-Transcript-
00:24 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the Cafe.
00:28 Welcome to the program. My name is Pastor Clark Covington. Amen.
00:35 A host of KJV Cafe, I was going to say minister, I don’t know, I was thinking of two or three things at once. Amen. I am the host.
00:40 I’m the host of KJV Cafe. Amen. And I’m a preacher and I’m glad to be here today.
00:45 Amen. I hope you are too. As we dive right back into God’s Word and here today, we’re looking again at Psalm 9. We’ve been in Psalm 9 this week and this is our third episode and we’ll have one more after this.
00:57 So we’ll make it an even four episodes here, but don’t worry if you haven’t been listening, I’ll recap it for you. You know I will.
01:16 `And we’re today, all we’re focusing on here in Psalm 9 is the importance of praising God and that it cannot be understated and that it is a form of worship.
01:14 It’s warranted. It’s wanted by the Holy Spirit, you know, talk about don’t, the Bible says, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. How about we enrich the Holy Spirit and it’s demanded by a holy God.
01:24 God demands that we praise him. I believe that, you know, we are made to praise him. I just can’t, I can’t harp on that enough.
01:32 And I’m just going to, this isn’t our text verse, but I’m just going to hop in here toLuke 19:37-40, because I can’t help it.
01:40 And when he was come, not as Jesus, even at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen saying, blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
01:57 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.
02:10 That’s Luke 19:37-40, talking about the necessity of praising God, talking about that.
02:24 If we don’t praise God, his creation will actually cry out and praise him. Talk about a day you didn’t expect. You quench the spirit, you don’t say anything.
02:41 And the rocks start calling out praises to God, but they’re showing forth his mighty works, what he had done. It says here, um, with a loud voice, the latter part of Luke 19:37, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen. They’re showing forth praise.
02:49 Our text verse here, Psalm 9:1, I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart. I will show forth all thy marvelous works. You know, throughout Psalm nine, it’s 20 verses.
03:00 Amen. We’ve read it in the last couple episodes here with a, uh, throughout Psalm 9, you get this emphasis on showing forth praise.
03:12 You know, in verse 11, it says declare among the people, his doings to show forth means to manifest, to publish, to proclaim.
03:22 The idea of the word manifest is to make known certain or clear to others. You know, it’s like if there’s so many layers to praising God, again, we’re made to praise God.
03:28 Again, I believe, as I’ve mentioned in the last couple episodes, I believe that when we praise God, that is a true form of worship because we are worshiping God sincerely and accurately and in a timely manner.
03:43 It’s not like we’re just saying, Oh God, how great you were, what you did a thousand years ago, even though he was great, we’re saying you are great for what you’re doing right now. And isn’t that an act of faith? Say we believe in this living God. Amen.
03:58 That’s an act of faith. You know, we pray, we pray to God for stuff. In our prayer meetings, we have prayer meeting every Wednesday night at our little group, our little church.
04:07 We pray asking God, you know, believing he’s going to answer that prayer. He’s going to do something. Now, it may not be what we want him to do.
04:15 It may not be what we understand his ways are higher than our ways, but we pray with that idea that there is a living God hearing our prayers.
04:22 And so when we see God answer those prayers or we see God act in miraculous ways or unexpected ways, we are to show forth praise. And you know, we do that how? By knowing who God is.
04:35 Psalm 9, there’s seven traits of God mentioned that I pulled out of Psalm 9, the eternal nature of God, that God is, he always has been, he always will be. He’s the alpha and the omega. He’s the beginning and the end.
04:48 God is. Amen. He’s eternal.
04:52 God’s sovereignty over the world and all the inhabitants of it, that God has full power.
04:59 When you see wickedness reign in this world, it’s not because God doesn’t know about it. It’s not because God’s been overpowered.
05:10 It’s because God’s allowed it for a season for his, only his reasons that we can’t understand. God’s unending power. He is to be feared and revered.
05:14 Psalm 9 literally ends with David exhorting, you know, look, it says Psalm 9, 20, last verse of Psalm 9, put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be, but men say law.
05:26 You know, them being the heathen, he says, arise, O Lord, let not man prevail. Let the heathen be judged in thy sight.
05:30 He’s saying, look, let these bad people be judged because you are the judge and put them in fear. You know, I’ve told our congregation many times, the worst thing I think for anyone, any, any person on this earth, the worst thing that can happen to them is that God leaves them alone.
