1. "Sometimes we can think to ourselves that that comfort means that it's right. And we get lulled into this sense of our relationship with God might be right because it feels comfortable."

2. "The ark was a blessing. The people took it for granted. And nobody came and rescued the ark. God doesn't need rescuing, we need rescuing."

3. "Mary Beth, my wife, often encourages me that when I feel down and depressed and in a dark place, that I should stop listening to the things that I'm saying to myself and I should start preaching the truth of Scripture. I wonder if that would be helpful for you today. Stop listening to yourself and start hearing what God is saying to you from His Word."

4. "Motivation comes and goes. Discipline is the thing that sticks. Now here's the problem with that is that we are weak and we are fallen. And so the thing that I would encourage you to do as you think about trying to be more consistent with your prayer and your reading of Scripture is not to white knuckle it."

5. "God isn't a monster chasing us through the woods. He's the Holy One who created the heavens and earth. He's the one who loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us, to save us. And so it's right to fear God with reverence."

6. "If we do not fear Him rightly, we are at risk of mistakenly thinking that we are in control. And that is not true. God is in control."

7. "You can cry out to your social status and it will not hear you. The wealth that you have accumulated is silent before your blasphemy and comfort is powerless to save."

8. "You lose nothing abandoning the false gods of this world. You gain everything by obeying and worshiping the true God."

9. "There is no offering that we could bring into His courts to make our relationship right with Him, and yet He invites us to come and worship Him."

10. "Your faith is proven when you trust Him that He will execute final and eternal justice."

Observation Questions

1. According to Psalm 96:1-3, what three actions are God's people commanded to do, and to whom are they directed?

2. In Psalm 96:4-6, what reasons does the psalmist give for why the Lord is to be feared above all gods?

3. What specific instructions are given to the "families of peoples" in Psalm 96:7-9 regarding how they should approach the Lord?

4. According to Psalm 96:10, what message are God's people to proclaim among the nations about the Lord's reign and the world He has established?

5. In Psalm 96:11-12, what elements of creation are called to respond to the Lord, and how are they to respond?

6. What does Psalm 96:13 say about the Lord's coming and the nature of His judgment?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why do you think the psalmist emphasizes singing "a new song" (v. 1) when the subject of worship—God Himself—never changes? What does this suggest about worship across generations?

2. The sermon explained that Israel began treating the Ark of the Covenant as a "lucky charm" rather than as God's presence. How does Psalm 96:4-9 correct this tendency to treat God casually, and why is fearing God "rightly" essential to true worship?

3. Verses 4-5 contrast the Lord who "made the heavens" with the "worthless idols" of the nations. What does this contrast teach us about the uniqueness of God and the futility of worshiping anything else?

4. How does the call to "worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness" and "tremble before him" (v. 9) connect with the invitation to "bring an offering and come into his courts" (v. 8)? What does this reveal about the nature of approaching God?

5. The psalm concludes with creation rejoicing because God "comes to judge the earth" (vv. 11-13). Why would judgment be a cause for joy rather than fear, and how does the gospel explain this?

Application Questions

1. The sermon challenged listeners to "stop listening to yourself and start preaching Scripture's truth" during difficult seasons. What specific truths from Psalm 96 could you speak to yourself this week when circumstances tempt you toward discouragement or doubt?

2. Verses 2-3 instruct us to declare God's glory "from day to day" and "among the nations." What is one practical way you could incorporate telling of God's salvation into your daily conversations with family, friends, or coworkers?

3. The sermon asked, "In what ways am I treating God casually?" Who is someone in your life who knows you well enough to help you identify blind spots in how you approach God, and how might you invite that conversation?

4. Psalm 96:5 declares that "all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols." What modern "gods"—such as status, wealth, comfort, or control—are you most tempted to worship, and what concrete step could you take to subordinate that idol to the Lord this week?

5. The psalm calls all creation to rejoice because God will judge with righteousness and faithfulness (vv. 11-13). How does the certainty of God's final justice change the way you respond to injustice or wrongs you are currently experiencing or witnessing?

Additional Bible Reading

1. 1 Chronicles 16:23-33 — This passage is the original source from which Psalm 96 is drawn, showing David's instruction to Israel when the Ark returned to Jerusalem.

2. 1 Samuel 5:1-12 — This narrative recounts how God demonstrated His power over the Philistine idol Dagon and plagued the Philistines until they returned the Ark, illustrating that God does not need rescuing.

