16:23-31. You will notice that Psalm 96 is almost identical to 1 Chronicles 16:23-31. This Psalm is taken from a song that David wrote when he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and placed it in a tent that he’d prepared as a place of worship for God. The song was meant for use during a worship service to focus the people’s attention on worshiping God, or as we’d say, Magnifying God.

There are four points I want us to make this morning about this verse that will help better define what we mean by Magnifying God.

I. We Magnify God by Singing His Praises (96:1-2a; 4-6)

1. Notice David’s repetitive call for the faithful to “Sing to the LORD.” The fact that he repeats his passionate plea three times exemplifies the type of excitement we are supposed to have when we approach the Lord in worship. “Sing to the Lord” for He alone deserves our praise! “Sing to the Lord” for He alone is the author and giver of our Salvation. “Sing to the Lord” for He alone deserves His name to be praised!

2. Notice that God is the object of our praise.

David lived in a polytheistic society where people offered their adoration and worship to various idols. So, David makes sure to be clear that it is Jehovah God, YAWEH who deserves our praise. He is worthy because He, “made the heavens” (96:5), and because “splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (96:6).

I love what Charles Spurgeon says about this passage, “We cannot praise him too much, too often, too zealously, too carefully, too joyfully. He deserves that nothing in his worship should be little, but all the honour rendered unto him should be given in largeness of heart, with the utmost zeal for his glory.”

Psalm 48:1: “Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise. . .”

Some where along the way many churches moved away from jubilantly worshiping God and began taking this solemn approach toward worship. Now, I agree that we must be respectful in the way we approach the Lord, especially since He is a Holy God. And there are times, like during communion, when we must be solemn. But David’s words indicate that there are times when we need to worship the Lord with excitement.

In 1 Chronicles 15:29, there is a scene that takes place just before the Ark of the Covenant finds its resting place in the tent David prepared for it in Jerusalem. It says, “And as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David dancing and celebrating...”

David was “dancing and celebrating!” While the Scripture doesn’t say it, but I’ll bet you anything that David was singing. How often do you get so excited about worshiping God for all He is and all He’s done that you can’t help but burst out into song and begin praising Him?

When we talk about Magnifying God, we are talking about coming before the Lord with such excitement that we can’t help but sing praises to His name. Whether we close our eyes, raise or clap our hands, dance in the aisle because we just can’t contain ourselves, we exist to express our appreciation for the Lord’s blessings and to do so in an exciting manner.

II. We Magnify God by Proclaiming His Salvation (96:2b,3, 10)

We will spend an entire sermon talking about sharing the Good News in a couple of weeks when we focus on our third purpose phrase, Mobilize for missions. But we can’t talk about magnifying God without mentioning how He is solely responsible for our salvation and our need to share that news with those who are far from Him.

Whenever something exciting happens to us, we can’t help but want to tell others about it. The greatest moment in our entire lives is the day we accept Christ as our Savior. In that moment we move from eternal separation from God to eternal life with Him. Whenever someone we love passes from this world to the next, we can be excited that we are going to join them in eternity, but only because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. It’s a true story that is worthy of our sharing with those who are far from God.

He is the great God who is “greatly to be praised.” Why? Because He saved us! He saved us!

I remember the exact moment when Emily told me she was pregnant with our first child. It was late in the afternoon on a Friday. She came in from work and a few minutes later she came to me while I was sitting on the couch and said, “I’m pregnant!” If you’ve been in that moment then you understand the joy that comes with those words. We made a vow to each other that we wouldn’t tell anyone until the time was right. Later than evening, we met up with her family for dinner. It was so hard to not blurt out the news. I remember how we sat across from each other at the table and every now and then our eyes would meet and we would just grin. We were so giddy! But again, not telling anyone was killing us. So, on the way home that night, we agreed that we could each share the news with one of our most trusted friends. The next morning, as soon as I got out of the bed, I called one of my buddies and told him. I couldn’t wait to tell just one person.

