Psalms 96

Psalms 96:1-13

GOD GLADLY Psalms 95, 96 (Sermon preached on the occasion of the thirty-second anniversary of the pastorate of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis.) THE Prayer Meeting of Thursday night ended the thirty-second year of our mutual relations as pastor and people. We employ this morning (March 3rd, 1929) for the Thirty-second Anniversary Sermon; but it is, as a matter of fact, the beginning of our thirty-third year of mutual labors. A brief review of these years should serve to excite both our gratitude to God for what has been accomplished, and our ardor in undertaking yet larger things. Figures do not always express facts, but in this instance they bear an eloquent testimony to the Divine blessings we have enjoyed together.In these thirty-two years it has been your pastor’s pleasure to welcome into the fellowship of this church 5,948 people, 2,578 of them by letter or previous experience and 3,370 of them by baptism. Of these, 173 have been received since our last annual meeting, 114 of them coming by baptism. Our membership today, after having given birth to two other churches in this time, dismissed many hundreds to other fellowships and having buried several hundred, Isaiah 3,270.In this same length of time our Treasurer has rendered thirty-two annual reports. The first twenty-five of these, representing something over twenty-four years of my service, showed an aggregate amount of $1,005,185.16 paid out. The next seven years’ report revealed expenditures and gifts, through the institutions presided over by your pastor, amounting to $1,400,305.98, or a total of $2,405,491.14, that has passed through the joint treasury in thirty-two years.

The annual report to be made in April will add to this amount some $200,000 additional.Thirty-two years ago the church properties consisted of the old church building at the corner of Tenth and Harmon Place, and the Emerson Avenue Mission, and were valued at $160,000. Today, reckoning in the property of the Northwestern Bible School, we have eight buildings, six of them buildings of beauty and stability, valued at something like $1,500,000.

In the face of somewhat extensive travel and the visitation of many church plants, we do not know of a physical equipment in the world exceeding that now enjoyed by the First Baptist Church.The church’s accessory work has kept pace with its numerical, financial and physical progress. As already seen, we have given birth to two other churches in this time. We have dismissed above 2,000 members to other fellowships. Few churches have more representatives upon the foreign field to whom it gives either entire or partial support. The work undertaken in this country reaches an enormous constituency, through our multiplied church organizations, our city missions contact, our bands of church workers, the Northwestern Bible School student pastors and Summer Vacation program; but perhaps the most important of all the things undertaken by the church, in these thirty-two years, was the successful inauguration of the Northwestern Bible School itself, an institute that has grown through twenty-six successive years, and enrolled this year in all classes 446 students; and yet is evidently only in its infancy in proportion and potency, although its graduates are now scattered through this land, and are found upon every continent of earth as missionaries.The accomplishment of these results is the product of the beautiful harmony that has existed in this company for more than a quarter of a century, and the evident guidance of the Holy Spirit in the church life and labors.It seems appropriate, therefore, to bring a message to you, today, of gladness and of gratitude, and to dare hope for far greater things under the leadership and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.I have elected, therefore, to continue our study in the Psalms by the consideration of Psalms 95, 96. They are little less than a burst of praise, born of true appreciation of God’s greatness, God’s goodness and God’s guidance.I ask you then to think with me, first of all, concerningTHE OF GOD He is great above all gods! The text reads, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods” (Psalms 95:1-3).Let us perfectly understand that the Psalmist did not admit the existence of other gods. The phrase “a great King above all gods”, is not to be interpreted as a concession to polytheism. In a recent debate I had occasion to say, “The spirit of cosmos”, “the god of the Modernist”, “the limited god of Sir Oliver Lodge” or of “Kant”, “the force that is working for righteousness”, “the gods of evolution”, are not the gods of my defense; but the God of the Bible instead, the God that created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is”.Now can anyone imagine that I meant to concede that these mental conceptions were gods in any true sense?

Paul, writing to the Galatians, said, “Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods”! (Galatians 4:8).Jeremiah long since raised the question, “Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods”? (Jeremiah 16:20).I received this week from a friend an extensive clipping from the St. Paul Pioneer Press of last Sunday, in which Pierre Van Paassan tells the story of Field Marshall Ludendorff’ attempt to turn the Teutonic nations from Christianity to paganism.