3. John 4:19-26 — Jesus teaches the Samaritan woman that true worshipers must worship the Father in spirit and truth, reinforcing the sermon's point that God is particular about how we worship Him.

4. Revelation 1:12-18 — John's response of falling "as though dead" before the glorified Christ illustrates the right fear and reverence due to God that Psalm 96 calls for.

5. Romans 8:18-25 — Paul describes creation groaning and eagerly awaiting redemption, connecting to the psalm's vision of all creation rejoicing when God comes to set all things right.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Natural Abilities vs. Right Worship of God

II. Context: The Ark of the Covenant's Return (1 Chronicles, Psalm 96)

III. Declare His Glory (Psalm 96:1-3)

IV. Fear Him Rightly (Psalm 96:4-9)

V. Rejoice for He Comes (Psalm 96:10-13)

VI. Worship God According to His Instruction

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Well, I wonder what comes naturally to you. What comes naturally to me is sports. I was never elite, but it seemed like anything with a ball, anything with a stick, anything with a glove, you gave it to me and I could make it go. I love sports. It's kind of innate.

It works for me. I know there's some people in this congregation as well that that's the case for music. You could hand them a violin or a piano. It doesn't matter, and they could make it sound beautiful. Same thing for languages.

Friends that are able to pick up languages easily and quickly, it seems to me like a superpower. My poor parents, they paid for just years of French. Gosh. And bonjour, huit heures, l'Eiffel Tower is about as much as I have. Mary Beth will often joke with me when we're at a French restaurant if I would like to translate the menu.

No, tonight we'll let the waiter guide us through, of course. But I wonder what comes naturally to you, right? There's people who are fast, she's really stylish, you know, he's really sporty. You know, there are things that are innate, that are natural, that feel comfortable. And sometimes we can think to ourselves that that comfort means that it's right.

And we get lulled into this sense of our relationship with God might be right because it feels comfortable.

Because God made you, because He loves you, wouldn't He want you to feel right about how you relate to Him? If the way you worship God makes you feel right, that's got to be right.

Well, two weeks ago, Ryan Correra, who we prayed for earlier, walked us through John 4, in which Jesus tells the Sumerian woman at the well, kind of a scandalous thing for our day and age, which is the way that you're worshiping God is not right. And that there is a right way to worship God. Jesus says the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. And when we read our Bibles, we quickly discover that God's actually quite particular about the way that we worship Him. He doesn't leave it to us.

The second half of Exodus is what that is all about. And all the way through Jesus' teaching and His ministry, He's very clear with His disciples about how we are to relate, His disciples are to relate to Him and to God.

And so this morning, I'd like us to ask this question, How should we worship God?

Fortunately, we have a wonderful, simple Psalm to help us with this question. Psalm 96. It's on page 499 of those Pew Bibles. Would you turn with me there? Now, and let's look at it together.

It answers this question, how should we worship the Lord? So let's read it together. O 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 peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord glory due 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 seas roar, and 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, for He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in His faithfulness.

Praise God, this is God's Word to us this morning. How should we worship the Lord? A simple psalm with three simple answers. First, we declare His glory. Second, fear Him rightly.

And third, rejoice for He comes. Declare His glory, fear Him rightly, and rejoice for He comes.

My prayer this week has been that God would shape and inform our worship today and for eternity. So, just a quick word of context. If you've been reading this text throughout the week, you may have noticed that this psalm is quoting another part of the Bible. It's a direct lift out of one chronicle David instructs his people to sing praises to God for the ark of the covenant has returned to the people in Jerusalem. And three very quick points on the ark, just to help us with a little bit of context for how we should think about the ark of the covenant as it relates to this psalm.

The first is that the ark is a blessing. The second is that the people took it for granted, and the third is that no one rescued the ark. Let's think about those three very briefly. The ark was a blessing. So the ark was, the people were instructed to construct a box, the ark of the covenant, right along the same time as they were instructed to construct the tabernacle.

This is right after Israel was rescued from slavery in Egypt and brought into to the wilderness, there at the foot of Mount Sinai, God gives the law, the Ten Commandments to Moses and inside of the Ark of the Covenant is where those Ten Commandments would be stored. The Ark was a blessing because it stored God's law. It also represented God's presence with his people. On Yom Kippur, the annual national day of atonement, blood would be sprinkled on the Ark by the high priest on behalf of the people and it represented, foreshadowed what we would see in Christ. And so the ark was a blessing to the people because it contained the law, it was his presence, it even was the guidance of the people through the wilderness and through various conflicts that they would encounter.