As great and exciting as that news was, it pales in comparison to the news of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ. The news of Jesus’s work of saving us from our sins deserves to be shouted from the roof tops and taken to the ends of the earth. We magnify God when we tell others that He alone can save us, that He alone is responsible for our salvation. We magnify God, when we tell others that no man made object exists that will open the gates of Heaven for us to enter. David rightly calls those objects “worthless idols.” They are worthless because they fade away and have no real value. They are worthless because they cannot stand as a substitute for something only God can do. Therefore, David implores us to go and share the greatest news that’s ever been and will ever be.

III. We Magnify God by Giving Him All the Glory (96:7-8)

Notice how David three times tells us to “Ascribe to the Lord...” just as he told us three times to “Sing to the Lord.” Once again, David is expressing a passionate plea for God’s followers to do something. Here he is calling on believers to credit the Lord for His: “glory and strength…” and “the glory due his name...”

According to Pastor John Piper, “‘Glorifying’ means feeling and thinking and acting in ways that reflect his greatness, that make much of God, that give evidence of the supreme greatness of all his attributes and the all-satisfying beauty of his manifold perfections.”

This means that He is due all the glory and all the honor and it is our duty as His people to give it to Him.

How often do we steal God’s glory by giving to people or things that don’t deserve it? I think one of the most common times we do this is when we pray and ask God to bring healing to someone’s body. We pray and pray for the person to be healed and when it happens, we are quick to thank the Dr. for prescribing the right medicines, but we never thank the One who gave the Dr. the knowledge or the One who provided the knowledge for creating the medicine.

Or how about when we pray and ask God to end our loneliness and when He brings someone into our lives that does just that, we praise the person and not the One who provided the person.

Magnifying God means we give Him all the glory for all He is and all He does because He alone deserves it. Our purpose as a Church is to Magnify God in such a way that there will never be any doubt that He is the One who receives all our worship for He and He alone deserves it.

May our prayer reflect the words of Psalm 86:8-10:

There is no one like You among the gods, O Lord, Nor are there any works like Yours.

All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, And they shall glorify Your name.

For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are God.

IV. We Magnify God by Worshiping Him Alone (96:9,11-13)

In the Eastern Nations during the days of David, kings were seen as majestic people. Many of them were thought of as gods. They would wear royal clothing and sit high on their kingly thrones where they ruled their nation. When their subjects approached the king’s throne they were in awe of the scene of him sitting on his throne and they bowed in honor of his splendor. On many occasions it was custom for their subjects to present their kings with an offering.

It is with this scene in mind that David calls on all inhabitants of the earth to “Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness...”

A.W. Tozer says that “Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that Majesty...which we call Our Father Which Are in Heaven.”

Italian poet Dante Alighieri was once attending a worship service. Deeply immersed in meditation during the service, he failed to kneel at the appropriate moment. People who were offended by his forgetfulness, rushed to the Bishop over the church and demanded that Dante be punished for what they perceived as blasphemy. In defending himself, Dante said the following, “If those who accuse me had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing.”

We are so blessed to live in a nation with an abundance of stuff that it is easy for us to fall into the trap of taking our eyes and thoughts off the Lord and placing our worship where it does not belong.

As Christians, we are called to pledge our worship to God, and nothing or no one else. Yet so many willingly bow down to the gods of Hollywood, the gods of money and possessions, the gods of Washington D.C., the gods of sports, and many others.

But this is wrong, and this is sinful. When we commit our lives to following Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to the One true God.

In response to Satan’s temptation for Jesus to bow down and worship him, Jesus says in Luke 4:8 “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”

It doesn’t get any clearer than that command. Our commitment to Christ is a commitment to approach His throne every day and worship Him in all His splendor and awe.

Revelation 4:8-11 tells us that at this very moment and every moment to come, the throne room of God is filled with the voices of the Angels as they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come! And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they existed and were created.’”

I believe this verse is the greatest example of how we magnify God. For when we surround His throne and honor Him in word and deed, just as the Angels are doing right now, then and only then is He truly the Lord of our lives.

The theme verse that you are going to hear over and over again as it relates to Magnifying God is Psalm 34:3: “Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.”

May we as one church Magnify the name of the Lord by:

Singing His praises

Proclaiming His Salvation to those who are far from Him

Giving Him all the Glory and Honor that He Deserves

Worshiping Him Alone