Shout for Joy!

[0:00] Psalm 33, if you're there, would you stand with me?

[0:17] ! We honor the reading of God's Word together. Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!

[0:30] Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to Him with the harp on ten strings. Sing to Him a new song.

[0:40] Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. For the word of the Lord is upright, and all His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice.

[0:51] The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap.

[1:03] He puts the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it came to be. He commanded, and it stood firm.

[1:16] The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of His heart to all generations.

[1:27] Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where He sits enthroned, He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.

[1:40] He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.

[1:56] Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

[2:07] Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in Him because we trust in His holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in You.

[2:20] May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word. Would you please be seated? Well, in case you didn't know, I'm a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs.

[2:36] I grew up near Kansas City. I've been to a lot of Chiefs games since moving to Oklahoma eight years ago. We've had the opportunity to go back a few times and watch the Chiefs play at Arrowhead Stadium.

[2:50] Arrowhead Stadium is the loudest stadium in the NFL. It holds the Guinness World Record for the loudest crowd roar at 142.2 decibels, which is equivalent to the sound of a jet engine.

[3:09] Chiefs fans are encouraged by displays on the video screen, the stadium announcer, and even the players themselves on the field to shout as loud as we can while the other team is on offense.

[3:26] NFL quarterbacks receive play calls through a hearing piece in their helmet, and they relay that call, that play, to their teammates on the field.

[3:38] Sometimes they change the play after everyone lines up because the quarterback sees something in the defense that they can exploit, and so they change a receiver's route, or they see that the defense is lined up in a way that will make the play called not effective, and so they'll try to change it at the line of scrimmage.

[3:58] And so the fans get loud to disrupt all of that communication, making it harder for the opposing team to hear their quarterback's calls and his cadence. The fans' participation gives the home team, the Chiefs in this case, an advantage, and Chiefs fans take a lot of pride in that.

[4:19] There are some places, like football games, where the expectation is for people to be loud, for people to get loud. Concerts, festivals, parades, amusement parks, rallies are examples of places where it's acceptable for people to be loud.

[4:36] There are places and events where the expectation is the opposite, places where you're expected to be quiet. Libraries, bookstores, museums, hospitals, funerals, and cemeteries.

[4:51] People are annoyed when someone is loud in a quiet place, and they're sometimes annoyed when someone is quiet in a loud place, wondering why they're not having fun with everybody else.

[5:04] Most people, I think, put church in the category of quiet place. There's good reason for that. Quiet communicates reverence.

[5:17] It helps maintain focus on God and prayer and the reading and the teaching of His Word. But the church building isn't to always be a quiet place.

[5:31] We expect the building to be noisy on Wednesday nights when our young people gather for Awana and youth group. And if you attend the Bible study, the adult Bible study downstairs, while the kids are having their game time in the fellowship upstairs, you know what I'm talking about.

[5:47] It sounds like a herd of elephants is storming through our church. But you get used to it over time, and hopefully you're thankful for that noise because it means that we've got a lot of kids in our church who are learning about the Lord.

[6:03] And while Sunday morning is a sacred time, a time when we gather in this place to worship the Lord, I think in our culture, in our context, we tend to feel that the sanctuary, this room we gather to worship, must always be a quiet place.

[6:22] Psalm 33, like all the psalms, is a song of praise. It's a loud psalm. The first word in the psalm is shout. Shout for joy in the Lord, O righteous.

[6:34] Verse 3 ends with the instruction for musicians to accompany shouts of praise with loud shouts from their instruments. God should be worshiped with loud singing accompanied by loud music that is played skillfully.

[6:49] That's important. But now I ask you, is that how you worship? Is that how we worship as a congregation?

[7:02] I'm not suggesting at all that our worship service should be more like a football game or a concert. But this psalm prompts us to examine the passion and the motivation behind our worship of God.

[7:17] It encourages us to draw inspiration from the information He has revealed about Himself in His Word, helping us to express the joy that we have in Him through our worship of Him.

[7:34] So the main idea for this morning's sermon is that the only being worthy of your worship is God, your Creator. The only being worthy of your worship is God, your Creator.