You will remember that Ludendorff was Chief of Staff of the German armies, and that he broke with the Protestant church after the war, and declared that “only a return to the worship of Wotan, Freya and Thor can restore the German nation to health of mind and body.” By way of argument, he said, “Before the introduction of Christianity into Germany, the tribes who dwelt between the Rhine and Danube were feared and respected over the known world. Germany’s unhappiness dates from the moment that our fathers were forced to accept Christianity. Prior to that, the Teutonic tribes had a creed of Wotan, god of war and thunder, and Freya, goddess of love, evolved naturally out of the conceptions of the Germans.”And after having bewailed the influence of Christianity upon his people, he finally adds, “But at last, in an hour of unparalleled contest, the recognition of our race, and the recognition of our nation’s gods, has awakened. Nothing can prevent us returning to the worship of our fathers during the coming years.”Mark, however, the language of the Field Marshall. He speaks of his gods and goddess as “evolved naturally out of the spiritual conception of the Germans.” That is the trouble with many of the gods of this present moment. They are the product of mental conceptions, and they have no existence aside from the imaginary pen-portrait; and there is neither in the heavens above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the water under the earth, one trace of their past or present.Not so of Jehovah! “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handy-work.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge” (Psalms 19:1-2). He is “God, and there is none else”.

It is a futile effort, therefore, being made by “the American Society for the Advancement of Atheism”—the effort to banish God. His personality is as well established as the existence of the physical universe; His intelligence is as clearly proved as the order of the sidereal systems, and His infinity and wisdom and power is scientifically demonstrated by the fact that men can find no end to either His conception or His competency. The infinite universe pays its silent, but eternal tribute to the infinity of God.He is author and owner of all the earth. “In His hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands formed the dry land” (Psalms 95:4-5).Such is the God of the Bible and such is the God of the true Christian faith. He is not an abstraction ; He is an individual! He is not a mental conception; He is an intellectual competent!

He is not a creation of imagination; He is the creator of all things! He is not a tribal possession; He is the owner of the earth and sea and all that in them is.James Hastings recited the instance of a certain famous Professor who once gave a lantern lecture to children about plants and flowers.

He explained how the seeds became plants, how the plant became leaves and flowers, and how the flowers developed seed again; and went on to tell how all the different parts of the plant were built up of cells, and they were filled with a wonderful substance called protoplasm, a substance that is contained in all living parts and makes them live and grow. Finally he remarked, “No one knows what gave this protoplasm its power. That is a closed door. Behind that door is an unfathomable mystery.” And one of the children spoke up, saying, “Please, sir; maybe God lives behind that door!” More than once in human history, the simple, unspoiled mind of a child has made the soundest suggestion.The Psalmist was not an ignoramus; neither was his intellect in childish immaturity when he wrote of God, “In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is His also, The sea is His, and He made it; and His hands formed the dry land” (Psalms 95:4-5). It is our calm conviction, resting in forty years of post-graduate study, that man has never imagined any explanation of the universe comparable to that which inspiration made the opening sentence of Sacred literature, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).He is worthy, then, of all possible worship! Hear the call of the Psalmist, “O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, For He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalms 95:6-7).The average citizen of America imagines, at least, that he is interested in the future of society; and, in the truest sense, that is well nigh the chief concern.

Would we know what will most materially affect that future for good? Would we provide savor for society?

