The fear of God is very much rooted in our contemplation of God and in our understanding of His nature and works. We are told to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and to fear Him. Why? He is holy and He is the Judge. He reigns over the earth and is the God of our salvation. Our understanding of who God is is directly related to our fear of Him.

I'm so thankful to be with you this afternoon. I'm thankful for the NCFIC and for my brother Scott Brown, who is one of the greatest encouragements in my life, but not the greatest. The greatest encouragement in my life on this earth is my own wife who's with me this weekend. And Brenda is very, very sweet, godly woman, and she fits the category for Psalm 128. She certainly is a fruitful vine, and she has been a blessing to me she's a woman of great piety and love for the Lord and we grow together in Jesus and We walk through those trials together and she's she's she's the first one on her knees the first one with her hands in the air to praise Jesus and she cries more than anybody else when the word of God is preached.

I guarantee it. I was listening to John Snyder with my wife, was it yesterday morning? And she cried through half the message, Sobbed and sobbed and I got up looked around see if anybody else could match What was happening in that chair and I couldn't see anybody else his heart was so rent By the Word of God as my own wife. She just feels the word She appreciates the word And anytime we turn on a sermon, she's there. She wants to pray.

She wants to be in the Word with me. We grow together. I'm just so blessed to have a wife like that. Is that okay if I could share a little bit about my own wife and what a blessing she has been in my life. She fears Jehovah.

She's a fruitful vine in our home and she is a huge, huge blessing. I know many of you have spoken to her at the book table as well. She's the one with a big smile, the biggest smile in the vendor hall. So that's the way you're going to recognize my sweet wife. Well, I'd like to begin this this afternoon with Psalm 85 because this has been in my heart the entire weekend It's been my prayer for the entire weekend So we're gonna read the psalm real quick and I'm gonna pray and then we'll be into Psalm 96 But here's Psalm 85 and verse 6 and here is the prayer listen carefully wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee?

And then verse 9, Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him, that glory may dwell in the land." Oh, that God would revive His people again, that we would rejoice in Him, that we would know the fear of God, and That we would see the glory of God like we've never seen it before in our churches, in our homes, that we would know what the words mean and that we would experience it and that we rejoice greatly in God. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would revive your people again. Oh Lord, that we would be able to see our need for revival, Father, that at least each and every one of us would would see that we have been too dead, too cold, too lifeless, Father, that the Spirit would come upon us and that we would be warmed and that we rejoice in you and that the glory of God be seen in our homes, our churches and throughout the land.

Oh Father, we pray by your spirit you would make this be in the name of your son Jesus amen. I only heard one amen. Anybody else amen? Is that your prayer? That God would revive you?

That you, that your family would rejoice in God more than you did last year? Last week? I pray that's the case for each and every one of us. Psalm 96. Turn there with me if you have your word with you.

Psalm 96. Let's read the Word of God. Please stand with me. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord all the earth, sing to the Lord, bless His name, show forth His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all people, for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nation are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Give to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due to his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts.

Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all 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 let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad Let the sea roar in the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful and all that is therein, then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord. For he cometh, he cometh to judge the earth.

He shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth. And all of God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Brothers and sisters, this message I think will direct itself to our response to what the word has taught us over this last weekend. We have learned of the fear of God.

We have learned of the nature of God. We have had a vision for the character of God, the works of God, and now, it's my prayer that our response would be this Psalm, that we respond in worship. That the response of a man who fears God would be the worship of the God who is to be worshiped, the God who deserves our worship, the God who cries out for our worship through His word and by the revelation of Himself to us in His word. These are the desired effects of the conference. So we desire that there be worship, that there be revival, that there be a stronger sense of God a 724 Experience of God of the worship of God of the response to the revelation of God the do response We we've learned something about God Now what?

Now now how do we follow up? How would we follow up if we truly believe these things? Worship today is so watered down. You know, We can critique the worship over here or the worship over there, but as you look at your own church experience and you look what's going on in your homes and you say, if I could critique it, What is the problem? It just seems it's watered down.

It seems like it's too insipid. It's empty. It's sometimes boring, but really it's an emptiness. When it's boring, it's empty. And it's empty because The messages may be empty, but our response may be emptied.