It was a blessing. Second, briefly, the people took it for granted. So eventually the nation of Israel over time began to view the ark more as a lucky charm and less as God's presence. This all came to a head when they were in battle against the Philistines and they were losing. And so the military leaders and the religious rulers said, hey, let's bring the ark up to the front lines because that will give us strength and power and luck maybe, I guess, certainly victory in this battle.

Well, the outcome was predictable. God is not on their schedule or on their terms, and so he demonstrates that by allowing the Israelites to be defeated and the ark itself to be carried off into the hands of the Philistines. And as a sort of an indication of their power and their dominance of the Israelites, they brought the ark into a temple before their idol, their god of Dagon. And so the people took the ark for granted. Third, finally, no one came to rescue the ark.

But you know how the story ends. We wouldn't be reading Psalm 96 if the ark didn't make it back to Israel. So how did it get back? Was there a daring nighttime raid that rescued the ark from the hands of the Philistines? Was there a special forces unit that dropped in and grabbed it out?

No. No one came to rescue the ark. Long story short, and if you want a really compelling narrative from the Old Testament, take a look at 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 5 this afternoon. It's a really cool story. They bring the ark into the sanctuary of Dagon.

A couple of mornings later, Dagon is wrecked and destroyed. Every city that the Philistines take the ark to is plagued and and forsaken. And so eventually they say, let's put the ark on a cart and let the cows just do what it will with it. Of course, the ark is then immediately taken back to Israel. And as it approaches, as it returns, David brings the ark to Jerusalem and there is rejoicing and there is this psalm.

The ark was a blessing. The people took it for granted. And nobody came and rescued the ark. God doesn't need rescuing, we need rescuing. So the scene is set.

David and all of Israel rejoiced because the ark and therefore God's presence had returned to his people. And so in this joyful song of praise, God instructs Israel how to worship God.

How should we worship God? Let's look at the first three verses. We are to declare His glory. Look again at verse one. 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. Notice the instruction to sing. I don't know the science behind it, but don't you also get stirred up when we sing together?

There's something special about us joining together, whether it's here or anywhere else, when you join with others and sing to the Lord. But even more so, the words that we sing, there's something really significant about singing words that have weight, that have meaning, It's one of the reasons why we encourage you often to take the bulletin with you and use it in your family quiet times and times of worship. The words are fantastic. We see here that David opens with this instruction to thrice sing, sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. And so as we sing, especially this new song, this idea of singing a new song is interesting because the subject of which we are singing it never changes.

But from generation to generation, we find new words and new melodies to worship the Lord. It was particularly cool to me to see, in our preparation music, Preserve us Lord, immediately followed by Gloryland. Those are two songs. And just, you see when they're written and who they were written by. You'll see that one was written in the 15th century and the other was written in the 19th century.

So separated by generations and generations and generations and worlds apart, these two individuals who wrote those two songs united in their praise of the Lord. They're singing a new song and we are singing that song together. Praising God in song unites us and strengthens us. It encourages the weary soul and fans the flames of faith. So no wonder David opens with this encouragement.

The nation of Israel had experienced a period of great mourning when the ark was lost and it has returned, and so they rejoice. Imagine the orders of magnitude bigger our rejoicing will be when the Lord returns to us. But not just today. We see there in verse 2, tell of his salvation from day to day. So as we sing and we tell and we declare God's glory and His majesty, His marvelous works, we're to do it day after day after day.

The love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. So we tell of His salvation every day because we're in need of it.

Every day. Like me, I wonder if you find it easy to tell of his salvation and worship him when you're feeling good, when things are going right, when the world is sort of at your fingertips, you're in command of it all. It's kind of easy to worship the Lord in those moments. But what happens when reality hits?

And the sickness comes, the job is lost, the circumstances change, and things are difficult.

King David here encourages his people, God encourages us, tell of his salvation day to day. Mary Beth, my wife, often encourages me that when I feel down and depressed and in a dark place, that I should stop listening to the things that I'm saying to myself and I should start preaching the truth of Scripture. I wonder if that would be helpful for you today. Stop listening to yourself and start hearing what God is saying to you from His Word. And so, for the good of your soul, for the good of those around you, we sing and we tell every day, regardless of our motivations, regardless of our feelings, because the one who who doesn't change, the one who is unaffected by the passing of time and by the changing of our emotions is the Lord.