[7:46] Psalm 33 is closely connected with Psalm 32. In fact, in 10 Hebrew manuscripts, these two psalms are combined into one. Psalm 32, if you remember from last week, is about the blessing and the joy experienced by those whom God has forgiven.

[8:05] David ends Psalm 32 with a command, Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart. Psalm 33 repeats that same command with almost the exact same language.

[8:20] God has ordained the placement of these two psalms to communicate the reality of His forgiveness and the joy that comes from being forgiven by Him.

[8:34] And again, I ask you, is this truth a reality that is communicated in how you worship the Lord? Is it communicated in how we worship?

[8:49] When visitors and guests worship with us, do they see and hear us expressing the joy of our salvation to God in our worship?

[9:02] If they observed us cheering for our favorite sports team or enjoying a concert by our favorite musician or engaging in some other fun activity, would they notice how we seem to come more alive in those moments, showing a passion for those interests that seem to surpass our passion for God, our Creator in worship?

[9:27] In Revelation chapter 2 through 3, Jesus dictates letters to the churches in Asia Minor. The first letter is to the church in Ephesus. He begins by commending them for their faithful commitment to His Word, their ability to discern and expose false teachers and their perseverance in remaining loyal to Him despite the persecution and the hostility that they encountered for their faith.

[9:56] But in verses 4 through 5, He gives a rebuke to them with a warning. And I want you to see that. Jesus says, But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

[10:10] Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

[10:22] The Christians in Ephesus were passionate for the truth, but their passion for the one who is the source of truth had grown cold and unloving.

[10:33] And so Jesus called them to repent. Otherwise, He would remove their lampstand. They would cease to be His light in this world. If we aren't careful, we can fall into the same kind of cold, mechanical, passionless, loveless worship of the Lord by allowing other loves to lead us to abandon our first love.

[10:59] Psalm 33 is the song of the forgiven. It's a call to worship the one who is truly worthy of our praise because of His great love for us to forgive us of our great sin.

[11:15] If your worship and your passion for the Lord has grown cold this morning, I pray that the Holy Spirit will use this psalm to fan into flame your passion for the Lord and to worship Him because He is the only being truly worthy of your worship.

[11:39] The God who created you and recreates you through faith in His eternal Son, the Word of God, Jesus Christ, is worthy of your praise. Psalm 33 is a passionate song of worship composed for those whom God has been gracious to forgive and to redeem.

[11:59] If you're here this morning and you are not a Christian, again, we're glad that God has brought you here. He's brought you here, friend, to hear His Word and to place before you the joy of His salvation.

[12:13] And I hope today is the day that He calls you to experience that joy and that you will know the only being who is worthy of your worship is the God of the Bible who created you and who created everything.

[12:33] This psalm answers three questions about worship. It tells us who to worship, it tells us why we should worship and what results when our worship is directed to the one who is worthy of our worship.

[12:48] Verses 1 through 3 are a call to worship the Lord. These verses communicate the truth that you are called to worship God, your Creator. You are called to worship.

[13:00] Verse 1, Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise befits the upright. The removal of the bone-wasting, strength-sapping hand of God from those who try to hide their sin from Him is met here with a shout for joy.

[13:21] The psalm begins with a sense of relieved praise and gratitude, like a child who is no longer grounded or a prisoner who is set free.

[13:31] The psalmist expresses the joy of knowing that when He uncovered His sin, God forgave Him and covered His sin for Him.

[13:43] As I mentioned last week, in salvation, God zeroes out our sin debt to Him and He attributes Jesus' righteous life to us. We are guilty, but He declares us innocent.

[13:56] He makes us right with Him and righteous in His sight. So praising Him in ways that express the joy of that sweet release are warranted. Have you ever been released of a burden?

[14:12] Maybe it was a final loan payment. Maybe it was a project that you were doing at work or at home, or maybe it was a test or an assignment at school that you finished.

[14:24] And when it was over, you felt relieved and maybe you even shouted for joy. I flunked out of college my freshman year. I had to make up those classes in the summer and even still, I was behind schedule to graduate.

