No Rivals (Psalm 97)

No Rivals (Psalm 97)

PODCAST NO RIVALS July 12, 2026 | Lucas Burkamper Shane Dickinson reflects on the importance of remembering God’s reign, using Psalm 97 as a guide. He recalls childhood experiences with substitute teachers and draws parallels to the human tendency to forget God’s rule. The Psalm emphasizes that the Lord reigns, highlighting His power and justice. The speaker connects this to Jesus, the eternal King, who offers life and redemption. He urges believers to reject idols, reflect God’s character, and rejoice in His reign. Believers can affirm the need to battle internal struggles and to prioritize God’s rule over worldly distractions. TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+ The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. Good morning, church. Hey, good morning, everybody. While you are here with us, do me a favor and turn in your Bible to Psalm 97. That will be this mornings’ scripture, Psalm 97. And while you’re turning there, let me take you back in time, maybe for some more years than others, but to growing up in school. Now, not everybody in the room universally loves the educational experience. This is understandable, but I think all of us can agree that the best day of the year or the best days of the year were when you had a substitute teacher, right? I don’t know what it is about substitutes, but for some reason, when they walk in the room, everything we’ve learned just goes away. See, I’m a teacher, and I have been for a couple of years. Shout out to the teachers that are in the room. And what I’ve come to understand is that a classroom is this delicate ecosystem that’s held together by scissors, tape, glue, but mostly by a teacher who understands, who just knows, who has a sixth sense about them to understand what’s going to be an issue and when it may erupt. But when a substitute takes over, all bets are off. In fact, I can remember my own experience. This might be hard for you to believe, or for some of you who’ve known me for any length of time, we’ll hear amen in a moment. I love to talk. I, I love to talk. It’s just it’s who I’ve been my whole life, and thankfully, teachers that I have understood this and were able to help me develop a system where I wasn’t blurting out or saying everything that came to my mind to give other people a chance to speak. But when the substitute came in the room, Shane was going to be talking. There was one time in particular, and it sticks in my memory to this day, that I had gotten to the end of the day and my name had been written on the board, and next to it was three check marks, and no, it wasn’t. Good job, great work, way to go. Hope you’re back tomorrow. It was for talking, but at the end of the day, I picked up my stuff. I made my way home. I enjoyed the rest of my day, and nothing happened. That was until the next day when the teacher of the classroom came back. See, I had made the mistake of believing that in the absence of the teacher, the rules that had been put in place, the expectations that had been given, had left with them, only to find out I was sourly mistaken. But I think we can give 10-year-old Shane the benefit of the doubt. Right? We’ve been there before. When we’re in school and we’re kids and we’re growing up, for some reason we’re barely able to think about the next period, let alone the next day, the next sentence, whatever it may be, we can give a little grace. But it’s my contention that it’s not just as schoolchildren that we find it difficult to remember. We find it difficult to prioritize that which matters most. We find it difficult to live in the expectation that we’ve been given, we struggle with this as believers too. At least I know that I do. Hopefully, I’m not in the room alone today. We struggle with this idea, and so our psalm this morning that we’re going to take a focus on Psalm 97 is going to help us for when we forget, it’s going to help us. For when we think a substitute’s in the room, we don’t need to worry about our behavior. It’s going to help remind us what to do as believers in this world today. Now, if you’ve been reading this week in preparation for our time together, the refrain of the psalm that we’re going to be going through is probably common to you at this point. The Lord reigns, like the chorus of a chart-topping hit. These three words represent what we’re hoping to remember as a result of our time together. If you remember nothing else in our time, remember today that the Lord reigns. It’s my hope that as we walk through the text, we’ll be able to see why this matters and how this changes our lives. But remember this: the Lord reigns. And like that song that we can’t get out of our head, like that memory that we can’t move past. I hope that this time together instills in us that this is the greatest of news ever, and we’re receiving this news at the most important time. See, you and I need this message today now more than ever. And before you tune me out, or before you get ahead of yourselves, it’s not because. The world’s in the worst place that it’s ever been. It’s not because the political divide that we see is unprecedented. It’s not even because we look at culture and say it’s too far beyond repair. No, you and I require this message today, not because of what is outside of us, but because of what is inside of us, see you and I have a battle that we wage every single day against something called the flesh, and we’ve been asked to put it to death in Christ. We’ve been made new, but we know on this side of eternity we still do battle with the flesh, and so this psalm, this time together, is is giving us what we need in order to battle and battle well. And so, if you’re ready to battle, I’m ready to battle, and let’s look together at what our battle plan will be. First, because the Lord reigns, we must rejoice in the king’s rule. Look with me, if you would, at the first six verses of our psalm, which state this: “The Lord reigns. Let the earth be glad. Let the distant shores rejoice. Cloud and thick darkness surround him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all people see his glory. The Lord reigns. Our psalm begins with these familiar words, which we’ve seen in our study so far. We talked back in Psalm 90-three that the Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty. Last week, Reeve talked about the fact that the Lord reigns. In a few weeks, we’ll see in Psalm 90-nine that the Lord reigns. Let the nations tremble. The Lord reigns. This refrain is repeated time and time again, not only in the Psalms that we’re looking at, but throughout the entirety of the Scripture. And so, it’s worth us asking a question in this moment. Why? Why do we have this refrain repeated so many times? And my belief, what I’m going to posit to you this morning is for two reasons. Number one, it’s because it’s a really important idea. And number two, it’s because we are prone as people to forget this truth, if we don’t remind one another regularly, and with something this important, we cannot afford to forget the Lord reigns. Now, the Lord’s status as reigning ruler in our text shouldn’t be a surprise because we’ve seen throughout the entirety of Scripture, even in the beginning of Scripture, that He has been ruling since the beginning of time. He created the world and everything in it, and the psalmist tells us that His rule, which has existed forever, goes far beyond the walls of Eden, goes past the kingdoms of Israel, and encompasses the entirety of the world. The Lord reigns, and the distant shores are even to rejoice. The reign of the Lord has not simply been seen, though, through His creation, but as our psalm shows us, has been established throughout the history of the nation of Israel, because in our second verse it says that clouds and thick darkness surround Him. and it’s more than likely in this moment that the psalmist here is referencing the nation of Israel, when the nation of Israel had come to Mount Sinai, and the presence of God had dwelt on the mountain. Take a look at what it says in the book of Exodus when it says to us that Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. This Lord who reigns, and He reigns in power. Our psalm continues by saying that the Lord’s rule is seen as fire that goes before Him and consumes His foes on every side. It’s seen as lightning which lights up the world, for the earth sees it and trembles, and it’s seen that the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. Fire, lightning, melting mountains. This is the way that the rule of the Lord is described to us. Showing us that it’s definite, showing us that it’s powerful, showing us that it’s all-encompassing. Anything that stands in opposition to this reign is powerless and destroyed. The Lord reigns, and it is so. And it’s about this time in our text, where it’s worth us asking the question, is this good news? Because I I don’t know about you, but when I think of fire, when I think of melting mountains, when I think of lightning, I I don’t think of courage. I don’t think of peace. If anything, I think of anxiety, fear, worry. Is this good news? Well, it’s easy for us to miss through the fire, the lightning, and the melting mountains, but the psalmist recounts in this section that there is hope that you and I require for this reality to turn from fear to rejoicing. Look again at verse two, where it says, “This clouds and thick darkness surround him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. The Lord’s reign is established in power, but it’s built on a reality that he is righteous and he is just, and this is a foundation of his throne, this is the foundation with which his throne is built on. And so, when we see this throne that exists, a question remains: Who sits on a throne? Who sits on a throne? A king. A king sits on the throne. Sure, the nation of Israel that received this psalm, us as Bible reading believers have read and have countless examples of kings, whether it be Saul or David or Solomon, just to name a few. But each of these kings led kingdoms that had some success, but ultimately failed, ultimately fell short, and ultimately faltered, but this doesn’t seem to be a throne for those kings. No, this seems to be a throne for a king who was prophesied about. He was prophesied to David, saying that your house, David, and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, this is a throne for a king who, earlier in the Psalms, is described as having a throne that would last forever and ever, with a scepter of justice that will be the scepter of his kingdom. For he loves righteousness. That king has a name, and that king’s name is Jesus. This throne. throne that awaits? This throne for the King that rules over all the earth is taken by Jesus, because His reign, though it began in a manger and continued through an earthly residing, was punctuated by His life-giving victory over sin and was written in stone as he walked out of the grave, and he is the reason that you and I this morning can rejoice in the Lord’s rule. We can rejoice because Jesus’s rule and reign has as its focus the redemption of those who had once been called foes, and his reign transforms those who had been foes through the sacrifice of his blood, overcoming the power of sin, so that you and I may be saved. The rule of the Lord was established in the beginning of time, and through Jesus, it was extended to those who trust and believe in the sacrificial King, who exists eternally to make this good news. This is a king who we can rejoice in. This is a king who we can give praise to. This is a rule that we can rejoice in, because his reign is perfect. As Charles Spurgeon states, when thinking about the rule of the Lord, and maybe to be helpful to us this morning, he says that absolute power is safe in the hands of him who cannot err or act unrighteously. That is our King. He is reigning, and it is him that we can say the Lord reigns. May we rejoice in his rule. May we rejoice in the rule of our King Jesus, for it gives us all that we need, and we are going to say thank you as we begin rejoicing. But the psalm doesn’t stop there. In fact, the psalm continues: If we are to rejoice in the rule of the Lord, we must also then reject every rival. Look with me at the next three verses, starting in verse seven. Says this: All who worship images are put to shame. Those who boast in idols worship him, all you gods, for Zion hears and rejoices, and the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments, Lord. For you, Lord, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. Gods, the Lord reigns, and our rejoicing in this reality requires that you and I would begin some action, participate in transformation, and pursue change. The psalms’ words here turn to a warning, and it’s a reminder for those who are seeking to rejoice in the rule of the Lord that all who spend their time worshiping images are put to shame. Of course, in the presence of the Lord, who’s this powerful reigning king that we’ve seen, how could anything or anyone stand in comparison? The text tells us that those who put their faith in images are put to shame, and it’s here where we run the risk again of tuning out, because it’s very unlikely that when we’re done this morning, you’re going to go home to an idol that you’ve made and offer worship and praise or say, “Hey, thanks for the day. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to go home and pray to an unknown deity who you don’t know the name of. But it’s not unknown, and it’s not unlikely. In fact, it’s extremely likely that you and I, as we go through our day, even as we end our time together, have in our lives idols that are vying for our attention, have in our lives rivals who are seeking to take our focus off of rejoicing in the reign of the Lord. If you don’t believe me, we have been given a lie detector test that shows this to be true, I have it here with me. Maybe you have it in your pocket, but it’s your phone. See, your phone tells the story of the idols in your life that exist, possibly in distracting you from the rule of the Lord. Maybe even as I’ve been talking, you’ve been feeling the buzz in your pocket. The well, the World Cup’s off today, so I don’t. Maybe it’s not that, but other things are happening too. Maybe as you walked in this morning, you took a look at your phone and you checked your banking app, and it’s the banking app that knows your. You know the password well. You don’t have to even you know put it in. It’s got the face ID, and and you you check it often. You check it often, in fact, because you’re saving and hoping and and believing that something is going to come out of it. But it’s gotten to a place where it’s become an idol, because when we look at the number, when we look at is there enough? Do I have enough? Am I able to afford this or that? This lifestyle, this experience, this car, this trip, often it comes back as our focus, but maybe it’s not your banking app. Maybe for you it’s social media. On social media, you’ve curated this perfect profile that people see you and say, “Wow, that guy’s great, and he’s going on these trips and he’s going to these places and he believes these things. He’s the best. That’s a rival idol that exists in our life. Maybe it’s the news, making sure you’re staying up to date, making sure you know everything that’s happening, everything that’s said, every event that occurs, so that someone can come to you and hear your knowledge. You could just give it to them and espouse everything you have to say-that’s a rival idol. And so you and I may not have an image made of stone, but we have images that we’ve made ourselves. I want to be rich enough. I want to be smart enough. I want people to like me. These are rival idols that stand in the way of our ability to rejoice in the rule and reign of our God, and what’s funny is the psalmist goes as far as to say that those who are the idols in which we worship, they are commanded to bow before the Lord as well. So just think about that for a moment. The things that we so often are putting our faith, our hope, and our trust in are commanded by the Lord to bow before Him. May we turn our attention from that which so often keeps us awake at night, that which we are trying to create for ourselves, and turn that attention instead to the rule and reign of our King, the Scriptures provide an example for us of this idea of idols. In case we need more to go off of, First Samuel five, the Philistines have taken the Ark of the Covenant, and. They take the Ark of the Covenant. They’re taking the very dwelling place that God had set up with them, and they get a good idea. Let’s see what the Philistines do. They say after the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the Ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day. There was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. They took Dagon and put him back in his place. But the following morning, when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. See, in the presence of the actual God, a false God falls to his face in worship and adoration to the king. The same is true not only of Dagon, not only of other gods, but is true of the things that you and I prioritize in our life. When put before the Lord, they fall on their face and worship because they understand that they have been given by the Lord. We know that not no amount of money in our life, no amount of gain that we have will be ever able to save us, will ever be able to keep us from disease, will ever able to keep us from death. Yet we put our trust in it continuously. We know that no matter how strong we may be, how gifted we we may become, it will not give us anything of eternal satisfaction. Here, the psalmist is saying, “Set aside your rival idols; reject every rival, because they pale in comparison to our God. The scriptures go on to say in our section here, verse nine: For you, Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods. In 1941, baseball fans were treated to some of the greatest baseball ever played. Now, if you’re a historian of any kind, at least on the diamond, you will know that 1941 was the year of Joe DiMaggio and the year of Ted Williams. In 1941, Joe DiMaggio had a hit streak of 56 games, which at the time and since has been determined as probably the hardest record in sports to break. No one’s come close, but not to be outdone, Ted Williams, also known for his skill with the bat, finished the 1941 season hitting with an average over 400. Again, like DiMaggio, something that had not been done since, and if you know anything about baseball today, is surely something that will never be done again. At the end of the season, they