But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods, and when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. The message this morning is taken from Psalm 33. You have it printed in your bulletin on page 6. And I have elected not to read it this morning before I preach. We'll look at it as we go along. We've already used quite a bit of it, the first nine verses we used in our call to worship, more verses to our call to confession and assurance of pardon. So it won't be that far away from what we want to talk about this morning. It's a Psalm of 22 verses, that's how many letters there are in the Hebrew alphabet, but it's not an acrostic. It doesn't, you know, first verse, second verse, and so on, with the Hebrew alphabet. It is a Psalm of praise. And most probably was part of the temple liturgy or a festival worship, that sort of thing when people were, of Israel were called to worship God. There's a very clear call to worship. There's reasons given for that worship, and there's a response. And it's something that would be used in worship. And you know, simply this morning, as we look at it, I would say that I would sum it up this way. Worship the Lord with your whole heart because he's worthy, all right? So nothing new, nothing you haven't heard from this pulpit before, but just that reminder that we worship the Lord our God with our whole heart because he is worthy. Let's look at this. The first three verses give a call to worship, saying joyfully to the Lord, you righteous. It is fitting for the upright to praise him. Praise the Lord with the heart, make music to him on the ten-stringed liar. Sing to him a new song, play skillfully, and shout for joy. It's the call to worship. There's the act of worship, if you will, the things that we do. We sing joyfully to the Lord. There's this idea of singing to him, of using our voices. There's the idea of making music using instrumentation in giving God worship. I was a little bit surprised. I was reading Spurgeon's Treasury of Worship and commentary on the Psalms, and I did not realize that for most of the church's history, or a lot of it, they sang without musical instrumentation. In fact, a lot of the early church fathers, Thomas Aquinas, Christos, Justin Martyr, these kinds of folks would say that the instruments were part of Israel's worship in the Old Testament when they were a baby, but like we put away the sacrificial system, so we put away instruments and we make melody with our voices, and it seems awfully foreign to us, doesn't it? We praise God for the instrumentations, and we find it commanded in the Scriptures. We certainly want to make melody in our hearts to the Lord, to use our voices to shout before the Lord, but that playing skillfully, that using the instruments that God has provided in today's world, in worship, it's a given, and I think there's biblical foundations, but there is that controversy. There is something else there. We sing to the Lord, we offer him worship that way, but did you notice who particularly was called to worship, shout joyfully to the Lord, you righteous? Now, there's another place in the Psalms that says there is not righteous, there's not who do good, so what's the deal, who's worshipping, is it a worship service of one, you know Jesus Christ, when he comes into the world, we'll pick up the psalm and sing it, or why? Why is it mentioned this way? Well, the Psalms, you know, if you think about the psalm, our children are learning for children's church, right? Psalm 1, blessed are those who do not walk in the way of the wicked or stand in the seat of the scoffer, sit in the, I'm not saying it right, but they're delighted in the law of the Lord, it says the wicked are this way, but the righteous are another way. This idea of wickedness and righteousness is a clear theme in the Psalter, and the wicked are, God deals with them in a different way, but what about the righteous, what that righteous just like you are, righteous because God has made a particular declaration, we talk about it as being an alien righteousness, it's not you and yourself because you're a sinner, right? I sin, I sin daily, I struggle with my, my sin nature and putting it off and putting it to death and living before God, but having put faith in Jesus Christ, having put faith in, for the Old Testament saints, in the promises of God in the substitute that He provided, Christ was symbolized in the sacrifice for sin, was He not? God accepted a substitute in taking away the sins, and He reckoned them as righteous, even Romans where Paul is explaining justification by faith in Christ alone, where we get this righteousness from God, says in verse 25, that God gave us the righteousness because He had passed over sins previously committed, the sins of Adam and Abraham and Noah and all the saints got it passed over, He hadn't judged them, He waited until Christ on the cross, and then He punished them fully. It's a call to the righteous, it's a call to those who have been born again to bring worship to God, and there's this call to sin, to make melody, to use instrumentation, for the righteous to bring their worship, there is a sense in verse 8, all the earth is to fear the Lord, and that is a call to worship too, but primarily we see it's a call to those who have put their faith in God and are called righteous. There's something very important about that, let me go back to it for just a second. When you think of yourself, you who have been reconciled to God on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, when you think of yourself, how do you think of yourself? Okay, God forgives me, but what I really am is a sinner. If we're honest about it, I'm sinful, my thoughts are sinful, my desires are sinful, I often say the wrong thing and often mean to say the wrong thing, although I regret it shortly afterwards, especially if someone doesn't like it, it feels uncomfortable when they respond to me, but basically I'm a sinner, is that how you look at yourself? Because if it is, I have good news for you, that's not how God looks at you. And I suppose that the bad news is, well no, it's good news, you can change, you can change your view of yourself and you should. If God has determined to see you as righteous in Christ, you should look at yourself