[14:41] In my fifth year of college, I discovered that two classes that I needed to graduate were taught by one professor who was taking a year's sabbatical, which meant that I had to return for a sixth year.

[14:59] Fifth year, seniors are called super seniors. Sixth year, seniors are rare, and we're called super duper seniors. At least that's what I told myself.

[15:11] But I remember going to those classes and students who had seen me for four years or more would give me this look like, why are you still here?

[15:22] What are you doing here? It was embarrassing. And when the last class was over and I passed those classes and I got a call from my school saying that they had my diploma for me, I drove up there with Danny, who I was dating at the time.

[15:40] I went into the office. I got my diploma. I walked out of the building and through the campus with my diploma, I raised it over my head.

[15:50] And I was singing and I was shouting and I don't remember what I was singing and what I was shouting, but it was a decent walk to the car and I just held that thing over my head.

[16:01] And I'm a reserved person. If you know me, I'm pretty reserved. But I didn't care who saw me. I didn't care who heard me.

[16:12] I was thinking, I'll never see these people ever again. It was over. It was done. It was finished. I didn't know at the time that the Lord would send me to seminary and then on to a doctorate, but at the time, it was finished and I couldn't hold the joy in.

[16:33] It had to come out. This is the same sort of excited, undignified shout that is described in verse 1. What could cause the psalmist to call for this kind of joyful, heartfelt commotion?

[16:51] It's knowing God, the love of God, to forgive sinners and release them from the earthly and eternal consequences of sin.

[17:03] It's the joy of Christians who know what Jesus meant when from the cross, as he was dying, he cried out, it is finished before he died. In Jesus, it is finished means our greatest enemies are finished.

[17:19] Sin, Satan, and death. It's the joy of knowing that our sins are atoned for, completely atoned for. It's the joy in knowing that we have peace with God through the blood Jesus shed on the cross, dying in our place for our sins.

[17:36] It's the joy of knowing that Jesus isn't finished. On the third day, he rose again just as he said that he would and he's seated at the right hand of God the Father right now, interceding on our behalf.

[17:51] It's the joy in knowing that the work he began in us is a work that he will one day finish. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, when we are glorified with him and like him and we're in heaven where there will be no more sin, no more pain, no more death, no more sorrow, no more shame.

[18:13] God is worthy of our worship because of what he's done for us. And so naturally, we should praise him proudly and loudly.

[18:25] Verses 2 through 3 say, sing to him with the harp on 10 strings. Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. The psalmist calls for loud, joyful music that is befitting of or proper for godly, upright people.

[18:46] It's proper for worship to be accompanied by instruments. Now, some Christians, the Church of Christ in particular, think it's wrong to use musical instruments in church.

[18:59] They say that the New Testament doesn't command or prescribe the use of instruments in church. Which is strange to me because the New Testament doesn't command us not to use instruments in church.

[19:11] In Ephesians 5, 19, Paul instructs Christians to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. It would be strange if Paul wanted them to address each other with psalms but not do what the psalms say.

[19:30] which is to shout to the Lord and to sing praises to Him with instruments. We should worship loudly and proudly with instruments that are played skillfully.

[19:42] We're also encouraged to sing a new song. At one time, our old hymns were new songs. In the 16th century, Martin Luther wrote new songs as God worked through the Protestant Reformation.

[19:59] In the 18th century, Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley wrote new songs that fueled the worship during the Great Awakening. In the 19th century, Fanny Crosby wrote new songs for her generation.

[20:13] Today, people like the Gettys and Matt Boswell and others are writing new songs for a new generation of believers whom God has been gracious to save. Writing new songs doesn't mean that we forget the old songs.

[20:26] But when a new generation experiences God's grace, Scripture encourages them to write new songs of praise to the Lord for their generation.

[20:39] And now, I need to step aside and say something that is on my heart. And I'm talking to our younger generations. We need you, young man.

[20:52] We need you, young woman, to produce new songs. We need you to produce new literature, new art that promotes biblical truth.

[21:05] If God has gifted you creatively, I encourage you to pour those gifts into art that promote biblical truth for your generation. In doing so, you will be performing an act of worship to God.