give out an award called Most Valuable Player, and it’s to go to the individual who is clearly the best, the greatest, the reason their team is successful, and in 1941 they had an issue. Who deserved it? The unbreakable streak or the unbreakable record? It came down to two deserving contestants that ultimately had to be determined by a vote, but none of them, neither of them could say that one had earned it and the other hadn’t. Such is not the case with our God. Our God didn’t happen to win a popularity contest just barely. No, our text shows us that He wins triumphantly and is greater and over and better than all. He is the Most High God, and no one comes close to Him. He he wasn’t a part of a television show where he was hoping to not be eliminated, that he wasn’t booted off the island, or that enough of America had voted for him. No, our God is a God who is the Most High, and as the Most High, He rules eternally, and no rival comes in comparison. No rival touches our God. The Lord is established as greater than every rival idol that exists, and you and I can see the reminder of this in Jesus Christ. We are reminded of this reality time and time again. See, because Jesus, when He’s on Earth, speaks that the thief comes only to steal, to kill, and destroy, but what does he say that he’s done? He’s come so that you and I might have life, and have it to the full. Jesus states during his ministry that he is the way, he is the truth, he is the life. No one comes to the Father except through him, and he also says that he’s the bread of life. And that whoever comes to him will not go hungry, and whoever believes in him will not be thirsty. You and I can reject every rival as we realize and respond to the invitation that Jesus provides us on a daily basis. He wants to show us and remind us that he is so much better than the idols we seek. Your rival, I. idols come to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus has come so that you may have life and have it to the full. So choose Jesus, whether it be your mind, whether it be my personality, whether it be our ability or strength, our accomplishments, our resume-all of it did not, all of it has not, and all of it will not be able to save. In fact, all that it will be able to do is bring us to shame. But Jesus promises that He will not put us to shame. Jesus promises that He will give us life and life to the full. Jesus promises that He will give us hope that is everlasting. Jesus promises that if we eat His bread, we’ll never be hungry again. Your money will run out. Your fame will run short. The image that we have created for ourselves will eventually die away. But the hope of the Lord reigns forever. Paul states this idea to us in Ephesians when addressing the church of Ephesus, for he says that the Lord is far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come, that is our God, who rules and reigns. How could we ever see fit to ascribe praise to any rival? Now it’s in this moment that we need to pause and ask ourselves, what do we do with the rivals that we have? I have two suggestions for places we can begin. First, you and I-we need to be honest about the rival idols that exist in our lives. If we are not honest, we are not able to see their power go away. You and I need to be honest about our rival idols. Maybe it’s the dream job, but if that comes at the expense of your family’s ability to participate in the local church, to be in community, it’s a rival idol that needs to be gone away with. Maybe it’s providing for our children, your children, the opportunity to have every experience to be on this team or that team. If it gets in the way of personal family worship, it’s a rival idol that is keeping you from the Lord and rejoicing in His reign. Secondly, you and I need to be fervent and repetitive in our rejoicing to the Lord for all that He provides. See, this is a psalm. This is a song that’s being sung. The Lord reigns, and this was something that was handed down through generations. As we read this text, we are not the first, nor shall we be the last, to see these words and to proclaim them in our life, and it’s important that we understand that because it means that this has been shared from generation to generation. Remember what the Lord has done. The Lord reigns throughout the entirety of the nation of Israel’s life and time. The Lord reminded them, “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. I am the God who parted the seas. I am the God who provided you manna when you were wandering, and he does this not to hold it over their head, but to remind them of the gifts that he has given, so they would pass it on to the next generation and never forget. And so you and I have this responsibility as well. We need to be fervent and repetitive in the grace that we’ve received from the Lord and share it with others. There’s a restaurant that does this particularly well. It’s a moderately well-known chicken restaurant. You might have heard of it before. You may have even been there. My only recommendation: don’t try and go after church today. They’ll be closed. Chick-fil-A. When you order at Chick Fil A, when you ask for extra sauce, when you say thank you on your way out of the door, what are you assured to hear from the worker? Let’s try one more time. What are you assured to hear from the worker? Ah, you’ve been to this place before. I thought it was just me. Now, in every opportunity, this slogan is given, and the reason it’s given is because the company has decided that this is an important reality that those who come into their restaurant would know that it is the joy and pleasure of the restaurant to serve. If we take away from the chicken and instead put ourselves. Think to yourself and ask, what would people say your slogan is? What would people say you attribute your success to? When someone comes to you and gives you praise, when someone comes to you and says, “Great job, when someone comes to you and asks how you were able to do this or that or make it all work together, what do you say? Or let’s move from just an individual to the church. When people hear the name Cityview Community Church, what do they say about our church? All the pastors have no hair. No, that’s not what they say. No, what do they say about our church? It’s our hope that they say in that moment that church loves Jesus, and they prioritize the gospel. It is the most important thing in the world. That’s our hope. We want that to be our slogan. We want that to be the slogan of our community. We want that to be the slogan of our family. We want that to be the slogan of ourselves, that we can rejoice in the Lord. The Lord reigns, and as we rejoice in His reign, we must see to it that we reject every rival that attempts to stand in our way of rejoicing in Him. Third, because the Lord reigns, we must seek to reflect the king’s character. Take a look with me, if you would, at the first part of verse 10, which states this: Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for He guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the wicked, from the hand of the wicked. The Lord reigns, and as you and I seek to rejoice in the reign of the Lord and reject the rival idols that vie for our attention and energy, you and I must seek to reflect the King’s character. For if we proclaim that He is our King, then our attitudes, our perspectives, and the manner in which we live must reflect that as well. It’s like what our parents always said when we were growing up: “You become who you surround yourself with. You become what you consume. You may not know this about me, but I’m a Cubs fan. See, you all knew it was coming. It wasn’t a matter of if; it was when. We got to the Cubs. Don’t worry. Now, I became a Cubs fan early in life, and when I became a fan, it was ingrained in me early on. If you are a fan of the Chicago Cubs, that means you are not a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. You can’t do both. I don’t understand. And so, what had to happen in my life was I had to make the choice. If I’m a fan of the Cubs, I have to. I’m happy when they win. I can’t be happy when the Cardinals win. It makes no sense. Why? Because I have said and I have stated I am a Cubs fan. I have 1000 hats. I have 100 shirts. I am a Cubs fan, and so my actions need to reflect that I am that fan. Or said another way, maybe you’ve said this before, that you want to get in shape. This is the year, and so you plan and you read and you do everything you can. You get the articles and the clothes and the the gear and everything like that. But another year goes by, and nothing’s changed. It’s not enough to say we want to do something. It’s not enough to say we are hoping to do something. We have to begin to do it. If I am a Cubs fan, I can’t cheer for the Cardinals. If I want to transform my body, I can’t continue to live as though nothing needs to change. The same is true of our God. We cannot make claims and not seek to live differently as a result. Consider the ministry of Jesus. What did He tell those he was speaking to throughout his time, sell your possessions and give them to the poor, for you have your treasure in heaven. Come and follow me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls. No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, or Paul, when he’s writing his epistles, he says, “Hey, put to death therefore that is earthly within you. Put off your old self. Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. If we say that we love the Lord, and if we want to say that we love the Lord, our lives then must reflect what we love through becoming like His character in our lives. For the Lord hates evil, and so as followers of Him, we should seek to hate evil as well. Because if we don’t, those rival idols that we talked about are only going to gain power and position in our lives, but how do we reflect the King’s character? Three thoughts as we continue. The first way we can reflect the King’s character and grow in our ability to do so is through asking for help and prayer. Jesus promised. He was ascending into heaven. That all power and authority had been given. That the very Spirit that had rose Christ from the dead is at work inside you and I. And so, as we seek to reflect the King’s character, it’s not about trying to do this and to stop doing this. It’s about trying to understand and embrace and live our lives as living sacrifices to the Lord, asking that He would move and change us. Secondly, we can reflect the king’s character by prioritizing knowing God through His Word. Knowing God through His Word, we can understand Him, and He can enlighten our hearts to see what it means to reflect His character. And then finally, we can reflect the King’s character through living in community with other believers, like we are right now. Because in this community, we can encourage, we can admonish, we can support one another. For this is a process that begins now and lasts a lifetime, but it is a process that you and I, as subjects of the King, do so with gladness, and we do not do so alone. May we reflect the King’s character. Finally, because the Lord reigns, we must seek to respond with the king’s joy. Let’s take a look at the final verses of our psalm as it draws to the close. We’re going to take the second half of verse 10 and finish it, where it says, “For he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light shines on the righteous and joy on the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous, and praise His holy name. Because the Lord reigns, we must respond with the king’s joy. This is good news. The reign of the Lord is good news. The Lord reigns, and this is a reason for joy. Look again at what the psalmist says. He says that the Lord will guard the lives of His faithful ones and deliver them from the hand of the wicked. The Lord shines His light on the righteous and His joy on the upright in heart. The Lord, whose reign is unmatched in scope, unmistakable in power, and unfathomable in glory, has promised you and I that He will guard and deliver His faithful ones from the hands of the wicked, now and throughout eternity. And so you and I can trust that He has done this and He will do this forever. And if we’re ever in a position where we’re struggling to trust this reality, we need not look any further than the cross of Calvary. For at the cross, the Lord revealed to us that He would guard the lives of His faithful ones, because He did not keep the life of the faithful one Jesus from seeing death. The Scriptures reveal to us that it was the will of God to crush him. The Scriptures tell us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and the Scriptures remind us that He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things, brother and sister. This morning, if you are seeking for a reason and a reminder to live with the King’s joy, remind yourself of the sacrifice that was made on your behalf, in order that you may be faithful and receive deliverance, Jesus. Christ. For whatever you may be experiencing, in whatever season you may find yourself, have confidence in this, and in so doing, take joy. The Lord reigns, and because of that reality, you and I are not put to shame. Rather, we are guarded and delivered in Christ, and so then joy is the only logical response of a heart that is fully secure in the King’s love, regardless of the chaos of the world around you. The Lord reigns, and we are safe in His hand, so let’s rejoice now, and rejoice we will. Let’s pray, Jesus. We come before you, and we are so thankful that you are the one who sits on the throne, for you are high above it all, you are over all, you are in all, and you have created in us a new beginning that is found in you, that we can see and say the Lord reigns, and because He reigns, we can have joy, and because He reigns, we can reflect His character, and because He reigns, we can reject rivals, and because He reigns, we can. Rejoice! Receive the rejoicing of our lips. Receive the worship of our hearts. Now we pray, God, in the name of Jesus, our reigning King. Amen.

Remembering God (Psalm 96)

PODCAST REMEMBERING GOD July 5, 2026 | Reeve Sam Reeve Sam emphasized the importance of remembering God’s sacrifices, particularly on Memorial Day, and the tendency of people to forget their spiritual roots due to busyness. The speaker highlighted Psalm 96, which calls for universal worship of Yahweh, the King who is God. The sermon contrasted idols with the true God, urging believers to worship Him for His holiness and sovereignty. It underscored the joy in worshiping a God who judges righteously and the significance of Christ’s sacrifice, encouraging continuous worship and remembrance of God’s faithful judgment in Christ Jesus. TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+ The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. Good morning, Cityview Church. Turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 96. If you don’t have a Bible, you can have the pew Bible that’s in front, in front of you, and it’s page 483 in the pew Bible. Every year in the last Monday of May, Americans celebrate, yes, to the four people who said that Memorial Day is a day to remember and acknowledge the soldiers who willingly gave their lives for our freedom, but if you’re anything like me, doesn’t often cross your mind that freedom came at a cost, but Uncle Sam knows this, and so we have Memorial Day. We forgetful people need a day like this, but why are we so forgetful? I suppose it’s the busyness of our lives, whether that’s ours in meetings just rushed all the time, or kids’ sports, or maybe homeschooling, there just always seems like there’s more to do in the state of panic. We just forget important things, like the movie Home Alone. We have rushed and gone to the plane, but we forgot the person, the person we forgot is Jesus, or is God. God has become an afterthought, or if you’re being honest, not a thought at all. How do we change this reality? This brings us to Psalm 96 Psalm 96 is a song of praise that is originally taken out of a larger Thanksgiving psalm that David assigned to the priests, you can find the full song in the book of First Chronicles, chapter 16, which is a book in the Bible that accounts for the things that the kings of Israel did. We see that David brings the ark of the covenant, which represents God’s presence, into Jerusalem, and then he assigns these musicians to minister before the Lord’s presence, worshiping God with the words that we see in Psalm 96 Let’s all rise as we read the word of God together and Psalm 96 Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to Lord and praise His name. Proclaim His salvation day after day, declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise, he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and glory are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord all you families of nations, 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 his holiness. Tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound in all that is in it, let the fields be jubilant and everything in them, let all the trees of the forest sing for joy, let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for He comes, He comes to judge the earth, He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. Please be seated. We’re in a series called Above All Gods, looking at Psalms 93 to 100 where we see the Lord represented as this king who reigns above all gods. As we look through Psalm 96 we’ll see specifically different reasons as to why we should worship this king always, and remember him, starting with we should worship Yahweh, because he is the king who is God. Look at verses one to six. Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth, sing to the Lord, praise His name, proclaim His salvation day after day, declare His glory among the nations as marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord, and most worthy of phrase. He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and glory are in his sanctuary. The other day we were in our preaching huddle, which we do weekly, and Brandon had mentioned to Lucas, our intern, that my lived experience as an Indian born and raised in Dubai matters to him and he does sermon prep, and it really touched me. Yeah, it was just a quick pass away statement, but it made me feel special. I don’t usually compliment Brandon, so take that. It might be something small to say, but in that moment I realized that my culture’s expression of Christianity is beautiful. But why does a small statement like that matter? If you’ve ever been a new person in a friend group, you kind of understand this for the first time when somebody actually sees and remembers you, remembers the things you said and brings it into conversation, you suddenly feel like you belong. That is such a unique feeling, and this is what we see in Psalm 96 We see God inviting the nations to sing to him and worship him. He’s not just welcoming them, he’s offering them a place to belong. We often think of this God of the Old Testament as this stern, angry God, focused on Israel, never inviting that couldn’t be far from the truth. Here, and in many other parts of the Old Testament, we see clearly that God is inviting all peoples from everywhere to come and worship Him. Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. a new song, because in the previous weeks we saw that the psalms were to the individual, or maybe to the nation of Israel, but this is for all the nations, for everybody, everybody come and worship Yahweh, He is the real mr. Warwad, and this invitation to worship the Lord isn’t just broad and abstract. There’s a call to acknowledge what He’s done and who He is. What He’s done matters in understanding who He is. Like you wouldn’t let somebody drive your car who’s never driven a car before, or at least at least has license. In the same way the psalmist reveals that God is trustworthy because He has proven Himself, His glory is to be declared among the nations, His marvelous deed among all peoples, as verse three indicates. But what are these deeds? What did the Lord do to invoke the worship of the nations for Israel. God brought them out of Egypt, took them through the wilderness, walked with them, was present for them, and then established them as a nation. For David, as an individual, he like blessed him by bringing the ark back to Jerusalem, and then established his kingdom as well, but what about the nations? What about them? Why should they proclaim his salvation? Why should they sing of his glories? What do the nations even say? The answer is clear in verse five. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens, idol, idol, idol. We keep hearing this word in the Old Testament, idol. What really is an idol? I love the way Psalm 115 verses 48 defines it. You’ll be up there. Idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell, they have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and they don’t make a sound in their throat. Don’t miss this. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. Interesting. Why would anybody make or trust an idol? This is the recurring thought that goes through my mind when I do my devotions. What role does Arsenal Football Club are the Mets play in my life? Are these avenues I go out of genuine admiration to or obsession. Have I made a good thing a god thing? Maybe for you it might not be Arsenal or the Mets, it might be the Cubs or the Bears, or if you’re in the wrong state of mind. I mean, state packers, even. What about music? What does the music you listen to reveal? The statistics show that Gen Zers are obsessed with artists who make really depressive songs. Oh, it’s not funny, that’s something to be really sad about. Honest confession, I am a Gen Zer. I often get caught in this trap of listening to music about romanticizing life, about sadness and unknown future hope, but then my wife pointed out that I am literally becoming like this music, it is. Sad, there was a sense of hopelessness that isn’t true of the Christian life that kept overcoming me because I chose to tune myself to the lies of this world than rather believe in the truth of the scriptures. Maybe your idol isn’t a sports team, maybe it’s not music, maybe it’s a person, kids, maybe it’s the popular group in your school, or singles, maybe it’s the dream spouse, parents, maybe it’s the perfect child, and so you start shaping your personality to fit a certain mold, you start thinking a certain way, acting a certain way, you compromise on the truth to accommodate your obsessions, but don’t be dismayed. This is not meant to be a mellow sermon, although will be in many points. David was rejoicing because the truth still stands, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but there is a Lord who made the heavens. Worship Him. We just sang, “This is my Father’s world. Here’s how the last verse goes: “This is my Father’s world. Why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King. Let the heavens ring, God reigns. Let the earth be glad. It is a unique invitation to just look around and see, look at the heavens, look at the skies, and know that there is a God. The idols that exist hope to be what God is, but the truth is, there is only one God, Yahweh. He is the great God and Lord, who has done marvelous deeds and is worthy of all praise in all nations. The psalmist uses a fourfold, fourfold praise: splendor, majesty, strength, and glory are before Him in His sanctuary. Imagine entering into the royal chambers of a king, gazing upon him as he is fully clothed in royal linen, surrounded by his ministers. How awesome is that sight? We read last week in Psalm 95 Come, bow down and worship, and kneel before the Lord our maker, the intention of passages like this is to lift you up to the heavens. Picture the divine sanctuary and honor Yahweh as the king who is God. If we’re so easily willing to give our hearts to these idols that are here today and gone tomorrow, how truly, and how much more should we be giving our hearts to the King, who is God of all the earth? Worship the King, who is God. The second reason we worship Yahweh is that He is the King who is holy. Look at verses seven to nine. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, 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 His holiness. Tremble before Him all the earth. To ascribe literally means to write down or to engrave. Think of like a tombstone engraving. You see this tombstone with this inscription that says Jerry was a great guy, loved the Lord. Now that I think of it, it kind of sounds like somebody who’s not getting a second date, but you get the point. If the Jerrys of the world, mere men, get the title of great, how much more the King of the universe, who made the skies and all that is in it. In the first verses, we see the psalmist say three times, “Sing to the Lord, and now we see three times, “Ascribe to the Lord, and more specifically, “Ascribe glory to the Lord. And verse eight gives us clarity as to why we ascribe glory to the Lord. It is simply because He deserves it. It is the glory that is due His name. It is remarkable that God has done marvelous things for Israel, even more marvelous things for us in Jesus Christ, but we don’t remember that we don’t acknowledge him or give him the glory that is due. But for a second, let’s just pretend like God didn’t do any of those things, and let’s ignore that for a second. Does God not deserve glory for being God, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, is that not a glorious God? We see in verse nine that we ought to tremble before Him, literally shake. He is the sovereign God of the world, and we are not. We can. And become like God, nor can we enter into His glorious presence, because we don’t honor Him as God, and this might be hard to hear, but not acknowledging God for who He is is sin, and we all fall short of giving Him the glory that He deserves, and then we wonder why there is this God-shaped void in our hearts. Maybe it’s because the idols that we’ve placed there instead, but what is separating us from experiencing God fully? It is God’s holiness. After ascribing glory to the Lord, the glory due His name, we see the statement: bring an offering and come into his courts, worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Why an offering in the Old Testament? This points to temple language, the it’s emphasizing the need for a sacrifice, so that our sins are cleansed before God. It emphasizes God’s great holiness and our lack thereof, and so it’s only right that we respond with fear, tremble before Him all the earth. We have so many people who claim to be great in the past. There’s the self-proclamation of 2024 Brandon, when he won the church fantasy football league, he lost the next year. Alexander the Great, who conquered all these nations till he died of illness at the age of 32 Herod the Great, who built all these awesome buildings, only to be only to watch it be destroyed in war. Fleeting greatness is not true greatness. It’s like catching air. There’s just nothing there, and we all, whether we like it or not, live our lives worshiping and ascribing greatness to ourselves or to other fleeting things, instead of worshiping the truly great and holy God. If God is perfect, which He is, and we are wretched sinners, so caught up in engraving our own tombstones with titles we don’t deserve, then there is a need for a sacrifice before we enter into His glorious presence. We always seem good until we stand in the presence of the truly glorious King. Picture Isaiah, when he saw the Lord enthroned with the proclamation of seraphim again three times holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Isaiah didn’t jump up and celebrate, he trembled before God and said, Woe to me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. When we are confronted by the holy God, King of all the earth, robed in majesty, worthy of all praise, only then do we understand how underdressed we are, how unworthy we are to stand in the presence of utter perfection. But that has not been the tone of this passage, that’s just been me in Psalm 96 What strikes me is that the psalmist is not grim or fearful, but rather he worships out of jubilation. David is excited to tremble before God. What a weird thing to say. The holiness of God is not causing him to be afraid, rather he worships with confidence. How do you do that? How does a sinful person get to the point of worshiping God joyfully? And that takes us to our final point: worship the King who is judge. Let’s look at verses 10 to 13. Say, among the nations the Lord reigns. The world is firmly established. It cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound in all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for He comes. He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness. Back in 2010 man traded 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. 10,000 bitcoins was valued at $41 at that time, so that. Kind of. I think he still got robbed, but 10,000 bitcoins is currently valued at $2 billion. The man says he doesn’t regret it. You and I both know he, he regrets it. What was the problem? It wasn’t that he wasn’t patient, that’s such an easy sort of thing to say, but none of us would have ever been able to know that Bitcoin was going to go off like that. The real problem was that he didn’t have the knowledge of everything. Guess what, he’s human, his judgment was errant because his knowledge was limited, but that’s not the case of our God. When the psalmist says the Lord reigns, he’s not just talking about a merely physical reality, he’s talking about everything, the Lord reigns over everything. God is sovereign. The world and everything is established because the sovereign God established it. But again, the psalmist is not scared of it. He is rejoicing, not just him. By the way, when you see this portion, it’s all of nature, the heavens, the seas, the fields, and trees all sing for joy. Paul in Romans 8:20-21 helps us understand this joy, for the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. It’s not just us looking for freedom, it’s also the skies, the seas, the fields, and the trees. The soldiers that we acknowledge on Memorial Day understand this firsthand. They participate in a war that doesn’t just destroy human lives, destroys everything – bombs destroying trees, animals being tarnished, everything touched by war just shattered. It’s a painful sight. And this is what sin does to our souls and to this world, to some of us, God coming to judge the world is scary, and it should be, but that just was not how David saw it. Why did David feel different? If anything, he should know that being in the presence of God is scary. One of his men in this, the prelude to the story, had touched the ark of the covenant, perished, gone. He was frightened. David was frightened for a long time to lift this from the previous place and bring it to Jerusalem, but now David is joyful. Why is that? When David is coming to Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant, he understands something so profound for those who ascribe glory to themselves and negate the glory that should be given to God. Those of other nations who worship idols rather than worship the true Lord and King, who reigns, the judgment of God should be scary. Their faith is as strong as a paper boat in an ocean. Light wave will just tumble it over and it’ll sink, but for the people of God who place their trust in the Lord, who comes to judge the world in righteousness and faithfulness, the coming judgment is a cause of joy, like Brandon said earlier, David is joyful because he understands that our worship is received by the same person who grants us forgiveness. Our worship is received by the same person who grants us forgiveness. In Luke 1941 we see the presence of God entering Jerusalem in the person of Jesus as the king who is going to judge, he sees the city and he weeps over it out of compassion and sorrow for the people, knowing that they are going to reject him as the king. Yet he does not shy away. He goes into Jerusalem and his coronation ceremony did have a crown, not of gold and diamonds, but of thorns. Instead of being robed in majesty, he was stripped naked, instead of being honored on a throne. Own, he was hung on a cross out of love. Jesus bore the sins of all who place their faith in him. The king of the world did not count equality with God, something to be grasped. Rather, he was made nothing, taking the nature of a servant, became obedient to death, even death on a cross. The punishment that we deserve, all of us who sinned against the most holy God, was placed on him on the cross at Calvary. In that moment, God did judge the world. Isaiah 53 five, referring to Jesus, states, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Quite often we read this passage, and the words that stick us, stick out to us, are pierced and crushed and punished. Can I encourage you today in light of knowing this faithful God, can we fix our eyes on the peace that He bought for us and the healing that He gives us. This psalm doesn’t call us to be somber. Sorry that I’m crying. It doesn’t help that let all the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, why? Because the curse that was ours is ours no more. Israel was jubilant because they could enter God’s presence annually with a yearly sacrifice. How much more joyful should we be that in Jesus the all-sufficient sacrifice was made on behalf of all those who believe forever. Memorial Day is a day remembering and celebrating the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom on earth. How much more must we remember the sacrifice of Christ that brought our freedom from sin, making us able to stand before the presence of the Almighty God. What a truly unforgettable event. When we forget this truly unforgettable event, guess what, the world forgets it with us. So, here’s the big idea: worship God always, remembering his faithful judgment in Christ Jesus, worship God. Always remembering his faithful judgment in Christ Jesus. It is so easy to forget God, especially in our busy lives, but it shouldn’t be. Everywhere you look, you get reminders of God. In the book Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren, she talks about all these everyday ways that we can think about God. When she opens her eyes, she’s reminded of our baptism, where she is raised from death back to life. When she makes her bed, she is remembering God ordering the chaos in Genesis. What an awesome thing to partake in by just doing your bed. When she brushes her teeth or does ordinary personal hygiene things, she’s reminded that Jesus came in the flesh and dwelt among us, such an awesome way to think about God. There are so many mundane things that we do in our lives that just help us remember the Almighty God. So, let’s try to do them. Parents and grandparents, the Beatles are awesome, and I think it is so cool that parents want to educate their kids with songs from their youth, but obla dee obla da, life goes on without them. It does not go on without Jesus. So, if this generation is burdened with all these lies that they’re hearing, how about we teach them some truth? How about we sing songs that are rich in the truth of scripture. Here’s a message to the church. It might be out of the ordinary, but it is so beautiful when we are jumping, clapping, and singing together with hands raised up, ascribing to God the glory He deserves. Jake mentioned last week about Michal, David’s wife, who was frustrated with David worshiping before the Ark of the Covenant, and David’s response is so cool. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. You know what that means. It means jubilant worship might make less of us, but it certainly makes much of God. So, let’s embody our worship. And for those who may not have a relationship with Jesus, just know that on the cross Jesus’ great desire was for you to know Him, not just as a king, but as a friend, as someone who, at great expense to himself, was giving his life for all those who believe in him. So sing with us, sing, be free. Let this be your first step of faith. May the truth of the lyrics that we are going to sing be the truth of your lives today, and to all of us, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to Lord all the earth, sing to the Lord, and praise His name. Proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. And indeed He did a marvelous deed. Christ died for us with a passion and love that is truly unforgettable. So let’s remember that and worship Him. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, you are so kind because you gave us your son, you gave us your son to unite this broken world to you. We are now able to stand in your presence because of what Jesus has done. All those who believe in you, let us not forget, Lord, in our busyness, in our weakness, in our desire to experience the world apart from you. May you change our hearts and help us run to you, Lord. Help us run to you, knowing that you are the way, the truth, and the life, and that is all we need, and that is all we will ever need, now and forever. We lay it all, Lord, before you and the throne of grace, that we can approach in confidence, come have your way in us, in your holy and matchless name, we pray. Amen.