05:42 That they think in their mind that there’s somebody they’re not, that they have powers they don’t have, that their eternity is much better than they, than they understand it to be.
05:51 You know, they think these things, right? And then God just lets them think it. That is the worst.
05:59 You know, the idea, when you read over in Paul’s epistles about being turned over to that reprobate mind, amen, that he gave them over to these unseemly thoughts.
06:05 And so they think they’re having their way because they haven’t faced immediate judgment.
06:10 And here in this world, we’re so used to instant gratification, amen. Everything at the touch of a button, at the touch of an app, you know, this morning I wanted groceries.
06:18 I put some stuff in the app and then it was at my doorstep in like an hour or two. And then my mother-in-law was like, oh, how cool is that?
06:26 You know, just came here, you know, cause she was stopping by telling me how she was going to help us with our garden. Don’t get me started on the garden today.
06:32 But look, you know, everything is immediate, is it not? And so people think, oh, I wasn’t, I sinned last night. I wasn’t judged.
06:41 I’ll sin some more, you know, and little do they know every sin is going to, they’re going to have to answer for between, before a holy righteous God, amen.
06:47 And that hell is a real place. The only way that they escape hell and death in the grave and that second death, which is worse than the first, amen, the only way they escape that is by putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
06:59 And so look, you know, God is real, praising him is true.
07:03 And if we’ve been saved, we have a lot to praise him for, amen. We have a lot to praise him for. And so we see these eternal traits, again, God’s unending power.
07:15 He should be feared and revered. God is a refuge when we go to in times of trouble. Again, I’ve mentioned this before that throughout the scriptures, God is referred to as a refuge, as a high tower.
07:24 And my little daughter, she likes watching the old fairytale movies and stuff. She said, oh, the high tower, they put the, they have a ladder up against the tower and then they take up that ladder so they can’t get you. And I said, exactly.
07:35 It’s like this, you know, you have that ladder, that ladder being salvation, that ladder being Jesus Christ, that living water, amen.
07:43 And you’ll never thirst again. And you get saved and you’re saved by that blood, amen.
07:46 And your old things pass away. All things become new and you climb up into that high tower, amen. And the whole world hates you because it hated him, amen.
07:52 And so what you do is you pull up that ladder and they can’t get to you because, hey, guess what?
07:58 The Bible says that no man can pluck you out of his hand. Him being God, amen. Ooh, I’ll preach.
08:02 And by the way, he doesn’t forsake those that seek him, amen. You know, I love this yard sign. I have no idea.
08:07 I know a church put it up, but we used to have a church building over there in the Krauss Lincolnton area where we would go and worship. And on the way there, there was this yard sign and it had like clouds on it.
08:15 And all it said was, if you don’t know God, ask him to reveal himself to you or something like that.
08:23 And it might’ve had a little asterisk like get a Bible, but I mean, it was so kind of just out there, you know? And what I love about it is it is a truth from the word that, look, you know what?
08:35 He’s knocking, open the door. You know, like if you’re convicted, you know, you simply just pray and you go, my wife tells a story about being in high school, going to Dollar Tree and just getting a dollar New Testament because she just had this curiosity within her.
08:50 Well guess what? She sought the Lord and not long after that, she was saved.
08:55 Amen. I mean, I practically ran up to the altar by the time I was allowed to go. And I mean, allowed by the time I was at a church that did a proper altar call and so forth.
09:06 I practically ran up there. I mean, again, you know, you, you desire to know God, he is faithful to not forsake you in that manner. The Bible says he desires all to come to repentance, all to be saved.
09:12 Amen. He’s an advocate for the humble. That’s another trait in Psalm nine and a judge, one that repays.
09:17 And the example given here in Psalm nine is let the, let, let the wicked fall into their own trap. So they make a trap for someone else and they fall into it. And there are so many examples I can give biblically Esther 7:10.
09:32 So they hanged Hammond on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the King’s wrath pacified. And if you’re familiar with the book of Esther, Esther you know, is basically she’s, she’s not basically, she is fatherless.
09:43 Her uncle Mordecai is a righteous man. He basically becomes her father and she ends up being queen there.
09:51 And Mordecai helped the King, even though the King didn’t know that Mordecai had helped him and Hammond wanted to kill all the Jews and wanted to start with Mordecai because he hated Mordecai.