[21:19] Your generation needs better art. They need art that promotes truth, not lies. Now, I'll step back into this.

[21:32] We are called to worship, and our worship should be enthusiastic. In verse 3, loud shouts can be translated as war cry or cry of alarm.

[21:44] When used for praising God, it communicates the kind of energy, emotion, and enthusiasm that is befitting of our King, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our personalities are different.

[21:55] Some people worship with their hands held high. Some people worship with their hands in front. Some people, like me, worship with their hands behind their back or to their side.

[22:07] Some people say amen when they hear something, some biblical truth that they agree with. Others utter a deep, guttural, mmm. We need to allow each other and encourage each other to respond to the truth and beauty of Jesus Christ according to the way that He has made and wired each one of us.

[22:32] God hears a quiet groan as clearly as He hears a shout. But don't be a distraction. Don't take the focus off of where it needs to be and put it on yourself.

[22:46] You are called to worship the Lord. Sing loudly and proudly, expressing your gratitude to your Creator who made you and who saved you. Now, why should you worship the Lord?

[22:58] In verses 4 through 19, we receive our cause to worship, your cause to worship. In verses 4 through 19, again, the psalmist gives three reasons or causes to worship God.

[23:10] The first is God's Word. Verses 3 through 7, again, say, For the Lord is upright and His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice.

[23:21] The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of His mouth all of their host. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap.

[23:32] He puts the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm.

[23:45] True worship grows out of doctrine rooted in the truth of God's Word. The songs we sing, write, and perform must be informed by the Word of God and inspired by the work of God.

[24:04] Everything that He says, everything that He does as according as He's revealed in His Word.

[24:16] And you know, songs help us learn, don't they? We teach our children the alphabet through the ABCs. You guys know that song?

[24:27] It's no different with the songs that we sing when we worship the Lord. They teach. They instruct. They help us remember biblical truth. They help us remember theology.

[24:40] Our church is committed to sing songs that promote biblical truth and hopefully implant that truth into your heart and into your mind. I've seen, and I'm sure that you've maybe seen too, the heartache of watching a believer with Alzheimer's.

[24:58] songs. They can't remember the names of their loved ones, but they remember the hymns that they sing in church. Songs are powerful teaching instruments.

[25:13] And so, sing worship songs in your home. When we do chores around the house or have quiet time, Danny will often play worship music in the background. Play worship music in your car, when you work out, or when you have downtime.

[25:29] I play a few worship songs in my office on Sunday morning before I come up here to preach to you. It puts my mind and it puts my heart in the right place. Some of those songs make me cry.

[25:41] I don't listen to those songs while I'm in the gym. Some pump me up. They energize my spirit, but make sure that those songs that you're listening to communicate biblical truth because a lot of them unfortunately don't.

[25:58] And so, you need to know your Bible so that you can discern the truth from error. In verses 10 through 12, the reason or cause we have to worship God is His sovereign will. Just as His word will stand, so will He achieve what He purposes.

[26:13] Again, those verses say, the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the people. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage.

[26:29] The Bible says that God chose the nation of Israel through whom He would bring the promised Messiah. He promised to provide, bless, and protect the Israelites if they followed Him.

[26:48] But the Old Testament gives us the heartbreaking details of what happened to God's chosen people when they repeatedly turned from Him. But God always preserved a remnant.

[27:02] And you know, many nations from antiquity no longer exist today. Many empires have risen and have fallen. But the nation of Israel continues to exist today despite past and present attempts to annihilate it.

[27:21] When I read Scripture, especially passages like Romans 11, I see that God still has plans for Israel. In the immediate context, in Psalm 33, the psalmist encourages his people, the nation of Israel, to worship God only, that they will be blessed by Him.

[27:41] We aren't Israel. We are the church. But we are commanded in 1 Timothy 2, verse 2, to pray for all people, for kings, and for those in high positions.

[27:54] These are those who we're also to pray for, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet, godly, and dignified life in every way. Our leaders can affect the conditions we live in, which have an impact on our families, our churches, our workplace, our cities, our nation, and our world.