Would we prove the triumph of righteousness in the land? Do we covet the best for our children and our children’s children?Then, beyond question, the obligation of the hour is to bring them to know God, worship Him, bow down before Him, acknowledge Him as the Shepherd of souls, and see ourselves as the sheep of His protecting hand.I have received this week, through the mails, infamous attacks upon the Christian faith, juggled figures to prove that Christianity eventuates in crime and to claim that from sixty to ninety per cent of the foolish and immoral and criminal citizenship is either Protestant or Catholic!But the literature itself bore the imprint of perjury, for the question put to the individuals, thus listed, was not a personal one at all, but a query rather as to the view-point of their parents, whether they heard anything of religion in youth or were brought up in ignorance of the same; as if one could live in a Christian land and hear nothing, be told nothing of the faith that has fruited in the finest civilization the world has ever seen.“The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism”, Mangasarian, Joseph McCabe and all their prejudiced and perjured associates, should make a pilgrimage to the feet of Superior Judge Louis F. Fawcet of Brooklyn, New York, and listen while he tells them of the four thousand boys under age, arraigned before him, charged with various degrees of crime, and let him say, as he did a while ago, “Of this large number, only three were members of a Sunday School at the time of the commission of their crimes, and even those three exceptions were technical in character and devoid of the heinousness that had characterized their untutored and unbelieving fellows.”It is little wonder that Judge Fawcet added, “In view of this significant showing, I do not hesitate to express the conviction that every young man in Sunday School or other religious work, with its refining atmosphere, enjoys a signal preventative against crime.”“O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalms 95:6-7).THE OF MAN We should acknowledge God’s present favor.“For He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalms 95:7). Of all the figures of Scripture showing the Father’s relationship to us, none is more suggestive than that of Shepherd. His care over the sheep involved courage, fidelity and affection. It was, therefore, a fit illustration of God’s care for us. The Psalmist felt the full force of this truth, and voiced it for himself when he said,“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me besides the still waters. “He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me” (Psalms 23:1-4). Perhaps the strangest fact of life is found in the circumstance that those who receive the greatest favors from God, often show the least appreciation of the same. The Old Testament is largely made up of the records of God’s favor and mercy toward Israel, but those records are blotted and blotched by the constant rehearsal of Israel’s ingratitude.Now when the world is more than two thousand years older than it was when Israel’s iniquities and ingratitude ended that special favor which God had shown them for centuries, men among Gentiles show little more appreciation of grace Divine. The healthy man, the prospered man, the man to whose feet favors roll with every morning, and whose head is pillowed on down with every night, commonly forgets the source of his every blessing; while those who have to endure hardship as good soldiers, often evince the true spirit of gratitude.We are told that when David Livingstone returned to Scotland after an absence of sixteen years in Africa, the University of Glasgow conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. On such an occasion the students were wont to take things into their own hands and give the honored man a boisterous reception. But when David Livingstone appeared on the college platform, the reception was silent and reverent. He was thin, tanned and emaciated from exposure to sixteen years of African sun and twenty-seven attacks of African fever.

One arm hung helpless at his side, having been crushed by a lion. He stood there, a hero indeed, having fought his battles for humanity and suffered as good soldiers commonly do; and his very presence inspired to the point of awe.He told them that he was going back to Africa to open new fields for British commerce, to suppress the African slave trade and to preach the Gospel.

And then he added, “May I tell you what has supported me through all these years of exile among people whose language I could not understand, and whose attitude was always uncertain, and often hostile? It was this: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”.Livingstone’s greatness was largely the result of his appreciation of the Divine presence and the Divine favor.I am wondering this morning—in fact, I am asking myself the question—and then I am turning that question to you: Do we appreciate this morning God’s goodness toward us as individuals, God’s grace toward us as a people?We are prone to forget His past mercy. “To day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My work” (Psalms 95:7-9).The reference is to ancestral sins, and the record is found in Exodus 17:1-7 when “the congregation of the Children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin”, were without water at Rephidim, and the people chode with Moses, “and said, Give us water that we may drink * * and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst”? and when Moses smote the rock that was in Horeb and brought water out that the people might drink.This was only one of the many occasions when Israel rebelled because of hardships to be endured. In fact, the forty years in the wilderness were the fruit of their rebellion and their refusal to believe God and to occupy Canaan according to His command; and though He interposed for them a hundred times, providing them meat when they were without—the bread from Heaven, drink from the rock, garments that grew not old, they shortly forgot.How like human nature, and even how like professed believers to this good hour! Would that we might make this very morning an occasion for dwelling upon past favors, and praises would break involuntarily from all our lips!I was impressed some months ago with what I saw concerning Chauncey M. Depew, who, at that time was in his ninety-first year, and was described as cheerful and buoyant. He sent out a holiday greeting to the world, in which he declared that the teachings of Christ were better understood and appreciated now; and then added, ‘The essence of happiness in this world, and salvation in the next, is to live in Christ, to absorb His spirit, His love, His all-embracing humanity.” Chauncey Depew’s life was truly a great one; and if he did not question that God was his supreme portion, who else may cast doubt upon the same?Age may have its weaknesses; it also has its advantages, and chief among them, is the privilege of life’s review.