that way too. When He calls you to worship, He calls you to worship as one who is righteous, it's not blind to your sin, we'll look in a little bit, we'll see that He sees, He looks, He knows the hearts of those whom He has created, there's no deceiving Him and He's not in denial, but having paid for your sin and having given you the righteousness of Christ, that's your identity. So a better way to describe yourself is I am God's child and righteous because of Jesus Christ. And while I struggle with sin, that's not who I am or where I'm going because Christ is my identity and He is bringing me home to Him, that's my hope and that's who I really am. So we deal with our sins but it's not who we really are, Christ is who we really are. So there's this call to worship, there is the call to the righteous to worship and there is this theme of joy and rejoicing that's inescapable, right? Shout joyfully to the Lord, sing to Him, sing praise to Him, shout for joy, these kinds of words in the song. I want to suggest to you that in worship, joy is the main emotion. Joy and rejoicing is the main emotion. And the reason why it's the main emotion in worship has to do with God and we'll look at that in our next section, the reason for worship, but we're not there yet. I want to say it's the main and we'll talk about the reason, so we'll spend most of the time there. But let me suggest it, so let me spend a little time saying it's not the only emotion. The Psalms show us that it is appropriate to be before God when you're sad. When you're sad because of your own sin and you're dealing with it again, when you're sad because of calamity and crisis and the struggles that you faced, did you know that one of the books of the Bible is called Lamentations and it is appropriate. And I think this is important for us. We want to be a place where the main emotion expressed in worship is joy and rejoicing, but it's a safe place, this is a safe place to be sad. It's a safe place to work through all your emotions, whether it's fear and anxiety or anger or sadness or grief or rejoicing. I've heard it on both sides. I've heard of people who don't want to go to church because they can't be sad there. They have to put on the happy face, I'm upright, upright, upright, upright, downright, happy all the time. I can't go there. I'm not that way. I've also heard people say they were members of a Presbyterian church or my dad. I can't express my joy and gratitude for the healing God has given me. I've got to go somewhere else. We need to be a place where we can rejoice and shout for joy and where we can weep and grieve and mourn and work out whatever issues we have in our life. But again, in this particular Psalm, the main thing has to do with joy. That's the main emotion. Let's look at the reason for worship. Why? Because that really tells us why the main emotion should be joy and rejoicing. The reason has everything to do with God versus 4 through 19. The person and character of God is at first is 4 and 5. For the word of the Lord is right and true. He is faithful in all he does. Listen to this. Verse 5. Lord loves righteousness and justice. Tells us something about his character. That tells us something about his person, who he is. He's filled with faithfulness and his love is poured out. He just loves justice and righteousness, very much in keeping with Lord's prayer that we would defend the, basically, I don't remember using widow and orphan, but that idea that we would care for the oppressed, that we would minister to those in need. That's part of justice. Doing what is right, speaking to issues, being engaged in this world and in life with a sense of what God says is just and right. God loves that. We can worship with joy because God is constantly faithful, constantly love, justice and righteousness, and the whole earth is full of his unfailing love. That's how verse 5 ends. The earth is full of his unfailing love. He said, loving kindness. His loving kindness is so free. His loving kindness. That's the same word. Hebrew has said, his loyalty, his faithfulness. Some people call it his covenant keeping love because he's faithful and loyal and that aspect is in that word. But the work of God too, from verses 6 through 19, it starts with creation, right, 6 to 9. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, their starry host, by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars and puts the deep in storehouses, that all the earth fear the Lord, that all the peoples of the world rear him for he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood fast. He goes from the person, this God who has great character and in his very being loves justice and righteousness and is faithful to what he does. He creates and he creates by speaking and bringing it into existence and he calls us to remember Genesis chapter 1 in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He said, let there be and there was. Now somewhere in my studies, I think it was in one of the sermons that I'm afraid I can't tell you who it was that I listened to but one of them pointed out that the language suggests also that maybe he has in mind salvation at the red sea. He remembered when God chose his people to be as an inheritance, how he redeemed them with a mighty arm and brought them out of Egypt and after they had left Egypt, there they were at the red sea when Pharaoh and all his army came to attack them and they cried out to God and God delivered them. He parted the waters, he put them in heaps, he separated the waters so that the people of God went on dry land. He's sovereign in creation, he's the Lord of creation, both in speaking it into existence and in separating the waters. He speaks and the earth obeys it, creation does what he wants and it has to do with our salvation when he separates the waters to bring us through toward the promised land on dry ground. And I think maybe that is in there because if you look at the context, the next thing is God sovereign over the nations. You see that in verses 10 through 12, the Lord foils the plans of the nations. He thwartes the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations blessed as the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose as his inheritance. You see, again, you think of the