[28:14] When those in authority are obeying the will of God, it is easier for us to live peaceful and quiet lives. And we're called to pray for them.

[28:25] Well, how should we pray for them? Well, I think a great place to start is to pray for their salvation if they're not already saved. Pray that God would save them.

[28:35] Pray that God will guide them. Pray that they will seek God's will. Because we know what Romans 1 says. Romans 1, 18 through 32 tells us what happens to a nation when it rejects God's word and it rejects God's will.

[28:51] It's not good. As Christians, our true citizenship is in heaven, but we are commanded to be Christ's light to the world. We are commanded as citizens of heaven to serve as Christ's ambassadors here and warn our communities about the consequences of rejecting Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

[29:14] Paul talks about that in 2 Corinthians 5, 20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.

[29:26] The book of Jeremiah is primarily about the judgment of Judah for their unrepentant and their rampant idolatry. God would discipline them by raising up the nation of Babylon to conquer them and to deport them from their nation to the capital of Babylon.

[29:46] And this was a severe mercy of God because while in captivity, his people would learn to stop worshiping idols. But while they were there, they were commanded by God to seek the welfare of their captive nation.

[30:03] Jeremiah 29, 7. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

[30:15] Does the same principle not apply for Christians today? Should we not pray for salvations? Should we not use our freedom and our nation to share the gospel and to warn people about the consequences of rejecting the gospel and promoting good things and godly things in our church and in our culture?

[30:36] How else can we fulfill our Lord's command to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth? Ultimately, what happens here happens under the sovereign will of God.

[30:49] Nothing happens outside of God's sovereign will, outside of God's sovereign plan. And so, we have a reason to worship the Lord for that. We shouldn't live in fear because God is incomplete in control and God pays attention to everything.

[31:04] He's watchful which is the third cause for us to worship Him. Verses 13 through 19. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man from where He sits and throned.

[31:16] He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the heart of them and observes their deeds, the king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not saved by his great strength.

[31:28] The war horse is a false hope of salvation and by its might it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

[31:43] God's eyes are on everyone. He knows everything. He knows everything you do and He knows why you do it. As we saw in Psalm 32, all the sins that you try to hide will be exposed by God.

[32:01] Whatever you are trusting in for rescue, for a sense of peace, for hope, for salvation, if it's not the God of the Bible, the God who gave His life to atone for your sins and cover you with His righteousness, then you have no hope.

[32:20] Only God has the power to defeat our enemies, sin, Satan, and death. And He did so by sending His Son, the Word of God, who added a human nature to His divine nature.

[32:41] Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, heaven's holy warrior, came to deliver your soul from the enemies that you could not defeat.

[32:57] God's desire is to forgive you, to redeem you, to restore you by removing your sins from you, your sins which have incurred His holy wrath.

[33:13] Hebrews 2, 14-15 says of Jesus, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, speaking of Jesus, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

[33:34] If God has been gracious to save you, He's freed you from slavery to sin through faith in Jesus Christ, His Son and our Lord.

[33:46] The burden of your sin is lifted by Him. Jesus has set you free. And again, that's cause to worship Him, isn't it?

[34:00] When you know who you are called to worship, when you understand why He is worthy of your worship, the result is confidence in this life as you patiently await the life to come.

[34:17] And so third, we see there's confidence to come from worship, your confidence from worship. Again, verses 20 through 22. Our soul waits for the Lord.

[34:29] He is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in Him because we trust in His holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us even as we hope in you.

[34:42] Worship produces stronger faith. If you worship in spirit and in truth on Sunday, you are strengthened for the week ahead. And this is my prayer for our church, that you will be equipped for the work of the ministry and that our worship plays a big part in that for you.

[35:04] That Sunday after Sunday as we obey God's commands to not forsake gathering together as a local body of believers in this place, we wait together for the Lord.

[35:16] We do that by reading God's word, by teaching God's word, by proclaiming God's word, by talking about God's word, by singing God's word, by meditating on God's word, seeking to be a congregation that is built on God's word.

[35:31] We stand together in Christ who has made our hearts glad in the truth. We trust in His holy name. We celebrate His steadfast love.