And he is the one that we're proclaiming. He is the one that we are declaring is glorious.

A couple of practical ways to do this. First, personal discipline. Right, it's kind of the obvious thing that preachers get up and say, read your Bible and pray. I would also say that, read your Bible and pray. Here's something that I just want to challenge you on.

Motivation comes and goes. Discipline is the thing that sticks. Now here's the problem with that is that we are weak and we are fallen. And so the thing that I would encourage you to do as you think about trying to be more consistent with your prayer and your reading of Scripture is not to white knuckle it.

Not to like do the DC thing of like, well, maybe if I just scheduled seven minutes, six minutes every time on this Tuesday that I'll be able to do it. I would encourage you to ask the Lord for the Holy Spirit to give you a taste for his word. It's kind of a scary thing to pray because he will do it. And then all of a sudden, you're going to be reading his word more. You're going to be praying more, and that may well change your life.

That's the warning, that's the disclosure on that. Next, in your home, for those of us with children, straight out of our text this morning, for those of us with children, over a meal, when you're with them, ask them to recount and declare His glory. Ask them if they can recite His marvelous deeds.

And you'll be encouraged. Kids, you should ask your parents for them to tell you a cool story from the Bible. Like 1 Samuel 5, how did the Ark of the Covenant destroy the Philistines with no help? It's kind of a cool story. Ask your parents to tell you that story.

Finally, with your friends, with your colleagues, with your fellow members of CHBC, Just make sure that your conversations are marked and covered by telling of His salvation, declaring His glory. You'll encourage them, they'll encourage you.

Notice who David calls on to sing in verse 1. And who it is that they are to declare God's glory too. It's all the earth. In the context of the ark returning to the nation of Israel, this was a moment of national unity for the Jews. Right?

So it wouldn't have been surprising if the instruction here was, you know, that Israel should be singing of God's glory. Israel is the one who should be declaring his marvelous deeds. But no, the instruction here is to all the earth. God's glory, God's might, His salvation is not limited to one people in one place at one time. This is a call for us to declare God's glory to all the nations.

We're told throughout Scripture that God's grace and His mercy, His gospel goes far beyond just this nation of Israel. The foreigner is welcomed in. We're called in this psalm and throughout Scripture, and specifically by Jesus himself, to go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Are you willing to go and declare the glory of the Lord to the nations?

If the Lord is calling you, to go to the nations, to declare His glory, would you come and speak to the elders about that? We would love to pray with you, to encourage you, to facilitate you. We would love to be able to launch you from the resources and the platform that the Lord has given us here in Capitol Hill. If you're not called to go, will you help us send Christians to places that do not have the gospel? Will you pray with us?

Will you give to this effort? Just maybe even go to the back of your directory and find some of the supportive workers and choose one or two of those families to pray for consistently. So maybe email them and encourage them to help foster their work and put wind in their sails.

How should we worship the Lord?

By declaring His glory for sure. Point two, by fearing Him rightly. Please look with me at verse four through nine. 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 due his name, bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the earth. It's strange to say it, that we should worship something that we fear.

It almost sounds like a terrible perversion. But God isn't a monster chasing us through the woods. You know, He's the Holy One who created the heavens and earth. He's the one who loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us, to save us. And so it's right to fear God with reverence.

That's what the Psalm is saying. Fear Him with reverence because of who He is and what He's done. We err when we do not fear Him rightly. We error when we view him and treat him casually as the Israelites did with the Ark of the Covenant. He's not your high school buddy.

He's not someone to hang out with. He's not to be treated casually. If we do not fear him rightly, we are at risk of mistakenly thinking that we are in control. And that is not true. God is in control.

I was surfing in Sydney at Point Break and it's way less cool than it sounds. I was surfing in Sydney at Point Break and a fin pops up out of the water. Now, nine times out of ten, you see a fin in the water in Sydney, in Australia, and it's a dolphin. And that's fine. When the tail fin pops up feet behind that dorsal fin and there's an ominous glide, not a playful bob, then you've got a shark.