Man is too consumed with himself. And I think this is the great obstacle that's been already mentioned many times over this last weekend. Man is consumed with himself. He's taken up with himself. Man is too big and God is too small.

That's the issue. That really describes what's going on in the American mindset. In the church today, man is just too big and God is far too small. We listen to all of these debates going on in the political sphere and almost everybody is saying they're grieved. We were grieving over lunch and we've been grieving for months on end.

Some are embarrassed. I think Ken Ham mentioned it's embarrassing. He's been to other countries and they're embarrassed for us. They're embarrassed for our leaders and for us and of course we have found the enemy. We found the enemy.

We got him. We found the enemy And it is us. We have leaders we deserve, don't we? So they're a reflection of the nation. But you know, as we describe the problem with the nation, we say, you know, yes, we violate the sixth commandment, seventh to eighth, the ninth to tenth.

There's a problem with the presidential candidates, the Supreme Court in the United States, with the universities, with the media, the culture, Hollywood, the K-12 schools. What's the issue? Is it the GLSEN signs, the promotion of homosexuality in the K-6 schools? Is it the 100 million dead bodies, the result of the American Holocaust, of abortion and abortifacience over the last 30-40 years? What is it?

What is the issue? What is the problem? We hear our presidential candidates leading and we say what is the issue and I think the issue has got to be that there is no fear of God Before their eyes you boil it down my friends. This is the issue. This is the substantial fundamental, if you wanted to bring it all down to one thing in one statement, what's the issue?

What's the issue? It has to be that there is no fear of God before their eyes. This is the need of the hour. This is the issue of the hour. This is the thing that afflicts the nation, the proudest nation on earth.

America has been number one in the surveys of Those nations that are proudest of themselves, of their academics, of their nation. America is the proudest nation in the world. And therefore, We call a nation to humble itself, and to fear God. So this topic this weekend speaks to the need of the hour big time. It also is the great solution to dead cold and insipid worship.

It's a great antidote and it's got to be the fear of God which always flows as we stand at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ it flows into the faith and the love. So the end result of all of these sermons need to be what we find here in Psalm 95. Let's begin with the first several verses of sing to the Lord, a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. This is a passion to worship, this is a call to worship, this is the desire to worship, This is the warp and the woof of the Christian church and the Christian life. I wrote a book on family life, trying to develop an idea of what it is to be a Christian family.

What is it? What is the fundamental warp in the wolf of the Christian life and the Christian community and the Christian family? You find it in Ephesians chapter 5 where There's a development of the Christian life into the husband and wife and the children and the Father's bringing their children up in the nurture And the admonition of the Lord, but what do you find in Ephesians 5? 19 at the beginning of all of this this is it this is the substance of it. This is what our godly homes Need to look like so if you say is this a godly home is this a Christian home Do I have a Christian home?

What is it that really constitutes the Christian life? All day, every day, The Christian home is known by this, listen, Ephesians 5 19, be filled with the Spirit. There it is, be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There it is. That's it.

That's it. That's the Christian life. That's the Christian home. That's the very definition of it. You live the family life, the community life of the Christian, it's got to be the ones that are filled with the Spirit that always responds in this this gratefulness, this thanksgiving, a spirit of thanksgiving And a spirit of song of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in our hearts.

And this is it. This is what needs to be the warp and the whoop. You sing, brothers, sisters. Are you singing in the home? Is this the Christian home in your experience this will happen as as we understand the love of God and Jesus for us we understand what Jesus did at the cross for us.

Our response is to live. The song on our lips, it's the Psalms, it's the hymns. We just extemporaneously sing those hymns and those psalms throughout the day. Is this your home? There cannot be a single man in his room saying I'm not a singer your your singer god commands you to sing three things required in scripture for christian academic and that is reading and writing to draw me six seven eight nine yes you read and write and singing there's no arithmetic This is the basic curriculum from a Christian worldview perspective.

Reading, writing and singing, You can do a little arithmetic if you have some spare time for it. But it ought to be what we do in our homes. We have a piano in our home and I told a brother just before I got up there if I had a choice between a bed and a piano I would choose the piano. Because I love this to sit at the piano and call my children around me and just begin to play and sometimes they just gravitate towards the living room and we're singing Amazing Grace and Come Thou Fount and Psalm 128 and Psalm 89 and Psalm 23 we just love to sing this brothers and sisters is the Christian life the Christian family life it's the expression of our love for Jesus and it really ought to flow throughout the home, be the warp and the wolf of the home. But briefly, I'd want to comment on as we sing to the Lord, there are some misconceptions of music within the body of the church that need to be corrected and that is, you know, the state of the church is known by external cultural elements.