09:58 And so Hammond makes this plot and builds these gallows to hang Mordecai thinking the King’s going to go along with it, thinking he’s manipulated everybody.
10:09 And guess what? You know, Esther foils the plot. She’s very brave.
10:14 Brave tells the King, the King ends up finding out what’s really going on. And Hammond, the evil person ends up being hung on the very gallows that he had made for Mordecai.
10:24 That idea of reciprocity, that idea that that evil that he had in his heart was, was ended up being put back on his own head.
10:32 Amen. And we see that very clearly in Psalm nine and these seven attributes help us to understand a very important point that when we praise God, we should praise him knowing him. David isn’t blindly praising God.
10:43 He’s not saying, oh, great God, oh, great God, oh, oh, great God. Amen. Okay.
10:49 Now, sometimes we’re brought to very little words, and I think that’s okay with the Lord because he knows our, the thoughts are our heart. He knows who we are. He knows everything about us.
10:55 But generally speaking, when we put forth praise to God, we should know who we’re praising, right? We should understand who he is. Amen. And these traits are very important for us to understand.
11:01 How could I tell you these traits? I pulled out these seven traits. I wasn’t trying to get to seven, just came out like that, which is God’s perfect number. God’s perfect number of completion.
11:13 But maybe if, you know, maybe you’re a Bible scholar, maybe you have a PhD in Bible. Maybe you could pull out 70 traits from Psalm nine of God, and maybe there’s someone that doesn’t know God at all and has never read Psalm nine and they don’t, they can’t pull out any traits.
11:23 Which one is going to offer better praise? The one that knows 70 things about God, the one that doesn’t know anything about God.
11:32 The one that knows the latter, the one that knows the more about God will be able to properly praise him. And I’m not urging you to become some Bible geek or expert, but I am urging you in a way to become a Bible geek because that will offer true and lasting praise to God.
11:47 And we see that David doesn’t just give us kind of the who of God, doesn’t just give us the example that knowing God is powerful in praising him and showing forth praise, but he also shows us how to do it.
12:02 I mean, rejoice in God. David was saying he’s rejoicing in God. Verse two tells us that he’s rejoicing in who God is and what he has done, no matter what’s happened in your day, in your life, in your week, you know, in your year, whatever it may be, you always can rejoice in what God has done for you.
12:15 If you’ve been saved, you have the Holy Spirit living within you. Your names are written down in the Lamb’s book of life. You can rejoice.
12:21 Amen. And David was recounting the victories given by God. David talks about how the enemy will come to a perpetual end.
12:29 And I love that phrase, the idea of a never ending end as in they will never rise again as in God is all powerful. You know, it’s the idea that when God says enough, it’s enough. Amen.
12:40 And David is recounting these victories. He’s talking about how God has blessed. Amen.
12:46 We learn about David and how in a lot of ways and how he recounted his victories against the lion, the bear, against Goliath, against even his own children who wanted to take over his kingdom.
13:00 And God gave him those victories and we see that form of praise, that showing forth of praise to God coming through by recounting those victories. My question for you is, you know, can you recount those victories that God has given you in your life?
13:12 And if you can, are you showing forth praise to him? Are you ashamed of God or are you showing forth that praise that he rightfully deserves? And what I mean by showing forth, I mean telling people about it, bragging on God.
13:25 Start at your household, start with your family and tell your family what God’s done in your life.
13:32 If you haven’t already, put it in park and tell them right now, hey, this is what God’s done for me. Amen.
13:36 And then once kind of get a little bit of fire burning within you, go tell everyone else. Write a social media post. Amen.
13:41 Go tell, you know, a friend, a coworker, whoever it may be, oh, but brother Clark, I might get in trouble at work. Yeah. You know, guess what? That’s part of being a Christian.
13:48 The Bible says to be rewarded with Christ, we have to suffer with him here on earth. And I wish I had more time to get into that topic, but it’s a truth. The point here is to show forth praise to God.
13:59 We have to know who he is and then reflect those attributes out by explaining what he’s done in our life. And if we’re not spending time with him to know who he is, and if we’re not looking around our life to see what he’s been doing, it’s hard to show forth praise. And conversely, if we are doing those things, it’s not hard.
14:17 It’s fruitful. It just happens. It just pours out of our, our daily time with him.
14:20 We praise him. Okay. So tune in next time and we’ll wrap up this message on showing forth the praise.
14:25 I thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless. Amen.