Hard Hearts and a Holy King (Psalm 95)

PODCAST HARD HEARTS AND A HOLY GOD June 28, 2026 | Jake Thomas Jake Thomas reflects on the struggle of running 10 miles with his wife Hannah, drawing parallels to the human reluctance to change and the need for God’s rest. He discusses Psalm 95, emphasizing three reasons for rest: God’s greatness, goodness, and the consequences of rejecting Him. God’s greatness is illustrated by His control over the earth, sea, and dry land, contrasting with lesser gods. His goodness is seen in His role as creator and shepherd. Rejecting God leads to eternal separation, while accepting Him offers immediate and future rest. The speaker urges the congregation to revere God, reject their rejections, and receive His rest. TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+ The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Psalm 95 That’s going to be page 482 in your pew Bibles. Again, that is Psalm 95 Now, once a year, my wife Hannah and I, we spend a whole day together running for 10 miles now. This newly minted Thomas family tradition is kind of an homage to the first time I made my move on Hannah. I was absolutely desperate to spend any amount of time with her, and so I invited her to do one of her favorite things: go on a run. The problem, though, that just obviously one of my least favorite things, but I was, I was very desperate, so I ran 10 miles with her, though calling it a run feels pretty generous. There was a lot of stopping, some walking, I may have almost laid down once, there was a little bit of crying, and some dry heaving as well, but somehow, in spite of all of that, she married me eventually. And now, once a year, we set aside a day to run 10 miles together, and we actually did it this past weekend. And my sister-in-law had a funny observation. She said, I love that Jake knows this is coming every year, but he still just won’t train for it, and she’s got a fair point. It’s brutal whenever I do it, but it just is a very easy way for it not to be so bad if I just trained. So, after every time I run it, I just think, okay, maybe this is the year I should start training, and like maybe next year will be different, but it’s just it hasn’t been that way, because I don’t change, I just do the same thing, and it hurts every time. Why wouldn’t I do that? Why wouldn’t I train? I know I’m gonna go on this run because I love my wife, and she’s persistent, but why won’t I just try, train, and make this thing that’s so difficult easier? I mean, it’s a simple answer. I don’t want to. I don’t like running once a year, let alone once a week. So, I’m just.. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to change. This is going to hurt until I change. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to train? If I could just wake up tomorrow and be a good runner, that would be great, and maybe there’s some people here that feel similarly, you know. You need the change, you know you have to do something different than what you’re doing right now. You don’t want to do the hard work of change. Are you burdened with the weight of needed change? You want to go to church more often, you want to pray more, or read your Bible more often, you want to scroll less, you want to gossip less, you want to tell the truth more. You want to change, but that’s hard work. But wouldn’t it be great if we could all just wake up tomorrow and be changed and be different with the hard work of changing our hearts already done, and we just sit back and rest in knowing that we are different. We don’t have to change anymore. God’s word shows us the pathway to rest when our stubborn hearts get in the way of us changing for the better. So this passage today we’re going to see the three reasons that following God can give us rest in spite of our stubborn hearts. So we’re going to start in verse one of Psalm 95 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. So the first reason is the greatness of God. God’s greatness leads us to rest, and that’s why the psalmist invites us to worship him in this psalm, because of the greatness of God. He says, “Come, let us sing with shout aloud, come before Him, let’s extol him with music and song. And he’s tone for the entire psalm here in these opening verses. He wants God’s people to worship him because of his greatness, and that’s the reason, that’s how this God could possibly warrant this reaction, because he is a great god, you see him say that when he says, “For the Lord is the great God. So, recognizing the greatness of God should lead us to worship. What does that mean? What is the psalmist describing when he describes the Lord as great? We actually see this very clearly in verses three through five. The Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth. The mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. I want to focus on verse three. It’s very important. It gives God this really interesting name. He’s the great king above all gods. Now we may kind of brush past that name by the mention of other gods. A lot of people today don’t even believe there’s one God, let alone multiple gods, but Israel would definitely have needed this reminder of God being the great king above all gods, because there was a lot of pressure from their neighbors to worship these other gods, so their neighbors introduced into pagan gods, such as Molech or Baal and Tiamat, and they told them, these are the guys that actually control everything. You want to have a good harvest, worship Baal. You want protection from bad luck and evil spirits, sing some songs to Tiamat. You want to have good luck and good fortune, sacrifice your firstborn kid to Moloch. So, their neighbors were constantly telling them that Yahweh is not the one in charge, and there are these way better options to worship instead. So, knowing that helps us understand the intentionality of verses four and five to utterly decimate the claims of Israel’s neighbors. Just look at this. So, Molech was the god of the depths, in his hand are the depths of the earth. Baal, he was the god of the mountain peaks, and you’re supposed to go there to worship Him, and the mountain peaks belong to Him, Tiamat. He was the god of the sea, He controlled the seas, and the king above all gods. He made the seas and the dry land between them. So, the psalmist is pouring out the absurdity of following these lesser gods, Yahweh is the great king over everything, from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and everything in between. Only God is king. And we saw this play out in Egypt, didn’t we? So God went toe to toe with Egypt’s entire roster of heavy hitters, from Happy, the Nile River god, to Ra, the sun god, the God of Israel, directly defied every Egyptian deity, and he went undefeated. He earned the title, the great king above all gods. And yet we don’t worship Moloch and Baal or Tiamat or even Ra today, but we too have other gods. I read a story about a pastor talking to a drug addict, and this drug addict said, really want to become a Christian because I don’t really like authority. I don’t want Jesus to tell me what I have to do with my life. Now the pastor wisely pointed out that heroin had been telling that guy what to do his entire life, and heroin is not a great boss for that dude. Heroin controlled his every action and waking thought, it dictated his every next move. Everything he did was to get another hit of his deity. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound all that different from trying to appease Baal to get a better harvest. And maybe I really doubt anyone here worships Moloch or suffers from a heroin addiction, but again, we too have our other bosses that we’re tempted to follow. I mean, maybe for you it’s sports betting, for a lot of people trying to get that parlay to hit to have that huge cash out dictates their every way that they spend their time and their money, all their resources, and then they’re left chasing big payouts in a system designed for them to lose, not a great boss, or maybe for you it’s trying to be physically attractive as possible, for you want to be the biggest guy in the gym or the prettiest woman in the neighborhood, and so you are willing to change your body or get all the outfits that you need to try and turn as many heads as possible, but we know that has an expiration date, right? Eventually, that too will fade, and you’re left chasing an impossible standard that isn’t going to last. Not a great boss. Maybe for you, it’s the approval of others. There’s something inside you that just needs people to like you, and so you’re willing to do things that you don’t really want to do, or say things you don’t really believe in, just to make people like you a little more, you know. The ironic part of that is that that just makes you more lonely, because if people, if you have to pretend and lie for people to like you, they don’t like you, they like the performance. That you’re putting on it just kind of leaves you lonely, and so for that reason, too, just needing the approval of others is not a great boss. What about you? What’s your boss? What controls your life? And our junior groups here, we have this set of questions that helps us identify the boss of our life, the things that we’re willing to follow instead of God. Here’s a few of them. What ruins your day if you don’t get it? What are you never satisfied with? What do you talk about all the time? What do you spend most of your time and money trying to get? What are you willing to sin to get? So we all have these, we all have these bosses, and none of these bosses are great, but that’s what makes following Jesus so amazing. He is the great boss above all bosses, the great King above all kings. He’s worth worshiping because he is great in everything that we’re tempted to place in his place as our boss, he created and rules over, and knowing that fact can lead us to rest. Trusting the right boss can lead us to rest, help us have peace. For example, I recently led a trip of students to Colorado, and every parent I talked to about the trip had this huge sigh of relief when I told him Jackie Berger was going too. Why is that? I’m a 20 year old dude, and she’s a mom. She’s the right boss. That makes sense, and in a much better way. God is the right king that is greater than all others. Only his great rule of our life can give us the peace that comes from following him, that leads to rest, but is that all he is? Is God just this boss and king that tells us what to do? Can I be further from the truth? So, in these next few verses, we’re gonna say that God is not just great, but He’s also good. Let’s start in verse six. Let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care. So God’s goodness leads us to rest. The second reason today is that following God, and sorry, this is the second reason that following God gives us rest. So, a lot of people have that question about God: Is he really good? Can a great king, a great ruler, be a good one? It’s definitely a worthwhile question, one that we see emphatically answered by scripture as yes, so God is a good king because he’s our creator and our caretaker. So we see that him as creator in verse six, it calls the Lord our maker, and that word is so beautiful in the original language, it has a much stronger emphasis of ownership. We are his people. He made us. We belong to him, and that means that you were made by God for God. Toy Story five came out recently. Whenever I think of those movies, I think about Andy writing his name on the bottom Woody’s foot. Now, I don’t.. I feel pretty good about this. I don’t think God wrote his name on the bottom of anybody’s foot here, but he went one step, not even one step, so many steps further than that. He made you in his image. Humanity is so different from everything else in creation, because we were made in the image of God. That’s the ultimate signature, the ultimate display of ownership. But ownership, it’s only good news if that comes with good care. I mean, everyone has seen the broken toys that come from a careless kid, right? And what good news that we see that God does indeed care for those that belong to Him. We see that verse seven it says He is our God, we are the people of His pasture, the flock under his care, he’s not just our creator, he does make us, he’s also our caretaker, and uses that picture of a shepherd to clearly help us envision the care that he provides. I mean, while Israel, they would have read this, and they would have thought about being in the deserts near Egypt, and God given them manna and quail from the sky, feeding them day after day, they would have thought about the pillar of smoke and fire guiding them through the desert. What a good shepherd indeed. God, He was a good creator and shepherd to Israel, and He’s good to us as well. God made us and also set His son to die for us to make the church, given us a purpose to serve Him and glorify Him. That’s what we mean when we’re made to magnify and sent to serve. God gave us that, and also He ministers to our hearts. He takes care of us when we are in need. He gives us our daily bread. He gives us comfort and stability during the difficulties of life. Life, how should we respond to that? How should we respond to the goodness of God? What do we do? Verse six, it gives us our clear response. So, verse one has this invitation to worship that focuses more on praising God and worshiping Him, but verse six has a different emphasis. It focuses more on pledging allegiance to Him, to bending your knee to Him. Says, look, it says, ‘Come, let us bow down and worship, let us kneel before our Maker. So, the only response that we could have to a great and good King is to bow down and kneel before Him. The psalmist, he’s asking Israel to place their allegiance in Yahweh, to follow the God, the King, who is the great God above all gods, and is a good creator and caretaker. The only response you can have to a God like that is to bend your knee and become a citizen of His kingdom, and this too, it gives us rest, knowing that our King is powerful and yet cares for us, gives us confidence that we’re going to make it, we’re going to be okay, and such a great and good God, while they were near Egypt, Israel got to witness everything, all these miracles of this care of God, of the greatness and goodness of God, and so surely at that moment they’re ready to worship Him, and only Him. Right, right. Let’s see if that really is the case as we close this psalm in the second half of verse seven today. If only you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Mass in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me. They tried me, though they had seen what I did. For 40 years, I was angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared an oath in my anger they shall never enter my rest. So, in these verses, we see the final reason that only God can give rest. Rejecting God is rejecting rest. The rejection of God is also the rejection of true rest, so to close this whole psalm, the psalmist, he issues a warning referencing Israel’s rejection of God at Meribah and Messiah, and so these verses kill the whole vibe of worship and praise. So the psalmist must have done that for really good reasons. Let’s really pay attention to why he chose to do this. This is a story from Exodus 17. So, God, He’s just brought Israel out of Egypt, brought him through the Red Seas. He defeated the gods of Egypt and the army of Egypt, and He’s been providing for Israel with food from the sky and guiding them with a pillar of smoke and fire. But at Meriba Messiah they got thirsty, and they questioned Moses, demanding water. They said, “This, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children, our livestock die of thirst? Why is this story a warning. What’s so wrong about asking God for some water to drink? The issue wasn’t what they asked for, it was how they asked for it. Moses, he asked back then, why he put the Lord to the test. Verse nine here says Meriba Messiah is where they tested and tried God. This question for water, it was not a hopeful question. If you were last week, Pastor Kyle mentioned these hopeful questions, which are questions that are to God with a trust and a belief that He’s going to fulfill those questions and meet those needs and promises. The questions that Maribel missile were not hopeful in the slightest. They were full of disdain and distrust of God. It’s the difference between a married couple working something out and fighting. So, if you know me, you know I really do not like conflict, and I get very uncomfortable when couples around me, or just people, just have fights, just makes you really kind of like, oh my gosh. Then I got married, and I learned there is a difference, like working through problems, it could sound a lot like fighting, but it’s different. There’s this trust, this mutual trust, that both parties want to work things out, and they want to reach a solution, a middle ground. That’s not true of fights. I find a lot of people, they fight because there’s this lack of trust, there’s this belief that the other person does not really care. So, Israel, they’re not working through the. Water problem with God, they don’t think He cares about them, and they don’t trust Him enough to even ask Him for water. They’re questioning this really patronizing way and rejecting way. So, verse nine points out another crazy part of this story. Look at the second half, though they had seen what I did. So, these people, these people who were thirsty, who were asking for water, they were the same people who were in Egypt during these plagues. They walked through the Red Sea. They didn’t take a boat, they didn’t swim. They walked, they ate the manna and the quail day after day. They saw the pillar of the fire, they followed it. And these same people, they didn’t even trust God enough to ask him for a drink of water. Have you noticed that story? They never talked to God at all. They went to Moses, and they asked Moses for water. Isn’t that nuts? Isn’t that crazy? They didn’t trust him enough for that, and that’s the reason this story is a warning to Israel and to us. It shows the danger of hardening your heart towards God, of testing Him, and then going astray from Him. And what was the consequence? They faced the generation that rejected God and Meriba Messiah. They never got to experience the rest of the promised land. They had the water of the desert for 40 years, never getting to the land of milk and honey, they never got to experience rest. They were stuck wandering, tired, wanting relief, but not wanting to do the hard work of trusting their God. But why would they do that? Why would they harden their hearts and reject the King who provided for them time after time again. Why do we? Why do we harden our hearts and reject God? Why aren’t we willing to change or let go of our sin, so we can enter His rest? We don’t want to. They didn’t want to, and the consequences for us are way more severe than walking around the desert for 40 years. When we reject God today, the consequences for that are death and eternal separation from Him. Something interesting to note is that the psalmist is writing this psalm after they got the promised land, so he is using this story as a warning to the people of Israel after they’re in the promised land. Now it’s interesting, right? What rest comes from Israel comes for Israel after they enter the promised land. What rest is there for God’s people? Hebrews four, it quotes Psalm 95 saying, Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their examples of different of disobedience. Now, that word, Sabbath rest, in Hebrews four, it’s not found anywhere else in the Bible, it’s only in that chapter, and this is a rest that people, it’s describing a rest people can enjoy today, right now, it’s not just a future promise, but right now, in spite of our sin and stubbornness, but how do we enter that rest? How can we complete the hard work of softening our hearts and surrendering to the King to receive rest? The answer is simple: we can’t, at least, not on our own, the Meriba Messal story has hints of