nations Israel and Egypt are at least good examples of this principle, aren't they? That Pharaoh says, they will be my slaves, I will build my beautiful statues by the blood and sweat of their brow and they will serve me this way and I will not let them go. And God says, yeah, yeah, you'll let them go, you'll drive them out of your land. And yet Israel, completely and totally by God's grace and God's choice, the choice of this heart is redeemed. And God keeps his covenant faithfulness and loyalty to Abraham, the promises he made to Abraham and he brings them out and says, you will be my treasured possession. You will be, I will be your great inheritance because God is sovereign over the nations. That's a good reason to praise him with joy, is it not? If you have been redeemed and you have been brought out of the domain and kingdom of the devil and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved son, that's by the sovereign will of God and nothing can separate you from his love of God, from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And so there you are, the sovereign over the nations is for you. That's a cause for worship with joy, shouts of joy, songs of joy, making music and celebrating. And in the midst of darkness and sorrow and sadness because the ultimate truth is true for eternity. And what we face here is momentary light affliction not worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory for God's people. He's sovereign over the nations, but he's not a God who's just impersonal, ruling over the hearts of kings and making things turn out the way he wants. Look at the Psalm as it continues, it's personal from 13 through 19, we'll look at that as a group as well. From the heavens, the Lord looks down and sees all mankind from his dwelling places. He watches all who live on earth, he who forms the hearts of all who considers everything they do. But just in those three verses, do you see the words, looks, sees, watches, he who form the hearts of all considers, he knows all, he's a very personal God, he's a God who sovereign not only over the big picture, but over the little picture over your life. And then he talks about this God who is personal. No king is saved by the size of his army, no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance, despite all its great strength, it cannot save. It's kind of like, okay, we look to God and we see that he is looking and he's aware of everything. So think about it, no one's saved by their strength. The king isn't saved by a strong army, the United States, the greatest power in the earth with the most sophisticated military ever known, is not saved by its great strength, nor its best general or warrior, even if it's Jason Bourne or one of his friends. There's no salvation in man, it's a song that reminds us, yes, we don't put our trust in people and kings and armies and weapons like horses and such, but we put our hope in God and that's exactly where the song goes, isn't it, verse 18 and 19, but the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope it is in his unfailing love, to deliver them out of death and keep them alive in famine. God sovereign over the nations, he sovereign over the individuals, so we don't put our trust in horses or armies or that sort of stuff, but we fear the Lord. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him and those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine, body and soul, body and soul, body and soul. That's what makes God so worthy to be worshiped. He's the creator of the ends of the earth, he sovereign over all that he has made, he rules over the big scheme of things and nations and over the little scheme of things, individuals. He's the one who can be trusted, nothing can thwart his will. No one can say to God, what are you doing? He does as he wishes. By the way, it does introduce one other aspect of worship. We may call rightly an emotion and that is fear. And it's used twice, it's used in verse 8 and in verse 18, and the word fear is defined by the Hebrew parallelism of the poetry in this song, and it's consistent with its definition. If you look it up in the theological word book of the Old Testament or one of the other lexicans, you'll find that this word fear that is used here has to do with terror and being afraid, which moves one to respect, reverence, awe. And it also has the idea of confidence, of trust, of that loving desire to please. And we understand that in our human relationships. When the child who the teenage child will say, messes up and says, how my mom's going to kill me or my dad's going to kill me, they don't. They're fearing not literal death, but Lord willing, the sorrow of disappointment. My parents are going to be so disappointed. And that's ideas there too, there's such a love for God. So verse 8, the fear, the sense of reverence and awe, that all the earth fear the Lord, but all the peoples of the word world, revere him. Stand in awe is the way the N.A.S. translates that. That's to see his greatness, his sovereignty, his majesty. But then in verse 18, it's that intimacy that we were looking at, that God knows each one of us. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope in his unfailing love, who hope, who trust, who wait in his hesed, his loving kindness, his unfailing love. There it is, it's loyal, it's dead fast. And there's this confidence in him. That trust is less in emotion than the terror I admit. It kind of expands the category, but there it is as we gather to worship. And it really does move us well into number three, our response. Our response in worship, verses 19 and 20, to deliver them from death, I'm sorry, 20 and 21. We wait in hope for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him, our heart's rejoiced where we trust in his holy name. We wait in hope. That word wait is an interesting word. The different translations do different things because waiting and hoping are really closely combined there. That hope is not the wish, it's the confidence. I wait in the confidence that God is going to appear. That God is going to rescue. That whether I have a sense of this presence in this very moment or not, he is with me and he will make his presence known. He will come back to my sense of his presence. And so there's that