And the one thing that can make death a terror is to face the same, conscious of having been an ingrate; and the one thing that would take terror from death is to fall at last into the embrace of that enemy, conscious of having lived a life of gratitude to God.Ingratitude provokes just judgment. “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known My ways; unto whom I sware in My wrath that they should not enter into My rest” (Psalms 95:10-11).Here, again, is an Old Testament reference. The entire generation that left Egypt, perished before they had reached the land of promise.

It was their ingratitude and disobedience that kept them out. God’s judgments are not pronounced in petulance; they are the product, rather, of man’s behavior. They are the fruit of man’s failure.Few greater men have lived through the whole latter half of the last century than the Russian, Tolstoi. He was a keen observer upon life, and, for the most part, a sound philosopher concerning the same. Tolstoi said, “No doctrine is harder than the doctrine of the world. Thirty millions of men have perished with wars fought on behalf of the doctrine of the world.

Thousands of millions of people have perished, crushed by a social state on the principle of the doctrine of the world. You will find, perhaps to your surprise, that nine-tenths of all human suffering endured by man is useless and ought not to exist—that, in fact, the majority of men are martyrs to the doctrine of the world.” You know what that doctrine is:—“Selfishness” eventuating in sin.It is customary for skeptics to cry against God’s judgments as unjust, and God’s actions in defense of righteousness, as harsh and inhuman.

On the contrary, God is “slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy * * He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities” (Psalms 103:8; Psalms 103:10). We bring judgments upon ourselves. We break His heart, and blast our own lives by misbehavior.Aquila Webb, in his assembly of illustrations, tells the story of a Calvinist preacher, who, in 1568. while Alva was at the height of his power in the Netherlands, dared to proclaim the Gospel. He was hotly pursued by a Spaniard, who sought his life, but fled across a lake on ice weakened by the sun of March. The ice was thin and swayed under the weight, but the lighter-weight preacher reached the land. Looking back he saw his pursuer had broken through and, struggling for life, was calling for help.

Without a moment’s delay, he went to his assistance, and dragged him dripping from the water safely to land; whereupon the rescued one caused the preacher to be cast into prison, tried and condemned, and later he lighted the fagots that burned him at the stake.How many people treat their Saviour after the same manner. The Son of God came unto His own, and they rejected Him.

He turned to the Gentiles, and they joined hands with the Jews who crucified Him. He came to save us, but unbelief sacrificed Him. Is it any wonder that ingratitude for present favors, and forgetfulness for past mercy, should eventuate in just judgment?All of this to the Psalmist was an appeal, and such it should be to us. He would have men turn from their wicked ways to theWORSHIP OF Hence the language, “O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His Name; shew forth His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all people” (Psalms 96:1-3).Jehovah deserves better than yet accorded. “O sing unto the Lord a new song”. No hymn of praise yet conceived is adequate. His goodness demands better than we have ever done. His grace calls for something new and higher than we have ever known.Many years ago now, when Moody and Sankey were young men, Mr.