relief. So, towards the end, Moses, he asks God for guidance, and God tells Moses to hit a rock with his staff, and then water flows out from that rock, and Israel has something to drink. So, in spite of their rejection and rebellion against him, he gave them water to drink and gave them relief, and we too have a rock that offers us relief today. Look at verse one, it says, “Let us shout to the rock of our salvation. This is clearly a reference to the rock at the Meru Messiah story, the water there was offered there, but it’s also a reference to the living water that was to come. Matthew 1128 says this: Jesus says this: Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus is the rock of our salvation. The rejected Son of God poured out his blood for our sake, so that we could. To the rest that he provides, the Sabbath rest, it was never meant to be found in a place, it was meant to be found in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. And that’s the answer. The hard work of changing our hearts is already done. Jesus, He was tempted in every way that we were and are, but he didn’t sin, and so we can accept his work as ours, and that enables us to approach God’s throne of grace. Consider it this way: Who’s able to approach a throne? The citizens of the kingdom, right? And so revering God as our King, Jesus as our king is the only way to receive rest, and on our own we couldn’t get past the moat, we couldn’t even get close to the kingdom of God. Our sin and God’s holiness are not compatible in the slightest, but God’s goodness sent Jesus down to die for us, so that we can accept Him as our Savior and follow Him right to the throne of grace as citizens, as royal sons and daughters of the kingdom of grace, and that’s how we receive His mercy and find His grace by swearing allegiance to King Jesus, the great King above all other gods, our maker, our shepherd, the one who delivered Israel out of Egypt and delivers all those who follow him from sin and death. Are you tired? Go to the King. Are you weary? Approach His throne in your time of need. Is the hard work of your heart hindering you? Let the hard work of the cross change you forever, and this leads right into the big idea this morning. The big idea, the big idea is revere your God, reject your rejections, and receive His rest. Revere your God, reject your rejections, and receive his rest. Now, what does that look like for us? How does that affect our day today? Let’s focus on revering your God. When we revere God, we should do so with joy, and joy is all over. Psalm 95 right? says sing for joy and extol him with music and song. It’s why we get together on Sundays to do these things as a community, but when you worship, do you find yourself thinking more about the one you’re worshiping or who you’re worshiping with? It’s an easy trap to fall into. Are you one of the first people to raise your hands so everyone knows you’re especially holy, or are you arms 100% your size to let everyone know you are very humble. Now, the problem of both of those is you’re not focused on the one that you’re worshiping, you’re thinking about the perception of everyone else that you’re worshiping with. It reminds you of the story of David dancing in the streets to worship and praise his God. Now, his wife was not amused by that, and thought it was just a very dishonorable thing to do. And let’s be honest, if David was here dancing on the worship service, he’d get a few side eyes. Let’s be honest, but his response, I think that should also be the response of our heart too. He said, I will be more undignified than this. I love that. Now, I don’t want anyone to mishear me. I’m not saying you have to raise your hands or dance around to worship, just encouraging you that as you revere your God, do so with joy, and a joy that is focused more on revering your God, as opposed to fearing your fellow worshipers, and what a privilege it is that we get to revere Him together, that as a community we gather to sing with joy to the Lord, who gives us rest, and we can indeed receive that rest now. Remember Matthew 11, Jesus says, ‘Come to me and I’ll give you rest. That’s not just a future promise, that is a right now promise that can be experienced from making Jesus the boss of your life. His yoke is easy, you can rest from trying to prove your worth to him. He knows all your faults and your unworth, and he loved you so much. He is willing to die for the broken version of you, all other bosses you could follow, everything else you could worship. It demands you to prove your worth. Jesus, He gives you worth, and as a result, gives you rest from trying to earn worth. But we still need to reject those other bosses. We need to reject our rejections of God. Psalm 95 urges us to reject testing Him. So, when we go to God with hard questions, we all seem to have a hard trust that He is going to care for us and wants to offer us relief in those moments. So, when we’re thirsty, don’t. Rumble and complain to God, go to Him, ask Him for relief with the belief and trust that He will give that to you, but also tells us to reject hard hearts like Israel, our hearts can be hardened to God’s voice and reject Him. So a student recently asked me, Why hasn’t God just forgiven Satan? So my first thought was, Kyle, please help, but then I just took a moment to think about, I was like, oh, scripture just gives us this so clearly, everything we know about Satan from Scripture, we know he was an angel and he saw God in his full glory, he knows everything about God that he could possibly know, but he didn’t want to submit to him. He knew all of God’s greatness and goodness, but he did not want to make God his king. And so Satan will never be forgiven, because his heart is too hard. He knows everything about God, but he still rejected him. He’ll never ask for forgiveness. His hatred is too strong of God, and He knows everything about God, so it’s not like anything could change His mind about it. And that’s exactly what our hearts can be like. We just.. we don’t like being told what to do. We don’t like submitting to authority. Now, a few weeks ago, I was a volunteer at the TGC Women’s Conference. It was a great time, and I was in charge of the free book station, so I, my job was to give out one free book to every woman that came to the conference, and you know me, I’m kind of real sickler. I was only supposed to give out just one, but a few people came and asked me for books for their friends that weren’t able to make it to that day. Now, I told them, hey, you come back the last day, we’re getting out so many books, as many books as possible, but for right now, we’re just going to one book today, and one woman, an older woman, she – when I told that, she just got really close to me, and she said, “Look away. So I kind of like laughed it off. I was like, “I’m not going to do that, and I said, just come back the last day, and we’ll get you your book. And so I walk away to go talk to another co-volunteer. I look back, she grabs an armful, and she goes, and my first thought was, like, I can totally catch her, I’m way faster than that’s a race I can win. My second thought was, oh, I do that. I do that to God when He doesn’t give me what I want, when I want it, how I want it. I tell Him to look away, and I take things in my own hands, and we all do that. So, how do we soften our hearts to his voice? How do we not do that? Have hearts so hard that we do things like that. Well, I think the answer is, we have to remind ourselves who’s talking. We have to remember the person speaking. So, Israel, their hearts got hard when they were thirsty, and they either forgot or they didn’t care that about all things that God had done for them before that point. So, when we harden our hearts, we do this because life gets hard, right? That’s why we do that. But in those moments, we need to reject our rejection of God and remember our King. Remembering the King who commands us is also the one who was crucified for us, so that helps us when he gives us hard commands. We know that he loves us, and he is a great and good king. So, remember, the one who is speaking is the way to soften our hearts, and when we do soften our hearts, we can hear what he’s saying. He’s inviting us to experience his rest. The writer of Hebrews and the Psalms, they both have the same invitation: Come, let us bow before Him. And this invitation has an interesting implication. A commentary I read said the invitation to come to the presence of God presupposes that by nature we are far from God. So, being invited to be near God it implies that we are far from Him. He wants to give you rest, he wants you to approach the throne of grace. He’s calling all of those with hard hearts to come home, to come to him. When the Titanic was sinking, some people said no to the lifeboat. They did not think they were going to need it, and it was only was too late that they realized they needed it the whole time, and we’re all like that, we’re all in need of this rest that the King provides, but we need to accept His invitation to receive His rest, because if we don’t, eventually we will be like Satan with hearts too hard, we will be unable to even ask for forgiveness and but if we accept this invitation to rest, we can receive the promise of rest that He’s going to take us, His people, home. Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it? King Jesus reigns, and He’s returning soon. He’s promised. Us that all who bow their knee to Him and soften their hearts will receive true rest. Isn’t that good news? So revere your God, reject your rejection, and then receive the gift of His rest. I’m very glad that my walk with Jesus works way differently than my runs with Hannah. The Thomas 10 miles is always going to hurt till I change, but with Jesus, He’s paved the way for me, and He invites me to receive Him, and by doing so, receive rest. So, Psalm 95 it gives us these three reasons that following God, following Jesus, gives us rest. His greatness shows us He’s in charge. His goodness shows that we can trust Him, and knowing that rejecting Him is rejecting rest helps us revere Him and receive His rest, not just in the future but right now. And so I’m going to close the first two verses of this psalm, and invite you to revere our great and good God, who gives rest to his followers. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. Would you please pray with me, Lord, great King above all other gods, our maker, our creator, the one who was crucified for us, the one who raised from the dead, conquered our sin and our death, and gave us the path to life and the path to rest, not just in the future for eternity, but right now today, as we make you the king of our life. I pray that we would do so, Lord, that we would live as citizens of your kingdom, that we would get to experience the kingdom of grace, and the rest that comes with following a king who is so good he was willing to lay down his life for all those who bend their knee to him. Pray for all of us, Lord, that we would follow you more and give up trying to change ourselves and let you do the hard work of softening our hearts and not letting us go astray. Be our shepherd, Lord, be our comfort, be our peace, be our rest. In Your powerful name I pray. Amen.

The Judge of the Earth (Psalm 94)

PODCAST THE JUDGE OF THE EARTH June 21, 2026 | Kyle Bjerga Kyle Bjerga discusses the human response to injustice, using personal experiences and biblical references to illustrate the struggle between revenge and faith. He recounts incidents of bullying and a recent playground altercation, emphasizing the natural desire for revenge. Bjerga highlights Psalm 94, focusing on God’s role as the judge who avenges and the importance of trusting in divine justice. He contrasts the wicked’s arrogance with the righteous’ hope in God’s discipline and eventual judgment. Bjerga encourages his audience to seek refuge in God, trusting in His ultimate justice and comfort. TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+ The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. Well, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You can go ahead and open up your Bibles to Psalm 94. If you use one of the black pew Bibles around you, maybe underneath that is page 482. As you turn there, when I was a student in school, when I was then a teacher in the school, and when I was doing youth ministry, whether as a volunteer or on staff at a church, there were a handful of times where I’d gotten to the angry to the point of losing my cool, and like angry to where my body responds, and I don’t know what to do, so like you feel that like I’m turning red, I think I, my heart rate is going 150 beats a minute. I’m standing here, I am sweating, my teeth are clenched, and I feel my fists going like this. So, just a handful of times that that happened. Now, what could make me reach this point was not disobedience towards me, was not disrespect, was not cheating, it was bullying, seeing bullies, people taking advantage of those who oftentimes were more vulnerable, whether they were speaking ill of them, picking on them, ridiculing them, mocking them, but they looked at this person and saw I could take advantage of this person, and it was the thing that got me angry, and I still see faces, I still see moments in my mind where these things happen, and I just remember my response in those moments. And this weekend, something happened where Jackie and a couple of our boys were at a playground, and there was an accident that happened, and a guy actually verbally attacked Jackie and her parenting and my son for an accident, and it was a bully, and so you’re sitting there, and now that I’m really wound up, Jackie Jackie’s probably wound up. Let me wind all of you up as well. What, what is it for you? Because I think even me, just saying those few things, faces popped into your mind, situations popped into your mind. And what kind of response do we normally have when these things happen, it’s the thing that goes through my mind oftentimes first. It’s revenge. I want them to be paid back for what they did to me. I want them to get what they deserve. And this is something that happens at all ages, because I love watching movies with my kids that I’ve seen, and I know the outcome. And one of my sons, in particular, loves to verbalize when he wants the bad guy to get it, and he will clap and be physically excited when the bad guy gets what he deserves, and I sit there and, like, yep, that’s me too, and in some ways you’re like, yeah, they should get what they deserve, and at the same time you’re sitting there thinking, like, I don’t want him to, like, you know, be super excited about these things happening, so this kind of this line, like, where do I get excited, where do I not? And then, how do I teach vengeance isn’t ours, vengeance isn’t mine. And so then you amplify these personal examples to some of the worst bullying in the history of the world, much larger scale, the oppression of people groups, kidnapping of children, trafficking, slavery, genocide, and on and on. We can go. When you hear a story of real injustice, you should have a response to it. We want to have that clear line in the sand of this is good and this is evil. The question for us? Is not whether something is evil or good. It’s how do we respond to the evil? What comes into our hearts? What comes into our minds? What comes out of our mouth? And what actions do we take in the face of wickedness and evil? The psalmist wants us to know what we should do, but better than that is where we should go, and so we’re going to start first in verses one and two. You can see there in your notes we are looking at the character of God. So here is Psalm 94 verses one and two. The Lord is a God who avenges. Oh God, who avenges, shine forth, rise up, judge of the earth, pay back to the proud what they deserve. So, no shock that we start with the character of God again. Everything must start here. Our prayers, our laments, our praises, and our requests must start with God. And last week, as we started this series in Psalm 93 we were in the throne room of God. We saw God robed in majesty, looking at the world that He established, and we saw that God is reigning, even in the moments where it doesn’t quite feel that way. And now in Psalm 94 we. Actually, enter into the chaos of the world, and we don’t see it from afar. Now we experience it. It’s our reality of living in a fallen world, and it’s the chaos that leads us to look back in Psalm 93 or two verses one and two of Psalm 94 and we ask the question, Who is God? And we see here in these first two verses that He is the judge of the earth, the whole, the judge who avenges and pays back the proud with what they deserve. In Romans 1219 which is reminding us of what it says in Deuteronomy 32 says this: Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. Vengeance is God’s. So the psalmist is ruining everything in God’s character, which is helping the psalmist and us get in the right mind and heart, because he could just go right into the account of who these evil people are, and this wickedness that they’re experiencing, but instead of doing that, because that’s just going to get all that injustice is going to well up inside of us, he’s reminding himself and us that I need to bring this to the only right judge, and so he pleads with God, he says, “Shine forth, says, “Rise up, and what he’s saying is, “God, show up, show up, be who I know you are, and do what you said you will do, because the psalmist knows that God’s vengeance, when he repays, it is fair, it is just, as a parent, if you’ve ever had kids disobey, amen. Okay, perfect children. If you’ve ever been in that moment where you have to discipline, how many times have you given that punishment, that discipline that didn’t quite fit the crime? It was a little bit too severe for what they actually did, or it wasn’t severe enough for what they did, because we know our kids are going to kind of say, well, that wasn’t fair, right? That wasn’t fair, because this didn’t happen to them, and so we’re going to hear this question all the time, and then when we stand back, we’re like, yeah, I’m not consistent, so Who am I in my little bubble if I can’t be consistent, who am I to think I can sit in the judgment seat for that person and that person and that person if I can’t even do this in my own home and be consistent and fair in my discipline, but God’s discipline is truly just. It is never more than it should be, and it is never less than it should be. It is never an emotional response where God disciplines based on how good of a day he had, which I think is true for some of us. So, it’s not he had a bad day, so the punishment is a little bit more severe, and he had a good day today, so the punishment is a little bit less. No, it is always just. It is always fair. And if we could see what God sees, if we could know what God knows, we would judge exactly the same way, because He is the only one that truly knows what is right and wrong all the time. And Aw Tozer says this, he says it perfectly in comparing our judgments and our actions with God’s when evil comes into our life. He says, how completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. To say, I don’t really know if I know the whole story, but God does. He doesn’t have any limitations when He judges, because God sees actions, and we oftentimes see actions, but only God sees the heart, and he will judge accordingly. So, now that we have our minds and our hearts in the right place, centered on the character of God, we can now move to the plea that the psalmist makes, and it’s a plea about the proud and getting what they deserve. So, we’re going to look at the second section there, the arrogance of the wicked, starting in verse three. How long, Lord, will the wicked? How long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words. All the evil doers are full of boasting. They crush your people, Lord. They oppress your inheritance. They slay the widow and the foreigner. They murder the fatherless. They say the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob takes no notice. Take notice, you senseless ones among the people, you fools. When will you become wise? Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge? The Lord knows all humans, human plans. He knows that they are futile. So, the question, How long, Lord, is a question we ask quite a bit in our Lament series that we did last year, and it is a hope-filled question. It is not a hopeless question. It, but as the psalmist comes here, he’s like, it looks like the wicked are jubilant, like they’re living the good life, things are going well, they have success, they have wealth, and not a care in the world, and usually that’s at the expense of other people. So, how long, Lord? And when you ask that question, how long, Lord, with the understanding of God’s character, it’s not hopeless in that the wicked are going to get away with anything, but instead it’s asking, I know you won’t let this go on forever, but could you step in a little sooner? Right, I know you’re not going to let it go on forever, but how long? When is the payback coming? Are you going to avenge soon? It’s a question asked through scripture many times. It’s a question that we continue to ask, and the question you’re also probably asking at this point is, why does wickedness persist? Then, why doesn’t God step in right now, right now, knowing what’s going to happen? Why has He not stopped this and this and that? And we’re going to come back to one of the answers that we see in the text this morning. We’re going to just hold on to that for a few minutes, and we’ll get there. But what the psalmist does here is he catalogs the list of these wicked things that these people are doing. These are not small things that you could just quickly glance over. He’s using words like pour out, full crush, which we looked at, even last week, in Psalm 93 overwhelming oppression, slay, murder, like these are wicked, wicked things. It’s a clear line. There’s no way around it. These are evil things that are happening, but what’s more concerning is not just what they’re doing, but who they are doing it to. Who are they doing it to, and we see here in the text, one, it’s his inheritance, God’s inheritance, his people, his covenant people, and there’s a good reason to think that this wickedness that’s happening with the people this time is coming from the inside, but of course it could also be things that are coming from outside nations, regardless of that, though the church has always experienced people attacking from within and people attacking from outside, whatever it is, the prayer is going to be the same, and so the psalmist says, because he’s confident in the Lord, we’re your people, so you are going to do something, because when you attack God’s people, you attack God when He has put His love and His promises on His people. When others go against them, God knows that God sees that, and God will respond. And so, Psalm is saying, How long until you do it? And then we also see who else is this happening to within this group of people: it’s the widow, the foreigner, and the fatherless, and these are groups of people that have special mention in scripture in multiple places, and the Lord makes provision for these groups of people in His law. So, here’s just one example from Deuteronomy 10. It’s not going to be on the screen, I’m just going to read it to you. We see all three of these groups of people in this verse, he defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing, and you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. So this is God saying this about these people, and these are the people that are being attacked by the wicked, and they’re doing these horrible things to them. And the key verse in this section is the attitude of the wicked, and it’s extremely unsettling. Look at verse seven, they say the Lord does not see, the God of Jacob takes no notice. How hopeless would life be if that was true? The Lord does not see the kind of Jacob doesn’t take notice, he doesn’t care. How hopeless would life be if there wasn’t a king, if there wasn’t a judge? Because one thing we know on this earth, the our earthly judges, our earthly justice system is going to let people get off, they’re going to be free, they are going to miss things, and people are going to get away with things they have, and they will, but not forever, but not forever, because there is a king, there is a judge. It’s unsettling, not because we find that this is their attitude. It’s unsettling because we know that this is our attitude. Many times, every time we sin, what are we doing? Maybe God doesn’t look at me today. Maybe He’s not watching. Maybe He doesn’t care. Maybe it’s going unnoticed now, and this happens because we, we give in at some point to temptation, and then we do it again a little bit later, and we feel like the guilt and the shame just isn’t quite the same as it was before. So just say, maybe God isn’t, maybe he isn’t watching, he’s not doing anything about it, at least. So maybe I can get away with a little bit more, and a little bit more, and quickly your heart becomes hard, then you start to realize. Is I’m taking advantage of the vulnerable, I am being wicked to other people in my mind, in my heart, in my speech, in my actions, and so we need to pray that the Spirit would reveal these areas of our life that maybe right now we’re holding on to very tightly, because we’ve gone to that point of saying, well, God hasn’t done anything about it yet, so why do I need to give it up? He sees, and he knows it’s interesting when somebody’s brought in for questioning for a crime that they think they get away with, pretty confident, even as they get questioned, they’re going to get away with everything changes, their whole countenance changes when somebody comes and says we have a video to show you, and it’s like, oh yeah, there’s cameras everywhere, there’s people with cameras, phones everywhere, and we’re going to show you this, and now all of a sudden everything changes, but there’s always been eyes on us, God has always seen us every day, every hour, every minute, so when you think about that, you’re like, oh, so he saw yesterday, he saw this morning, going to church, he sees my heart right now. In verse seven is a succinct way to define what it’s like to live without the fear of the Lord. So, if you want to say, like, what does it mean when somebody doesn’t fear the Lord, it’s this: the Lord does not see, the Lord doesn’t take notice, and that we see here is called foolishness. In contrast to verse eight, look at verse eight: Take notice, you senseless ones among the people, you fools. When will you become wise, and how do the wise live? Well, Proverbs tells us the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It’s the fear of the Lord. It’s exactly the opposite of what these people are doing. And then the psalmist just kind of takes us to school. We’re in theology 101 right now, in verses nine through 11, we’re looking at the main question, Who is God? And in these four questions that the psalmist asks, we find out that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient creator. That’s what we see here. So, look at the first two questions: Does He who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he, who formed the eye, not see well? Does he? God tells Moses this in Exodus 37 I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. They’re asking, How long, Lord? And he’s like, I see you, I hear you, and I’m going to do something. The next question, does he who disciplines nations not punish? Well, before Moses and the people of Israel are even in Egypt, God is talking to Abraham in Genesis 15, giving him his covenant, and he tells Abraham, your people will be in a foreign land, will be enslaved in a foreign land for a very long time, and before that even happens, this is what he tells Abraham, but I will punish the nation, which we know is Egypt, I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. Does the Lord discipline? Yes, He disciplined Egypt, and everybody in that area heard about it. And then last question, does He who teaches mankind lack knowledge? Isaiah 4610 says, I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. He knows it all. He’s everywhere. He’s all powerful. He’s the creator. This is who our God is. And so the wicked should fear the Lord, because he does see, he does take notice, and he won’t let evil prevail in the end. And then we get this kind of summary in verse 11, reminds us there’s nothing outside of God, there are no human plans that God does not see. He knows what’s going to come. He knows nothing can thwart His plans, nothing evil or wicked. And we now move from the arrogance of the wicked to the hope of the righteous. So, look, starting in verse 12 through 19, the hope of the righteous, blessed is the one you discipline, Lord, the one you teach from your law. You grant them relief from days of trouble till a pit is dug for the wicked. For the Lord will not reject his people, he will never forsake his inheritance. Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Who will rise up for me against the wicked, who will take a stand for me against evildoers? Unless the Lord had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death. When I said, “My foot is slipping, your unfailing love, Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. And so we have here. At the beginning, these words “discipline” and “teaching” are the same words that were just used in the questions that the psalmist asks, same words in verse 10, but the audience has changed. The audience is not the wicked, the audience is the righteous, those who follow the Lord. And right here we get one of the main differences between being wicked and being righteous, because God will discipline and punish both, and he also teaches who he is. He makes it known who he is. In creation, we see it in his word. And so the question is, How are you going to respond to this? How are you going to respond to the answers to this question of who is God? And the wicked respond by saying, The Lord does not see, the Lord does not take notice, and the righteous, those who submit to God, are willing and ready to hear His word. They’re ready to be disciplined, they’re ready to be instructed, so that we can see right here in verse 12. Blessed, it’s like the beatitudes, blessed, happy are those who are ready to receive the instruction of the Lord to receive the discipline of the Lord, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and they are ready to receive the relief that is talked about in verse 13. They’re ready to receive that relief, because not only does God discipline us, He teaches us through the hardships that we experience, through our troubles, through enduring what the wicked and the evil will do to us, so I love what Augustine says. Says, “Bear patiently when evil doers get all the luck, and they bear patiently, tolerantly the hardships that fall to good people until this world comes to an end, until iniquity shall pass away. They are blessed already, for God has instructed them in His law and made them gentle through days of misery until a pit is dug for the sinner. The Lord is there to instruct us to walk with us, even as the evil, even as the wickedness is going on around us. And Augustine is really just quoting from this psalm here, relief is possible, because look at verse 13, as the wickedness and evil happens, a pit is being dug. The more wickedness, the deeper the pit goes. In a way, the evil and wicked are digging their own grave. And I said, we come back to this question: Why does God let evil persist? Why does He not just stop it right now. Well, there’s a great answer to this in Genesis 15. Again, as God is talking to Abraham, giving him his covenant, he’s telling him what’s going to happen to his people, as we just read that they’re going to be enslaved by another nation, but they will return to the promised land. But when are they going to return to the promised land? He says when the sin of the people there, the Amorites, has reached its full measure. Because God is patient, God is patient. God gives time for repentance, or you could repent, or you can continue to dig, and that’s what the Amorites are doing, they dig a pit deeper and deeper. When they hear about things that the Lord is doing, they don’t repent and follow Him. They just keep digging, doing wicked thing after wicked thing. And so, when God brings this judgment on the Amorites in this moment, there isn’t a mistake, like they can’t stand before God and say, “Oh, wait, we didn’t know, or bring these excuses and all these different things to him. It’s like you’ve been digging this pit for a very long time. So God allows things to reach their full measure, in part to demonstrate to us what is truly unjust. It’s not that God needs to prove himself, it’s just for us to be there and not stand before God and say, like, I didn’t know, I had no idea. I didn’t know my heart was getting harder. I don’t think I deserve this, and making every excuse in the book to say, like, I don’t deserve this. When he shows us what our sin is and what it does, all of us would stand there and say that’s a fair punishment, that’s fair judgment, and that’s what’s happening in this, they continue to dig to show one day that I’m without excuse, as all of us are, we’re without excuse, and then here’s the relief for us, that the wicked will not ultimately get away with anything, they won’t, another relief is the teaching of verse 12 mentions God’s law, so we find relief in the difficult moments, in the troubles, in the hardships, in our circumstances, with the promises of God, with the promises of God, the teaching from God’s law. This is what we see in verses 14 and 15. Things are going to be hard, we’re going to experience wickedness working against us and working against the Lord, but the Lord will not reject His people. He’ll never forsake His inheritance. I will never leave you nor forsake you. And that is a promise that we cling to in the wickedness and the evil. Is He’s got me, He’s got me. And then we also find relief that the wickedness, the wicked do not have the final word. It says in verse 15, judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and this is looking forward to the future, so the new heavens and the new earth, where Jesus is making all things new. So when we ask the question, How long, Lord, this is the answer, the new heavens and the new earth, when everything is made right. Another question that we ask ourselves is where do we go when we experience trouble, when it seems like the wicked are winning, and that’s where the psalmist goes next in his questions. In verse 16, asks, Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evil doers? And I love this. He describes these experiences and emotions that he’s feeling that lead to these questions. Verse 17, he says, ‘I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death. So, in the face of wickedness, we could despair. That’s what’s happening here. I could despair. Our minds can go to thinking that God can’t or won’t do something that maybe He’s not able. Do you hear me, God? Do you hear me? In verse 18, He says, ‘My foot is slipping in the face of wickedness. We can doubt, we could be tempted to respond to evil with more evil. We could be tempted to think, like, well, they got away with it, so maybe I can get away with it. And our foot slips off of our firm foundation. We’re being moved, we’re being shaken by our circumstances, and it’s hard. I get it. When wickedness is winning, it is so easy to say, like, I just want to do the same thing, I just want to get vengeance, I just want to make sure they know they’re wrong and that I am right. Does he take notice? And then verse 19, when anxiety was great within me, so in the face of wickedness, our thoughts can be overwhelming, causing anxious feelings, anxious thoughts, causing us to fear, and unable to rest. So, my question for you now is, Where is that temptation? Is it despair? Is it doubt? Is it anxiety? Is it all of them? Thankfully, the psalmist gives us the answer to these questions, no matter where you are. Verse 17, when we’re talking about despair, it says the Lord gives help. Verse 18, when you’re talking about doubt, God’s unfailing love supports you, and when you’re talking about anxiety, verse 19, God’s comfort brings you joy, we go to the one who provides all of this, where all the promises of God are yes and amen. That’s in the personal work of Jesus Christ. That is where we go. The psalmist here had all sorts of small s saviors, small s saviors, prophets, priests, kings, judges, that for a time, might bring some comfort, for a time might bring some help, might bring some support, but just as likely they would end up on the wicked side of things. Just go through First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, and you start to see how quickly these kings can go astray, right? So, there’s some small ass saviors that could bring some of this for a little while, but none of them could bring a completely satisfying and ultimate help, support, comfort, and joy, other than the capital S Savior, Jesus. That’s what He came to do, because He did that through His death, because He defeated evil, He defeated wickedness and sin, triumphing over them by the cross, and not only does he do that, but he sustains us now, and so what do we have to do? We have to turn our eyes back to him. We have to turn our eyes back to Jesus. Some of our women were at the Gospel Coalition women’s conference last week, and the theme was “Turn Your Eyes: Seen the Savior in the Book of Psalms, and that’s what we’re doing this morning, and our eyes have to go to Jesus and say, “This is what you have done for me. This is why I can be completely confident, and this is one of my favorite songs. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. We’ve been singing it as a family this week after Jackie got back from the conference, and listen to these words: “Oh, soul, are you weary and troubled? Are you experiencing wickedness and evil? Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth, evil, wickedness, troubles, hardships will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace, what could do that? Only Jesus can do that, can bring us that comfort and that joy, which leads us to the last section here, the work of God, starting in verse 20 and. Can a corrupt throne be allied with you? A throne that brings on misery by its decrees. The wicked abandon together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become my fortress and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness. So here we are, the work of God. The psalmist comes back one more time to the wicked. The wicked cannot be aligned with God. The wicked are working against the Lord and working against the righteous. So now, at this moment, as we’re living our lives right now, two things are happening. The wicked continue to do wicked things and evil things, and they are continuing to dig that pit for themselves, and then the righteous, those who are in Christ Jesus, are taking comfort in God, their rock, their fortress, and their refuge. As the psalmist sees the Lord’s people being oppressed here and condemned to death, we look back to the cross 2008 years ago, when the wicked banded together against an innocent one. That’s what they did. The wicked banded together to say this man needs to die, the only one who is truly righteous, the Lord Jesus Christ. And they persecuted him, and they crushed him, condemning him to death. There’s something we have to come to terms with, all of us, this morning, and that is the wickedness is not just out there. The wickedness is in here. The wickedness is in here too. Every one of us knows what we deserve. If you recorded the last week of your life, your heart, your mind, your speech, your actions, would you want it played here for everybody to hear? I wouldn’t. I didn’t want that the other day when that guy was going after my family. We all deserve God’s judgment. We’ve rebelled against the Creator, who has given us our eyes and our ears, and we’ve asked Him, “Do you see? Do you take notice? We all deserve that. And yet, through Jesus Christ, listen to what the psalmist says in Psalm 103 He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities when we are found in Christ Jesus. Because of this, the Lord is not a god we run from, but a god we run, we run to as our refuge and our fortress for the help and the support and the comfort and the joy that we’re looking for. He is the rock, he does not move, he does not change, he remains the same regardless of the wickedness going on around us. Verse 23 goes back to what I said before, it’s a nice bookend from where we started. Lord, avenge, pay back. Well, what’s he going to do? He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness, the Lord our God will destroy them. The same words used in verses one and two. He is going to do this. No one is going to get away with anything, but at this time, on this side of the cross, those sins, that wickedness, that evil is either paid for on the cross by Jesus Christ, or it will be paid for at the final judgment, because for those who are in Christ Jesus, we ask, How long, Lord, how long? But if you have not asked that question, do not presume upon God’s grace, because you may be hardening your heart, and you may be digging a pit deeper and deeper, because Jesus will come again. He came, capital S Savior. When he comes again, we see this in Acts 1731 It says, “For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead. Well, there’s only been one man raised from the dead like this, and He is appointed at one time to bring justice to the earth, so He will come again. Will you be digging a pit, or will you be running to Him for His as a refuge? So Christ will come and judge you for your sins, past, present, and future paying you back what you deserve, or He will welcome you into His kingdom, because He paid for your sins, past, present, and future, and gave you what you don’t deserve, His grace, His forgiveness, and reconciliation. So, the big idea this morning from Psalm 94 is this: the judge will make all things right, so take refuge in Him and be comforted. The judge will make all things right, so take refuge in Him and be comforted. What does this look like for a few different groups in here? Just want to say a couple things. One, if you were here this morning. In your questioning Christianity, seeking who is Jesus, have some questions trying to navigate the difficult life that we find ourselves living. We’re so happy that you’re here this morning. We have a lot of the same questions that you do, and so this morning my plea for you is simply to fear the Lord. Fear the Lord. He sees all, he knows all, but he has made a way for you to be forgiven through his son, so that you can experience true freedom, true rest, true comfort, and joy, and help and support when the wickedness and evil is going on around us, and he gives us the strength by his spirit to pursue that right life, right living on the right line that has been drawn in the sand, so we know what is good and what is evil, and he helps us to walk with him. So my plea is to fear the Lord today, for my brothers and sisters in Christ, take refuge in the Lord, and let Him avenge, let Him pay back. You’re like, well, what is that? What does that look like? I told Jackie this when I wasn’t with them, when this happened at the playground, and I told her, in God’s providence, in His grace, what sermon was I working on when all of this happened, because I told her all the same things happened to my body, but my mind and heart did not go to the place it would have gone a week ago, simply because I was in this, and it’s going through my mind is like, how could I respond the way I want to respond, and I didn’t know that in the moment, but stepping back now, I’m like, how in the world did I hold it together? It’s simply by God’s grace to say, Lord, you avenge. It’s not for me to do it’s not for me to take vengeance. And when we look at scripture, I’ve got one example from scripture and one from more recent history, but I think we need to hear these to truly understand what does this look like, to not avenge, but to let the Lord do it. Many of you are doing the two-year Bible reading with us, that, and we just finished up First Samuel, and so you’re studying the life of David, and King Saul is pursuing David unjustly. He is jealous, he doesn’t want David to have the throne, and so he is pursuing him. How many times David have a chance to take Saul’s life twice, and how many people were encouraging him to do that, to take Saul’s life. Why seek vengeance, get revenge, take the throne? And what did David do both times? He left a warning for Saul. He said, I just took some stuff from you, just cut off the corner of your robe, but I just want you to know I’m here, but I’m not going to take your life, that’s the Lord’s to do. The Lord will avenge, the Lord will take your kingdom from you, the Lord will give the kingdom to me. He trusted the Lord to do what God said He would do. Vengeance is the Lords, and then Corrie 10 Boom, one of my favorites, imprisoned in a concentration camp for hiding Jews in her home with her family from the Nazis in World War Two, and she constantly spoke of forgiveness every time she would see a guard, there was this moment of what I described, that anger inside, why is this happening to us, but at the same time she was able to pray the prayer, Lord, forgive them, which is exactly what Jesus did on the cross, forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing. How many of these guards knew what they were doing in this moment, and she wanted them to experience the grace of Jesus Christ. So, Lord, if they go to their grave unrepentant, judge them, and he will justly, but Lord, I want them to experience the grace that I’ve experienced, because I deserve exactly what they deserve: eternal separation from you. But instead of seeking out that vengeance, she gave it to the Lord. But this is important for us. We need to pray prayers, not just of judgment and justice, we need to pray prayers of forgiveness and pleading for the lives of those who have done evil and wickedness in our life or to others. And finally, church, we need to be comforted and comfort each other. We help others, not seek revenge. We help others support others when somebody sins against them, when they experience evil and wickedness, and we pray prayers like Psalm 94 So I want to read this from Second Corinthians one three through four. Ground ourselves in the character of God, so that we can help each other. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. So we remind each other that the Lord sees all our sins and the wickedness and evil of others. It will not go on forever, and we pray for the wicked that they would come to believe in Jesus Christ, have their sins for. Given like ours have, because it has been paid if they repent and stop digging those pits, and they too can walk in comfort and joy that we are walking in, because the judge of all the earth will do what is right. So take refuge in Him and be comforted. Let’s pray, God of all comfort, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your love for us, the forgiveness that we have received through your Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross and in the empty tomb. We thank you, Lord, that as we enter into this next week, if there’s any evil or wickedness that we experience, Lord, I pray that you would remind us to come to you first, that we would come and pray, we would come and plead with you, and that you would be the help and the support and the comfort and joy that we need in that moment as we rest in the finished work of Christ, and rest that you will pay back the evil you will give it what it deserves, and let us trust you with that. We thank you, Lord. We love you, and we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Lord’s Reign (Psalm 93)

PODCAST The Lord’s Reign June 14, 12026 | Brandon Cooper Brandon Cooper discusses the theme of God’s sovereignty as expressed in Psalm 93, emphasizing that God reigns eternally and brings stability and security. He highlights the chaos in the world, from global conflicts to personal struggles, and contrasts it with God’s unchanging rule. Cooper outlines three truths about God’s reign: His eternal reign, His mighty reign, and His holy reign. He encourages believers to interpret their circumstances through the lens of God’s unchanging character and to live in submission to His rule, finding peace and stability in His sovereignty. TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+ The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. Good morning, church. You can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Psalm 93 Psalm 93 as you are flipping there, perhaps at some point in your life you have asked the question, undoubtedly in a moment of exasperation, Who is in charge here? That is more accusation than question. When it comes out, of course, it’s uttered when things aren’t going as they should, and there’s this sense that well, somebody’s responsible for this mess, and I would like to talk to them, you’re gonna make your complaint, you know. So you, you’re asked for the supervisor, they come, and then they’re supposed to set it right. You get your apps for free, or something like that. Like, I want to know it’s taken care of. Now, we could be forgiven, I think, if we have occasionally felt like asking this of the world at large, is anyone in charge? Is anyone responsible for what’s going on? When I read that the invasion of Ukraine, for example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is now been going on longer than World War One. We got war in Iran, Ethiopia, elsewhere, from Ebola to the new world screw worm, from inflation to immigration unrest in Northern Ireland. There’s a lot going on, and that’s just the news headlines, of course. That’s not anything to do with your life personally. What could be happening there? Maybe you just went through their third reorg in as many years, or you got a kid struggling academically, mentally, relationally, spiritually, or a loved one dementing, deteriorating in other ways. We are often apt to wonder if anyone’s in charge in the midst of so much instability and insecurity, and it breeds anxiety in us, and we have been called the anxious generation, breeds anxiety and anger as well. This world so often proves chaotic, dangerous, overwhelming, but someone is in charge. That’s the good news. That’s the good news of Psalm 93 We are beginning a new series today, as has been mentioned. We’re going to look at a set of eight psalms that are linked together by a common theme, the kingship of God. The Lord reigns, He reigns above all pretenders to His throne, above all powers and potentates and princes above, as our series has it, all would be gods, and the opening psalm of this little section of the psalter declares it from the start, declares it, and then describes it, and in the process of describing his reign answers our question, just who is in charge brings peace in the midst of very real storms. We’re gonna see three truths about God’s rule and reign as we go through the psalm together. So let’s start with verses one and two, Psalm 93 verses one and two, as we look at God’s eternal reign, His eternal reign, Psalm 93 one and two. The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength. Indeed, the world is established firm and secure. Your throne was established long ago. You are from all eternity. So our psalm opens with the words The Lord reigns. This really is the headline for all of Psalms 93 to 100 Like, headline is about right. You can almost picture the paper boy on the street corner going extra, extra, you know, read all about it. The headline is meant to catch your attention, especially because it’s not felt reality. That’s what a headline is meant to do, though. Right? Grab your attention, go. I want to read the rest of the article, and in this case, it’s because how can this be true? And it goes on to explain it, as we’ll see now. This phrase, the Lord reigns, is repeated verbatim in Psalm 9697 99 and we’re going to see it a bunch, and the idea is present in all of them. God is king, and it reads almost like a proclamation. It needs exclamation points after it. The Lord reigns. We see this elsewhere, this sense of announcing the news of God’s. In Isaiah 52 verse seven, the prophet says, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation. You’re going, “Wow, this sounds awesome. What is our salvation? What’s the good news that’s going to give me peace in this moment? And it’s this who say to Zion, your God reigns. That’s the good news. Your God reigns. God is on the throne always. Who’s in charge here? The Lord is, without question. It is a fixed state of reality. It has always been true, and it always will be true. There is not one maverick molecule in all of God’s universe. He is never surprised by what is happening, even though we so often are, and whether it was the pandemic that caught us all off guard worldwide or the detour that you weren’t expecting to take when you tried to go down West Avenue this past week, like he’s not surprised by any of it. He knows what’s happening where you are, and he’s using them for his good purposes. And what sort of king is he? Well, Psalmist tells us that he is robed in majesty. Now, clothing is important. It’s important in scripture, but it’s important in our lives as well, because clothing tells us who a person is, what he or she does, like a uniform, almost. You pull up in front of a fancy restaurant, or whatnot, you hand the keys of your car to the guy in the red jacket, not just as somebody standing there, that would be a bad idea, right? They say you kind of know, okay, he’s the valet that helps. Or we had a group of women who were down in Indianapolis these past few days for the Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference, and they always have lots of people at these conferences very helpfully fitted out in T-shirts that say, like, I know what I’m doing, you come and ask me a question, if you got a question, so you know. Okay, that’s the person I talked to. So clothing tells us who a person is, and God is clothed in royal robes, because He is king and intends to reign as king. He’s not a weak king, either. He’s not an impotent king, he’s not a king in exile. No, he is a king on the throne who is armed with strength, girded with strength, like he is ready for action. He has the power that he needs to rule, and so when God shows up on the scene, he is dressed as the commander in chief of the universe. You might picture that scene just moments before Israel enters the promised land, right before Jericho’s walls fall down, all of that, and Joshua has a vision of the angel of the Lord, like God embodied the commander of the Lord’s army, like that’s what he looked, he got a sword in his hand, that’s how God looks when He comes to act as a result. Then the world, and by world, here we’re not talking about the landmarks, it’s not the stones and the plants and things like we’re talking about the people. The world’s population is established, it is firm and secure. In other words, it can’t be moved. There’s a certain solidity to human affairs, which is why nothing seems to change much under the sun. No one can upset the order, but notice that the world is established because God’s throne was established from eternity past, like he set up his throne from before the beginning. He is eternally the king. That’s significant. There’s an implicit conclusion to be drawn here. The stability of the Lord’s throne, the fact that he is always the one reigning, that’s what provides stability to the world. You can see it in the passive tense that’s used. The world is established, like someone else is establishing it. It can’t establish itself. The Lord holds it up and holds it in place. You ever drive along, you know, rocky cliffs or something like that, and sometimes they’ve got those wire cages over the rocky cliffs, so you don’t get fallen rocks hitting your car or something like that. That’s like those cages are holding the chaos in place. If you’re to pull them off, the whole thing would fall to pieces. That’s the Lord with this world, He’s holding the chaos in place, so it doesn’t fall to pieces. We read in Hebrews one that the king sustains all things by his powerful word, and if he were to stop sustaining them, it would be absolute chaos. So his eternal reign brings stability, his eternal. Rang brings stability. He keeps the chaos at bay. All that happens happens according to his will and for his good purposes. Except that I already said that it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. So, what do we do about that? We’ll get to the chaos in a moment, I promise you. But what do we do about that? I think there’s an application point here. It’s just that we follow the psalmist, do what the psalmist did here. What I mean by that is this: when trouble comes, start with theology, not the trouble, start with theology, not trouble, like the psalmist takes care to make sure that he’s going to interpret his circumstances in light of God’s unchanging character, instead of backwards, because so often we are tempted to interpret God in light of our fluctuating circumstances, but no, God is who He always is, and He’s always reigning. So, the psalmist, again, the psalmist is going to talk about chaos in the next section, but He reorients His heart first. It’s like He puts His feet down on solid foundational truth, the Lord really does reign, that is true, regardless of my or your feelings or impressions, and he has proven it time and time again. He has proven it supremely, of course, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, because that is the triumph of good, of order, of stability over all the powers of darkness and chaos, so like the psalmist, we need to preach this truth to ourselves regularly, like maybe you’re that one in the reorg, you’re out of a job right in that moment when you get hit with unexpected medical bills, guess what, even then he is still King John Calvin, the Swiss reformer, back in the 16th century, had this to say about this psalm, and this idea, he says, our not investing God with the power which belongs to him, as we ought to do, and thus despoiling him of his authority is the source of that fear and trembling, which we very often experience. The whole reason we’re all anxious all the time is because we forget who God is. We strip him the authority that is his, and so Calvin goes on to say, I love this: were we well persuaded of his invincible power that would be to us an invincible support against all the assaults of temptation, the temptation to doubt, to anxiety. That’s it exactly. We fear and tremble. Understandably, there are all sorts of things in the world that should make us afraid and trembling, but we fear and tremble, because we doubt his reign, and when we remember, it brings us stability, and see him there on his throne, robed in majesty, girded with strength, strong to save and breathe rest the same God who toppled Jericho’s walls, who plucked Daniel out of the lion’s den, who created and sustains all things by his powerful word, who cast sickness and darkness out with a word, with a touch, when he walked among us, sometimes even with the faintest feel of the fringe of his robe, like that God, that same God has got you. His eternal reign brings stability. Second, then let’s talk about His mighty ring, verses three and four. The seas have lifted up, Lord, the seas have lifted up their voice, the seas have lifted up their pounding waves, mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea. The Lord on high is mighty. I love this, because it’s the reminder that we need so often that the Bible won’t lie to you. The Bible is not trying to fool you, it doesn’t sugarcoat or whitewash the harsh reality of life in a world in rebellion against God’s good and rightful rule, and so it tells us this there in verse three, in this it’s staircase parallelism, if you want the