[35:45] We continue to have hope in a world that is hopeless. We continue to worship our Creator who saves us, sustains us, sanctifies us, and saturates our minds and our souls and our hearts with the reality of who He is and what He's done by the indwelling of His Spirit.

[36:03] Brother, sister, of all people in this world that God created, you and I have more reason than any to sing, to shout, to lift our heads and our hands with glad hearts because of our God's steadfast love.

[36:29] Amen. Amen. And so, how should we adjust to what we've heard? Worship God consistently. Worship Him consistently.

[36:43] God has created us. We are living sacrifices to the Lord every day of every moment of our life. We should be worshiping Him consistently. And worship isn't just singing.

[36:54] It's obedience to what God has commanded in His Word. It's obedience to do what He says and to share the truth and the reality of who He is.

[37:06] And of all people in this world, again, we should be the happiest, the most joyful because we know Jesus Christ and we know what He's done for us.

[37:22] And if you're here this morning, you've heard the gospel. You've heard who Jesus is. You've heard what Jesus has done, what He's done for you and He commands you to come to Him, to repent of your sins, to turn to Him in faith and you will be saved.

[37:38] And you, you will have a joy unlike any other. When you experience for the first time that sweet release, that forgiveness, the joy that comes after your grief over your sin and that stays with you through everything that you go in life, knowing that you are united with Christ and there is nothing that can remove His steadfast love from you.

[38:02] As I was finishing this sermon, I thought of a song that we used to sing as kids in my church growing up. And you've probably sung it too.

[38:15] And it goes something like this and I'm not going to sing the first part. But it's what we teach our kids about the joy of the Lord. And this song goes, I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

[38:31] Where? Down in my heart. Down in my heart. I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

[38:43] Down in my heart to stay. And what? And I'm so happy, so very happy. I've got the love of Jesus in my heart.

[38:56] And I'm so happy, so very happy. I have the love of Jesus in my heart. That's the last time you're probably going to ever hear me audibly sing.

[39:10] And what's the second part? And if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack. Ouch! Sit on a tack. Ouch!

[39:21] Alright, that's enough. But you know what I'm trying to say. We teach our kids about the joy of knowing Jesus Christ and the happiness that comes from that and when they worship with us, when they worship with you mom, when they worship with you dad, when they worship with you grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt, friend, they should see that the songs that we teach them are a reality.

[39:46] We're so happy. we have the love of Jesus in our heart. Let's pray. Lord, you and you alone are worthy of our worship.

[40:07] You are our creator. You made all things. You are our recreator. Lord, you in your grace have chosen to forgive us, lead us to repentance and faith in your son, Jesus Christ.

[40:22] You recreate us through the indwelling of your spirit who continually works in us to sanctify us, completing the work that you began until that one day comes when it is finished and we're with you in paradise, glorified as you are.

[40:38] But Lord, until that time comes and we pray that it would come quickly, we know that we still have all the reason to be joyful, all the reason to be thankful and grateful and happy people because we've been saved from our sins.

[41:00] We have eternal life. We have experience. We have the steadfast love of you, oh God, and nothing can change that. And so Lord, I pray for us this morning having heard your truth in Psalm 33 that you would cause us to continue to meditate on the wonderful reality of who you are and the reality of who that makes us and the joy that it gives us.

[41:27] And so God, I pray that no matter what we're going on in life and Lord, we've read your word, you know you see everyone. You know every heart. You know every person. You know every struggle.

[41:37] You know every heartache. But yet God, you meet us in those times and you remind us of the truth that you who save us are a God who sustains us, a God who keeps us and who will cause us to be with you in paradise one day where we will sing your praises forever.

[42:02] And so Lord, I pray that we would be the kind of people that you've empowered us to be happy and joyful.

[42:13] The true joy because we know the great joy of who Jesus is and what he's done for us. And God, may we worship you in that joy. May we communicate the reality of who you are with others joyfully because we have a love unlike any other love.

[42:32] The steadfast love of you. And we thank you for it. And we pray that you would be glorified in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.