Moody spoke one day from Luke 15:1-7—the parable of the lost sheep. He carried his audience into the Divine presence, made them feel the Saviour’s affection as they had never felt it before, and to see His sacrifice on their behalf as they had never before seen it. When he finished, he turned to Sankey and said, “Sing”.A few days previous, Sankey had clipped from a newspaper the words of the Ninety and Nine, and had put them into his vest pocket. He remembered the words, saw how fitting they were to what had been said, and wondered if he could improvise adequately. Fishing from his vest pocket this newspaper clipping, he laid it on the organ before him, and sang through the first verse. “There were ninety and nine that safely lay In the shelter of the fold; But one was out on the hills away, Far off from the gates of gold, Away on the mountains wild and bare, Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.” The music came as if by inspiration. Sankey’s soul was swept as the same was born within him and he said that he wondered if he could possibly track himself on the second verse. The same Spirit that had helped him to sing the new song, enabled him to re-trace every note, and the music of the Ninety and Nine was born.It was a hymn of such greatness, and the music of it was such a marvel, that it has stirred the world with a new sense of the Shepherd’s love and in spite of Campion’s detraction, almost contortion, it has continued to thrill the redeemed, and even appeal powerfully to the lost and wandering. But never since the morning stars sang together has any music been adequate to the full praise of God.J. Wilbur Chapman tells the story of the time when he attended the spring festival of music at Cincinnatti, when Patty was soprano, and Carey was alto, and Theodore Toedt was the tenor, and Whitney was the bass. They sang the Hallelujah chorus, and he declares that after the quartette had rendered their special parts, Toedt carrying the refrain, “He shall reign” to the very skies, then the whole chorus coming in, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”—he said, “I bowed my head and sobbed, and in my soul, cried, “Come, Lord Jesus, and come quickly and take the throne’.”It is the conviction of some of us that, when He comes and every angel in Heaven and every saint of the skies and of the earth unite their voices in the final oratorio of all ages, the Lord will hear for the first time the adequate expression of His praise.He deserves better than yet conceived.“For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised: He is to be feared above all gods; “For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens. “Honour and majesty are before Him: strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. “Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His Name: bring an offering, and come into His courts. “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before Him, oil the earth. “Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: He shall judge the people righteously?’ (Psalms 96:4-10). Once in a while some one undertakes to draw a picture of the Lord that shall be adequate. Bruce Barton, whose popular style has resulted in a plethoric purse, undertook that task, when he selected the theme, “The Man Nobody Knows”; but that he signally failed in his effort, is the uniform conviction of true and intelligent believers.One capable writer says, “Occasionally we see a view of half of the human face—one side, with the other side slashed cleanly off. That is what Mr. Barton did with Jesus Christ—sliced Him half away, and in his piece of surgery, he has taken away that portion that makes Him so vital, so essential, to fallen humanity; namely, His Deity.” Think of attempting a presentation of Jesus, the Lord of Glory, never once introducing into the picture the hint of that glory, a tint of the Divine! Who wants Christ reduced to the place of superman, and so made the subject of admiration, but not of worship? The writer quoted from says, “Well might it be said of ‘The Man Nobody Knows’ that “they have taken away my Lord; I know not where they have laid Him.”I call you, my people, this morning, from all such low conceptions of Jesus, from all such blights of unbelief, to the perspective provided by the Psalmist.

Oh, when we get the right view-point, when we see Him as He is, when Divinity shines from every feature, speaks in every word, manifests itself in every movement—then His true greatness is understood, His incomparable glory is manifested, His honor and majesty are partly comprehended, the beauty of His holiness whelms, and it’s an occasion when even the heaven and earth should rejoice and be glad, and the very sea adds its glorious basso to complete the sound, and the very fields are joyful, and all, that in them is, bursts into song —the very trees breaking their silence to praise His Name.Finally,Let us sing as men who know the time is short!“For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His Truth” (Psalms 96:13).These are days when wicked men will have nothing of a coming Christ. These are days when an apostate church puts that doctrine in discard.

These are days when false prophets regale the ears of people, and fill their pulpits with denunciation of the doctrine that Prophets and Apostles declared to be the “Blessed Hope” of the ages. But the Book abides and the truth rings from its pages, and believers know the meaning of it.“For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His Truth” (Psalms 96:13). It is a word of warning concerning our conduct. It is a word of encouragement concerning the craved fellowship with Him. It is a word of rejoicing for those who intelligently believe. It is a doctrine that has been basal in the belief of this church for many years.Yes, my sisters, my brethren; is it not the doctrine that has brought us the blessings to which reference has been made this morning, and the only doctrine that can preserve us against the course of this present evil world, that can prepare us for the service that should be rendered against that day, that can inspire us unto the task of making the truth known to men, and that can finally fit us to face Him without fear or shame?Can we do better this morning than to conclude this part of our service by joining with Dr. Lowell Mason in saying and singing, “Hark! ten thousand harps and voices Sound the note of praise above; Jesus reigns, and Heaven rejoices; Jesus reigns, the God of love: See, He sits on yonder throne; Jesus rules the world alone.

“Jesus, hail! whose glory brightens All above, and gives it worth: Lord of life, Thy smile enlightens, Cheers, and charms Thy saints on earth: When we think of love like Thine, Lord, we own it love Divine.

“King of glory, reign forever; Thine an everlasting crown; Nothing from Thy love shall sever Those whom Thou hast made Thine own; Happy objects of Thy grace, Destined to behold Thy face.

“Saviour, hasten Thine appearing; Bring, O bring the glorious day, When, the awful summons hearing, Heaven and earth shall pass away: Then, with golden harps we’ll sing, ‘Glory, glory to our King’.”