waiting, there's that confidence that I will wait in hope for salvation, for deliverance from famine or whatever the situation is. And I thought about this in one time in my devotions and I noted, I went to where Jesus tells us that we will be persecuted from place to place. And in the same place where he says we'll be persecuted and put to death, he says, yet not a hair from your head will perish. And it's like, okay, you'll be persecuted and put to death but not a hair from your head can perish. So I thought about Hadrak, Meshak, and Abendigo in the fiery furnace, right? Their hair was certainly not sensed and they were persecuted. And yet what about Stephen, who saw the Lord in his glory as the stones came and killed him? He was brought safely into the presence of the Lord in the eternal perspective. And so our hope, our waiting, God often in this life brings about his presence and a real deliverance to real problems right here and now. But even when he doesn't, ultimate health, ultimate salvation, ultimate peace, shalom, deliverance is guaranteed. It's guaranteed because Christ has been raised from the dead. There's our evidence and our assurance. And therefore it says, in him, our hearts rejoice, there it is, it brings us back to the call, doesn't it? To shout joyfully, to worship the Lord with joy. In him our hearts rejoice for we trust in his holy name, our hearts rejoice, our hearts worship God with joy. We rejoice because we trust, we express our faith, we believe in him, we believe in everything he said is true, that he is the sovereign Lord, that he is providing redemption, that he is our savior. Now, as I close, let me just, let me read to you something that I read in my devotions a couple months ago from Octavius Winslow. It's a little bit difficult because while he wrote in the time where he said things in a way that's hard to understand. But what he has to say is beautiful, so it's worth it. So stay with me. Okay, I'll do my best to read this in a way that's easy to understand. And he's talking about faith in God and trusting in Christ and in the presence of God and the midst of sorrows. Because remember, I said, this is the chief emotion, even for those who are downcast and discouraged. And so now I'm going after you who are downcast and discouraged, all right? And he gives a warning about Satan. He says, unless aware of his design, Satan will here obtain a great advantage over you. And then he speaks about that, assuming the form of an angel of light and with angelic gentleness and plausibility, he will suggest that your frame of soul is too torpid and lifeless and dull to draw near to God. So here he is, Satan, in your life as an angel of light, right? That well-meaning word that points out your sin without any grace or look to Jesus. It's Satan who says to you, look at your sin. You're not worthy. Look how dry you are. And so it goes on, that your affections are too frigid. Your love to congealed your heart to carnal, your mind to groveling, your pursuits to earthly, your backsliding too great, your neglects too many to take to Christ. You get it? He says, all the reasons why I can't go to Christ, I've got too much sin, my heart's too cold, I just don't feel it. He will hold up to view the folly, the hypocrisy, the inconsistency of being found in the appointment and use of holy and spiritual duties while your soul does cleaves to the dust. But listen not to his false suggestions and he'd not to his sophistical reasoning. No, not for a moment. It is only in the way of waiting upon God that you will recover from the lapsed state of your soul. In the way of meditation, of confession, of tears, of prayer, may you yet rise from the dust with bold opinion, richer plumage, sweeter song, soar to the gates of heaven, and return again, scattering around you its blessings and reflecting its glory. Oh, go to Jesus then, however low and discouraged your spiritual state may be, and relax not a single means of grace. Isn't that beautiful? And so, with those words, let's go to this means of grace, where our joy is maybe at its peak. In that ironic, we celebrate a meal that mentions Christ's death and in his death the eternal benefit to our soul. This is a means of grace, this is how the gospel takes a form and a picture before us. The preaching is a means of grace, the going to the word, the prayers, the sawing of that, but this is one, too, and this is where our victory is, this is where we are the righteous from Matthew's gospel, the 26th chapter, starting at the 26th verse. While they were eating Jesus, took some bread, and after a blessing he broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which has poured out for many, for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this root of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Here is the sovereign Lord providing propitiation, satisfaction. Here God assures us that His wrath and His anger and His displeasure are removed from all those who receive Jesus Christ. It's symbolically represented in the bread and the cut that represent His body and blood, that call us to remember Christ has died. Christ was buried, and Christ was raised from the dead, and in His death burial and resurrection through the shedding of His blood, we have forgiveness of sins. And the sovereign God, gladly, with joy, receives you as his son and daughter, not the gospel truth of this, fill your hearts and minds as we eat this bread and drink this cup. Let us pray, Lord Jesus, we come to this table which you yourself have instituted as a means of grace to us. And we know, oh God, that this ritual, this symbolic thing that we do is dead and lifeless and meaningless unless you breathe life and meaning into it. And we've reflected on the meaning that these elements represent your body and blood. May they do that for us today. You said that we should take and eat and remembrance of you, that we should drink from this, but for it represents your blood and may our taking and eating and drinking be representative that we spiritually do trust in you alone. And may our souls be ministered to by your spirit so that happy or sad, angry or mad, we would rejoice in you. We ask this Lord Jesus Christ because we have put our faith in you and you are ours and we are yours, Amen.