And in this case, when I saw this fin and the tail fin pop up, of course now it feels to me like it was 50 feet long and whatever, it was jumping out of the water. It wasn't, but it was very close. And it was very confident. And I was not.

Your mind quickly rifles back to all the advice that you've heard during Shark Week. You punch it in the nose, you gouge its eyes, you rip its gills, and you realize as you're thinking all that thing, it's like, ah, like the person telling me that was definitely on land at the time.

There were only two outcomes in that moment. Fortunately, the shark swam away, but the power and the speed were shocking. And in that moment, when I saw how fast and how big this thing could move and that I could not, it was very clear to all involved who was in control. The shark was in control. In the same way, in such a small shadow of the reality of what it will be like when we come into the presence of the Lord.

It reminded me of John on the island of Patmos when he's confronted with the unveiled glory of the Lord. In Revelation 1 verse 5 he says, he is to be, I'm sorry, in Revelation 1 verse 17 it says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

Make no mistake, God is the one in control and we are to fear him rightly. And so let's make a point to ask those who know us best, who are deepest in our lives, ask them, what ways am I treating God casually? Because frankly, this is the sort of discipling question that often is in the blind spot. Sometimes it's hard to till the soil enough to really find where it is that you're treating God in a casual way that we need to correct. He is glorious, He is powerful, He created the heavens and the earth, and this is the one that we get to worship.

He is in control.

All other gods, in comparison to the one true God, God are nothing, are worthless. All other gods are just a mere construction of man's imagination. And our modern idols, our modern gods today, though we might think that they're quite impressive, are as impotent and inanimate as wood and steel and stone statues of the Philistines' day.

You can cry out to your social status and it will not hear you. The wealth that you have accumulated is silent before your blasphemy and comfort is powerless to save. Compare that to our God. He heard the cries of his people enslaved in Egypt and he did something about it.

He rescued them physically, in history, out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness.

God witnessed King Herod, you can read this in Acts, King Herod not giving him glory and immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down in the street. You can read about that in history books, not just the Bible. When we were lost in our sin, God sent His Son to die in our place, and He rose from the grave. Don't miss this, friends. God is real, and He really did these things in observable history.

God is greater and more worthy than your— God is greater and more worthy of your worship than any other God. You lose nothing abandoning the false gods of this world. You gain everything by obeying and worshiping the true God. So Christian, what are these idols in your life? In what ways can you put them in their rightful place in submission to God?

God. It's not wrong to do well at work. It's not wrong to have friends and wield political power. And it's not wrong to look to this world for happiness and joy, but we have to subordinate it to the one true God. All of these things are less than and worthless compared to the one true God.

We should worship God by fearing Him rightly. We fear Him rightly by knowing who He is and knowing what He has done. Listen for a moment to the attributes just quickly read from verses 4 to 9. So who is God? He is powerful and beautiful.

He is strong and splendid. God is the one whose majesty is unrivaled, and all those who enter His holy presence tremble. Our God is big and strong and holy. And what has He done? Well, according just to Psalm 96, He's created everything and is in need of nothing.

He is also the one who invites us to come into His courts to worship Him in the splendor of His holiness. The list could go on and on and on and praise the Lord, we will have eternity to recount who He is and what He's done. There is no offering that we could bring into His courts to make our relationship right with Him, and yet He invites us to come and worship Him. And so apart from Christ, that is a terrible and fearsome invitation. And so it bears explaining for my friend who may have not heard the gospel, my friend who's here this morning who does not know the Lord.

If you are here this morning, you can hear my voice, and you do not call yourself a Christian, just like what Ken said, we are so happy that you're here. But hear this, God calls you to worship Him. And He's made a way for you to safely be in His presence. Because standing on your own, you would be destroyed. The gospel is the good news that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life.

He was fully a man. He knew exactly what it was to live in this world, and yet He did not sin. He obeyed His Heavenly Father, he obeyed God perfectly. And yet, he was arrested and tried and unjustly put on a cross to die. Little did they know that that was Jesus' plan all along.

He went to the cross willingly to die as our Savior, as our sacrifice. And because he died and took the penalty for your sin, you can have life. How do we know that this is true? Because the tomb's empty. The tomb is empty.

Jesus rose from the dead, vindicating the promise that God had made that he would make a way, that he would crush the penalty of sin and death. And so, friend, he is welcoming you into his courts, and you can come because of the blood of Jesus Christ. How should we worship the Lord? By declaring His glory, by fearing Him rightly, and finally, point three, rejoicing, for He returns.