cool name for it, right? Staircase, like we’re going up in intensity, the seas have lifted up, they’ve lifted up their voice, they’ve lifted up their pounding waves. We use this same idea, we’re trying to dramatically capture the intensifying threat. So, maybe you’ve walked into a meeting before, and somebody said that we have a problem, a big problem, a problem. That threatens to derail the whole project, that’s that same staircase parallelism, that’s what we’re talking about here, and the imagery helps us feel exactly the unrest that this causes. Like, put yourself in the scene for a moment, maybe you experienced this even as a child. I know I did many times, because I loved playing in the waves, and so you’re there at the beach, you know, it’s summer vacation, you’re at the ocean or something, you got having fun playing in the ocean waves, but you know, the second day, third day, whatever, they’re a little bigger than they were the past couple days, and so that first one hits you and knocks you down, and it’s kind of fun, you know, but then before you can get up, the second one hits you, and so you’re stuck underwater, and by the time the third one hits, like you’re out of breath, and you’re so disoriented that it smacks your head into the sand, like that’s really different experience, you’re hoping somebody sees you, Mom or Dad, come and just put you down, so you can breathe again. That’s how life feels. It feels like no one’s in charge, because the hits just keep on coming. We’re waiting for Dad to pick us up, still can’t catch our breath now. These ocean currents, these pounding waves, literally, the word there is crushing. We’ll see it again in the next psalm, but these crushing waves, they’re a symbol of the world’s unrest. In Hebrew thought, the sea is like the gateway to the abyss. This is where chaos comes from. It’s such a powerful image to the Hebrews that they would even use it of invading nations, like if Assyria was coming, Isaiah 87 you can see this, Assyria is coming, it says the Euphrates is coming against you, like there’s a river coming at you, because water is so scary, it’s everything that overwhelms us. Even that word has it in it, right? Overwhelm. We’ve used it so often, figuratively, we forget the literal meaning, which means your head’s underwater at the time. Support me in the whelming flood. We sometimes sing, so that’s the chaos, that’s the unrest. How many of you have been sitting here wondering this whole time, how do we square verse three with verses one and two? It doesn’t make any sense at all. The Lord reigns, this world is established, it’s firm, it’s secure. You’re drowning. Well, which one is it? Revelation doesn’t match reality here. The answer to the question is in verse four. You see, we take the staircase up to peak freak out, but then we get a staircase down in the next verse to peace, because mightier than the thunder of the great waters, literally the voice of the waters, the same word “voice” that we saw in the previous verse. Mightier than the breakers crashing over you, the Lord on high is mighty, and this is the God who brought order out of chaos, the spirit of the Lord hovered above the primordial waters in creation. This is the God who split the Red Sea, so Israel could walk through on dry land. Oh, you’re worried about drowning? Don’t worry, I got that for you. We’ll just make walls out of water, no big deal. Who, a little bit later in the next generation stopped the Jordan River from flowing, so that again they could walk on dry land as they crossed into the Promised Land. This is the Lord who, when He walked among us, fell asleep in the middle of a storm. You know why Jesus fell asleep in the middle of the storm on the boat, because He was not confused about who’s on the throne. This storm doesn’t threaten me. I know who’s raining. He’s snoring. The disciples are freaking out. They got verse three going. They forgot verses one and two. They wake Jesus up, and what does Jesus say? Hush, be still, and all the storms still, so what’s true literally of the waters and all those stories I just told is true of every figurative flood and storm in your life as well. God is bigger, He is stronger, and He is more than enough. Even when we drown in the flood, which will happen one day, right? Something’s going to get us in the end. We know that we’re going to die, but even when we drown in the flood, He’s got us, because He already defeated the final storm we face, death and judgment. And so His mighty reign brings security, His. Mighty rain brings security. You are secure in His mighty hands, no matter the crushing breakers. So, what do we do with that truth? How do we put it into practice? Cling to it like a life preserver when your ship sinks, will you let the knowledge of His mighty reign put your circumstances in perspective? And can I say that that’s corporate application for us, like this is what we do for each other as a church, and why community is so important, especially in the midst of storms. We often quote Ephesians four here as a church. It talks about the fact that we speak the truth in love to one another, and for some reason we’ve got it in our heads that when Paul says speak the truth in love, he means when you have to rebuke somebody, just try to be nice about it. That is not what that verse means. That is true, by the way. That’s just Galatians six. Okay, Ephesians four: speak the truth in love. What is the truth that we’re speaking, so that we’re built up in Christ? It’s Ephesians one to three. It’s the gospel of Christ Jesus. We are by nature deserving of wrath, but because of His great love for us, God made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace that we have been saved. We speak that truth to each other, gospel truth. It’s the reminder that we need to keep our head above water. Again, firm feet firmly planted on the foundation of truth, illustration for those my age and older, you all see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner, one, there’s that great scene when he first meets Little John, who’s a big dude, meets Little John, and they fight, you know, kind of over the river and whatnot, and eventually Little John falls in, and he is freaking out because he can’t swim, and he’s about to drown, and so Kevin Costner’s got him Robin Hood, and he’s like, “Do you yield, kind of thing? and he’s like, “Yes, yes, yes, just help me, and all that Robin Hood does is say, “Put your feet down, because he’s standing, he’s in three feet of water, he’s about to drown in three feet of water, he’s like, “Whoa, I’m fine. Like, that’s what we do when we speak the truth and love to one another. We say, put your feet down, put your feet down, and breathe. Get your head above water. You got a financial struggle going on right now. Guess what? Your God owns the cattle on 1000 hills. He’s got enough to provide for you, and better still, He set you in church. He set you in a community of people. Like, at one point, the disciples were worried about findings. What happens if we lose everything because we’re following you? And Jesus says, yeah, yeah, that’s that’s likely. You’re probably gonna happen, actually. But here’s the thing: you lose your house, you get 100 houses, not just in the life to come, but in this life. Why? What house? Your houses, your houses. You’re the 100 houses for the people in need in those moments, of course. God provides through his people. He provides. I mean, the God who gave us Jesus, how will we not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Romans 832 You facing physical struggle right now, sickness, maybe even a sickness that will end in death. The king said, I’m the resurrection and the life. That’s solid truth. Death is not the way life is supposed to be. It is hard when you lose someone you love, that is a wound you carry with you for the rest of your life. It’s real. It’s a real storm. But if I could quote somebody, it’s one short sleep, and then we wake eternally. If we are in Christ, and we see our loved ones again, is there a sin you can’t overcome? Is that your struggle? Well, God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. We might become like Jesus, our Savior, conformed to His image. The one who saves us promises to sanctify us, to make us like Jesus. He’s faithful, and He will do it. He will sanctify you. That actually takes us to our third point. Then, let’s talk about His holy reign, as long as we’re talking about sanctification. The last verse of Psalm 93 verse five: Your statutes, Lord, stand firm. Holiness adorns your house for endless days. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to fit the rest. To the psalm, it’s kind of a weird end to it, but a second glance will show us that it is the perfect punctuation mark to what has gone before. The word statutes here, laws, decrees, testimonies, all good translations, it’s a word that’s used throughout Psalm 119 which talks about the glory of God’s word, and so it’s what God says about himself, what he says about the world, what he says about us, that’s statutes, and then his statutes stand firm, literally are trustworthy, this really important word, anytime you talk about the faithfulness of God, it’s the same idea, the same root word that’s there, where to get our word amen from it. God is faithful to all that He says, faithfully keeps every promise He makes. So, what God is doing here in Psalm 93 verse five, is he’s vouching for the words of scripture. If I can misquote the FDIC, the Bible is backed by the full faith and credit of Almighty, eternal God, which is not bad, even better than being backed by the full credit of the US. But what does God’s law have to do with His sovereignty over creation? Well, the law shows us, tells us explicitly God’s character, His nature, and it’s His character, His nature that underlies and establishes the moral and physical order of creation. This is why God points to nature in Job. So, you haven’t read the book of Job. What happens? Job, he goes through some storms, about as intense a storm as you could possibly imagine, a series of them, and he’s got questions for God, who’s in charge here, is kind of his question, like this doesn’t make sense. I didn’t sin, my kids didn’t sin, they’re dead, I’m suffering. How come all these sinners are doing just fine? And the Lord answers him out of the whirlwind, we’re kind of expecting him to, you know, actually explain what happened, like Satan and I, we had this bet going, and he doesn’t, instead he just takes Job on a tour of creation, it’s like a nature documentary, why, and not only that, why does Job go awesome? Thank you. I got what I needed, because that tour of nature shows the moral order of the universe. It’s not perfect, because we’re in a broken world, of course, but there is order in creation, the same order that is in the universe as a whole. Christopher Asch, in his commentary on Psalms, says it like this: the stability of the world and the trustworthiness of the scriptures are two sides of the same coin, because the same faithful God stands behind both. The sun rises in the east each morning, spring follows winter inevitably. Why? Because God is who He always is. That’s why. That’s the only reason that it keeps happening. He orders the world. The whole reason science is possible is because God made the world. So, if that orders the world, though, that should order our lives too. That’s why the psalmist homes in God’s home, at the end there, like God’s house, the temple, of course, is what we’re talking about, because the temple is the place where God’s rule should be acknowledged like this is the place where we say yes, exactly, God is king. So we should see a world rightly ordered in the temple, not always, though. I mean, you know that you go to church, you know this isn’t always the case. We are in a broken world, and even God’s people are still infected with the virus of sin, and so we are being remade. We are not without sin yet. We are not glorified yet. In fact, if this psalm was written after the exile, which is most likely, then that means God’s house had already been knocked down, like Nebuchadnezzar took care of that, razed it to the ground. Temple was destroyed as punishment because the people in the temple, and going to the temple to worship, weren’t holy. And so it leaves us wanting more as we read this, even as we read this verse, he. Here in its context, if we were like fifth century Jews or something, would leave us wanting more. It points us to the one who said, I’m greater than the temple, Jesus, who deals with that sin and who makes us holy. And, of course, through Jesus, it points us to the church, God’s people being conformed to God’s character bit by bit, because we are now the temple of God, First Corinthians 316 and 17. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, that God’s spirit dwells in your midst. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person, for God’s temple is sacred, holy, and you together are that temple. His temple is a holy, which means holiness should adorn that temple. The holiness that should adorn his house should adorn those in his household. It should mark his people, and so his holy reign, his holy reign brings sanctity. His holy reign brings sanctity, changed lives, a transformed people living out their transformation in increasing measure every day. If we are God’s people, if we are the house of God, we must be a people committed to holiness. And this is why we gather. This is why you’re here now, so we all can sit under the authority of God’s word, because God’s word is the transforming agent, the power for our change. That’s why we gather in smaller groups, community groups, to talk about the sermons. We can say, okay, how should this be changing me personally, not just in general ways, or why we get together in journey groups to speak the truth in love to one another. We fight sin with the gospel. That’s why we have informal conversations as His people to rebuke, to encourage. It’s why we disciple, we invest in the next generation, or just in the people around us. We cannot pretend that He is our King if we’re not living in submission to His rule. So I ask you a question now that we often ask ourselves in our journey groups, is there any area of your life where you are a hearer of the word but not a doer of it, where you are not in submission to what you know His word says is true. If so, God addressed that, because a speaking God looks for and expects a listening people, and to listen in scripture is to obey. Jesus himself taught how important this is. Interestingly, he even used the image of a flood that’s coming otherwise. If you grew up in church, you’ve heard this parable before, of course, about a house and where exactly you should build it. He says this at the end of the parable in Matthew seven, but everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. Problem with sand, of course, no solid foundation to it. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. We don’t want that for ourselves, and so we’re going to build our houses, build our lives on the solid foundation of the truth of who God is. An eternal God brings stability, a mighty God brings security, a holy God brings sanctity that leads us to our big idea. Now, you got the big idea already, because I told you the big idea the whole series, but there’s a response that’s built into it, of course. The big idea, the Lord reigns, the Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. The Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. Take heart. Take courage in the knowledge that God reigns over the rains. He reigns over the storms. He also holds the reins. I could just keep going if you want, but I won’t. That’s fine. God reigns, and his character is more important than your circumstances, like the truth of who he is is more important than your experience. So take courage in that, take heart, but take care, take care to live in submission to King, to God, this good, glorious, great, and gracious, thank God, gracious, and you are here and in Christ, like if you have submitted yourself to the rule of God by turning from your sin and trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Scripture tells us you are a new creation in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come, and we’re a preview of what’s coming cosmically, because, like the new creation that you are, the new creation that God is bringing, the new heavens and the new earth of Revelation 21 and 22 it will be in line with God’s order, so we read in Revelation 21 we get the description of the new heavens and the new earth, and it says that basically there’s no more chaos, there’s no more sin, no more suffering, there’s no more sickness, there’s no more death, no more tears as a result, and on that last day, then we will sing with joy at the wedding supper of the lamb and his bride, the church. Verse that Erica already read it for us. What will we sing? What’s the song we will sing together? Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns by the blood of the lamb. His kingdom comes in fullness at last, the kingdom that Jesus announced at the start of his ministry. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s the kingdom that Jesus proved when he stilled the storm, the throne of which kingdom Jesus ascended at the cross of Christ, crowned with the crown of thorns, but that’s his coronation. He’s robed, even in that moment they offer him mock worship, the Roman soldier, but this is his coronation ceremony. When he’s lifted up on the cross, he is lifted up on to the throne, and there he drowned in the ocean of God’s wrath, his righteous anger at our sin to still that storm forever for those who would put their trust in him. So, what’s happening in the meantime? First Corinthians 1524 and 26 Then the end will come when he hands over, when Jesus hands over the kingdom of God to the Father, after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Jesus reigns. He is on the throne, even now there are parts of the world still in rebellion against Him, and he is putting down those rebellions one at a time. So, why wouldn’t we submit to a king like this, who loved us, who adopted us, who reigns with wisdom and goodness and power, and even in those moments where it feels like he’s not reigning, we have the reminder that he is waiting, he is tarrying, so that people have time still to repent and submit to his rule, so they can enter that kingdom eternally. We see the goodness of our Savior, I mean, even in the Declaration we read back in Isaiah, where we started here, right? How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, and the good news that was proclaimed was, ‘Your God reigns. That’s Isaiah 52 seven. Few verses later, Isaiah 53 A lot of you know this. Here’s your king, who is reigning, surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, and he was crushed for our iniquities, and the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed, and because of that one day in the new heavens and the new earth, Revelation 21 verse one, the sea will be no more. That’s the good news. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s no sailing like days at the ocean, that’s not it at all. We’re talking about the chaos, we’re talking about the abyss. There’ll be no more pounding waves, no more rushing torrents, no more drowning floods. Take heart, He’s overcome the world. The Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. Let’s pray. Hallelujah! We praise you, Lord, because you, Lord God Almighty, reign. You are on the throne, and we would have no one else on the throne, because we see who you are, who you always are, who you have been from eternity past, your wisdom, your goodness, your power, your holiness, your love. Lord, we pray, then that you would reign, that you would bring your coming kingdom at the proper time, and that in the meantime, Lord, that we would submit to your rule. May our love of our King be written on our lives as a declaration to those around us that you reign and that you are a good king, we pray this for your name’s sake, Amen.