Psalm 96

Tonight we are going to continue into the Psalms with Psalm 96. The main topic tonight is that we Worship the God who is worthy of our praises. We need to grasp the idea that when we sing, give, talk, pray, or even live we should be doing it because God is worthy of it all. Our lives should reflect the God that we serve.

This Psalm is written during a time of Joy and celebration, which shows that the more we learn about God and the more we should worship Him.

My personal experience with this is from one of my seminary classes. We were talking about God and the attributes of God that we can’t imagine because there is no human equivalent to these attributes. I asked the professor what is the point of learning about something we can’t understand and he responded through laughing that the more we learn about God the more of an Awe we get of Him.

We learn about God so that we can be amazed by him.

This Psalm is about our worship a Holy God.

Psalm 96 ESV

1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! 4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. 7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! 8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! 9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! 10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” 11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 13 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.

1. Sing because He is WORTHY

Psalm 96:1–3 ESV

1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!

All throughout scripture we look at us singing our praises to God.

We sing to God because he is good.

We sing to God because we are thankful for who he is.

We sing to God because we are not him.

We sing to God because he deserves our worship.

A fun thing to notice in these 3 verses is the repetition of the word sing. Anytime you are reading the Bible and you see a word repeated multiple times then there has to be some importance behind the word.

SIDE NOTE: I challenge you to pay attention to scripture whenever you are reading it and pay extra attention whenever you see a word consistently repeated look into why that word is repeated.

In this Psalm we see the word sing 3 times within 1.5 verses.

First lets look at who is singing. We see that the Psalmist is commanding us to sing. We should sing.

Second who are we singing too. We are singing to God. The Psalmist actually wrote the name Yahweh as the person we are singing too. The importance of the Psalmist writing Yahweh is in the Hebrew language that is a name that is not pronounced because they considered themselves unworthy to speak the name of God. So instead they would just write out 4 letters and not ever say the name of God.

We should be singing to God and we should understand the grandeur of singing to the creator of the universe. I wish we could go back to the reverence that the Hebrews had when it came to God.

We should be singing to God because he wants to hear our worship. So many times whenever we think of singing to God we think of an old hymn or song but that is not at all the only songs we can sing to God. The Psalmist instructs us to sing a new song to him. We are commanded to sing songs of praise and adoration to God because God daily reveals himself to us.

Lamentations 3:22–24 ESV

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

God continually reveals himself to us daily we must be attentive to Him.

The Psalmist commands the entire world to sing to God.

This is very strange for this to be said before Jesus because the Jews were God’s chosen people not everybody else in the world at that time. That means that the only people who could be saved were the Jews, so when the Psalmist wrote this he was foreshadowing the moment in which gentiles could worship God and be saved.

Singing to God in worship brings us to sharing Christ with others. The Psalm goes into we should sing to Bless God’s name, which leads to us proclaiming God’s salvation daily.

We must be a group of people that are continually sharing Christ’s salvation throughout our lives and that only happens when we truly worship God for who he is and what he has done for us then evangelism becomes an active part of our lives.

Evangelism is a necessity for Christians because evangelism is simply us sharing how God has saved us throughout our daily lives.

And when evangelism becomes part of our lives then missions become second nature for us.

John Piper says in his book Let the Nations be glad:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is! Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, mission will be no more.... Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s Glory.

So many times we want to start with missions or mission projects but for missions to become the focal point worship must be the focal point.

SINGING TO GOD LEADS US TO SHARING CHRIST THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!

God created creation to worship him.

2. Praise because He is ALONE

Psalm 96:4–6 ESV

4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Great is the Lord and Greatly to be praised!

We sing and praise something that is worthy of our honor and praise. God is most definitely worthy of our honor and praise but are we giving God the honor and praise he deserves.

If someone came into this church who knew absolutely nothing about church or God. Would they see a group of people who truly believed that God was worthy of their praise or would they see a whole bunch of people going through the motions and half-heartedly praising God?

I am not saying that we should be dancing and raising our hands but would it be evident that we are singing to the God of the universe and the God that sustains us each and everyday.

A Great God deserves Great praises, but so many times I personally do not give God the praise that he deserves.

Humans are created to worship! The problem is that so many times we will begin worshipping the wrong things rather than the God. There is a saying that

“GOOD THINGS BECOME BAD THINGS WHEN THEY GET IN THE WAY OF THE BEST THING!”

We have a major problem today with idols. We may have a bigger problem with idols today than ever in the Old Testament. We also have a major problem with other gods being worshipped rather than the true God.

I can guarantee that everybody in here worships something more than they worship God. That object of worship is more likely than not your phone, tv, or even a person. The way you can tell what you worship is whatever occupies the biggest majority of your time is most likely you object of worship. The point is that all of gods that we worship are meaningless and amount to nothing because they ultimately will not satisfy us.

Jesus expressed how much our love for God should look like compared to everything else and it really puts into perspective the importance God places on our love.

Luke 14:26 ESV

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Our love for Christ should make everything else that we love look like hate. This sounds good biblically but it is extremely hard to do this.

I love Breanna obviously this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but what Jesus told the disciples is that the love I have for Breanna should look like hate when compared to the love I have for Christ.

This same thing should be said for our idols as well. It is ok to like things such as sports or phones or maybe even TikTok but whenever that become you reason for living then that is your IDOL. Good things very easily become bad things whenever we begin giving all of our time and energy into them.

The only God that is worthy of worship is the true God. God is the only person we can worship who will actually satisfy us in the end. God is completely worthy of our complete worship.

3. Give because He is Holy

Psalm 96:7–13 ESV

7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! 8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! 9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! 10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” 11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 13 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.

We need to give God the glory because He is worthy. We need to understand the magnitude of worshipping God is brought about because of his love for us.

We need to give God the Glory that is due him because he deserves it.

Whenever we look at worship we instantly think of us singing to God but that is not the only way that we worship God. We worship God through giving our offerings to him, giving our time to God, and ultimately giving our lives to Him. God ultimately wants you to give of yourself to Him and once we give our selves to God then God uses us to further his Kingdom across the entire world.

The reason we worship God with our lives comes from the fact that God reigns!

We worship the God who is actively reigning over all of his creation. Whenever you look back at history people always worshipped the reigning king because they are in power regardless of if they deserved it or not. But God is the reigning King and he has demonstrated to us the reasons why we should worship him.

Verse 10 is what we should be telling everybody that we come in contact with because that is the absolute best news we could ever get. Throughout all of the craziness that we have been through over the past year we can hold on to the fact that God reigns.

The creator of the universe is still in control and nothing or no one can overthrow Him. The God that we worship is so much greater than anyone or anything that we so often worship. The God that we proclaim throughout the nations is the God who is in control. From the moment that he spoke the world into existence God has reigned and will continue to being sovereign over his creation.

What is awesome to look at is that creation itself sings praises to God. All of nature is worshipping God daily. This also shows us that God himself is revealing his nature and adoration to us through Nature. Whenever we are outside we are seeing God’s handiwork in a way that is indescribable. The handiwork worships the creator, so how much more should we worship God.

In closing, we should sing because he is worthy

Praise because he’s alone

give because he is holy

We need to be aware of God and take extra notice of him during our daily lives, because there are many times when we go the whole day without ever being thankful for who God is.

When we worship through singing, praising, evangelizing, or mission we do so because God is Great.