Let's look again at verses 10 through 13. 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, let the earth rejoice, let the seas roar, and all that fills it. That 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. As strange as it might have seemed to worship that what you fear, it might also seem strange that we would be excited about being judged. No?

Seems strange to me. I was driving down 4th Street. There's a series of stop signs. You know the one, right? And no excuses.

I take full responsibility for this. I kind of had a soft roll through some of those stop signs. Like, I came to a stop. It was respectful. It was demure.

It was fine. But, like, did the center of gravity really rock from the back wheels to the front wheels? It's debatable. Predictably, well not predictably, gosh, who would have known this would have happened. Lights, sirens, like high beam lights, as the finest of DC's police force, Homer, where you at?

Pulled me over. Glad they did. Pulled me over. But I have to confess to you, as I saw the police officer getting out of his car and walking up to my driver's side window, I was nervous and I was scared.

Not because of a threat that anything would happen. I knew who was going to give me a ticket and I was going to feel embarrassed, but, you know, it was being, I was being judged and I was going to be judged having come, falling short. I was going to be judged for doing something wrong. And it's just not a pleasant feeling. And so why is that?

You know, I wish I had been innocent of this minor traffic violation, but I knew I was guilty, I knew I'd likely receive a ticket.

I did, I paid it, I was not rejoicing over that judgment. But the Lord's judgment is different. The judgment we're used to is muddled by sin and we feel it. Matt Martens wrote a book about it. Our system is imperfect and it's run by imperfect people.

It's our system of justice, the judgments that we see in everyday life, it's mired by the fall all and by sin. So verses 10 through 13 describe God's justice as equitable, righteous and faithful. And so his justice, his judgment is different, substantively different. My non-Christian friend, God has promised to lay bare the facts of your life. Not the hearsay, not the conjecture, not the gossip, He's gonna lay bare the facts of your life.

And so I wonder, how are you gonna do? How is God gonna judge you?

Well, we rejoice, Christians, those who put their faith in Christ, that our sins have been dealt with on the cross. We rejoice at His justice and His judgment, because we know we stand innocent, even though we have been enemies of God. That's His grace, that's His mercy. And so our rejoicing is a rejoicing knowing that Christ has died in our place.

And so as we read this and we see this joy over Jesus's return, it's not just for us personally, but that injustice that you know, well Jesus is going to take care of it, it's going to be made right. The miscarriage of justice that makes you so hot mad, that will be made right. The justice delayed, the justice denied, the justice abused, Jesus will make that right when he returns to judge all the earth. And so we rejoice. And so brothers and sisters, pray for the lawyers, pray for the judges, pray for the police officers to carry out justice in a way that reflects God's purpose.

Perfect justice. We should work for and seek a good representation of God's righteous justice in this world. But let's not get it confused. Let's not get confused our justice for God's justice. It says in Scripture that we are not to take vengeance into our own hands but that God will repay.

And so though it might be difficult, again, from this text, I would encourage you to look to the day when perfect justice will be done. And endure knowing that God keeps His promises, endure the injustice of today for that hope, that certain hope that Jesus will return and put it right. Your faith is proven when you trust Him that He will execute final and eternal justice. Verses 11 and 12 say, 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.

Consider that since the fall, all of nature has stood bearing silent witness to humanity's wicked rebellion against God. I just imagine for a moment the olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane, the scandal of witnessing a mob handcuffing Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and leading him away at the point of a sword to be tried by a corrupt group and then murdered and killed.

I think the olive trees are part of these trees that are singing for joy at Jesus's return. When he comes back, all of that will be put right. And so all of creation, all of nature sing for joy because no longer do they have to bear in silence the scandal of God's name being besmirched. And therefore, joy is what marks the Christian as we reflect on this idea that Jesus will return. We rejoice because He returns.

There is no better hope and there is no greater certainty. Our worship of God, sometimes it doesn't come naturally. It's certainly not innate. Your relationship with God should not be driven by your heart's every desire. Praise God that He instructs us how to worship Him so clearly from our text of the Psalm 96, that we're to declare His glory we're to fear Him rightly, and that we rejoice for He returns.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we look forward to the day when Jesus returns in His glory, and our faith will turn to sight. Until that day, Lord, mark us by the way we worship you with our lives. Amen.