We understand the worldview as it's expressed through the music of the church. This is one of the reasons why my heart breaks at the music that I hear these days. I hear of churches that are godly, that have the hymns and the psalms, and the Word of God is preached with faithfulness every Sunday morning, and then the youth make it to 17 or 18 years of age, and they move off to another church. They leave in mass. I know of churches, smaller churches, where all of the 17-year-olds and the 19-year-olds, 24-year-olds are gone.

Gone, gone. But why are they gone? Why do they leave? They leave because of the music. The music.

Because they've received from the pop culture, they've inculcated through the top 40 stations and others a certain form of music where the personal emotional experience is everything and Dionysios, the great god, the Greek god of unrestrained passion, always seems to win in our society today. And then there's the modern reaction to the dead formalism where there was a fearless and our godless formalism where there wasn't the expression of the rejoicing with trembling before God, there was no heart. And so the empty formalism is replaced by an empty informalism. So somehow we think that if we could just get rid of the formalistic music and take on the informalism where the leaders have the tennis shoes the cappuccino in a hand and We're just a little more informal the shirts now untucked. We got him.

We got it now We got it the guys real the music is real he's real but he's really informal. There's still something missing, and those of substance, those that seek out, What is it that's missing? What is the content of the service missing in the dead formalism and the dead lifeless fearless informalism what's missing but the fear of God a confrontation with the true and living God at the foot of the cross of Calvary This was missing Music is the enculturation of our theology So bad music comes from bad theology Music is always sung in context always in context of what well we sing in the context of the cross. And here's a good test for you. Whenever you're singing a song, ask yourself, would I sing this on the ark?

What is what I sing it? While God is delivering his people from the worst catastrophe the world has ever seen, in which dead bodies are bloating and they're bumping up against the side of the ark, and you stand on that ark and you see the judgment of Almighty God, the wrath of God before you, and the love of God in his sustenance and his saving of his people. Would you see it on the ark? Would you see it on the cusp of the Red Sea where God does this mighty deliverance? And friends again, this is what constitutes the thrust and the substance of our faith.

We see Pharaoh's armies destroyed and the bloated bodies of these soldiers from the greatest empire on earth bumping up against the seashore of the Red Sea and here you are just delivered from this great empire and it's been the most unbelievable, magnificent delivery anybody has ever seen in the history of the world. How are you going to sing that song now? And how would you write the song? In this case Bunyan calls the fear of God the bass in the orchestra. Fear of God, the bass in the orchestra.

It's not a be-bop-a-loo-loo. He loves you too. It's not that light thing. There's some substance to it. There's concrete in the foundation of the music.

There's the fear of God as the beginning of music. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge and expression, and the fear of God, as it's said here in Psalm 85, is the beginning of salvation. We will see your salvation, O God, when we fear you. It's there at the cross where we fear God and we see what God did to His Son. Would you sing that song at the foot of the cross where the wrath of God is really poured out upon His Son?

Would you sing that song there? The cross, you know, calls for gravitas, doesn't it? You can't be light about it. You can't, you can't, you can't, you just can't use a t-shirt that says God's gym on it. It's just not, it's not enough fear.

It's not enough gravitas. There's got to be a rejoicing with trembling, where love and fear meet together at the cross. A rejoicing for the love of God, for the unspeakable relief that sweeps over us for sins paid for and eternal judgment averted. A rejoicing, but also a trembling for the turning of the face of God from His eternally begotten Son, whom He loved from all eternity with a love we can't even imagine. But He turned His face from his son because there was wrath to pay, there was hell to pay, there was the eternal white hot judgment Almighty God poured out upon his son, trembling at the cross, amen, trembling, trembling at the cross of Jesus Christ, trembling and rejoicing for the love of God that was shown to us at the cross.

It's at the cross, brothers and sisters, at the cross where we can rejoice with trembling. It's the both hand in the singing of God's songs. This song is not sappy, it's not sentimental, it's not self-oriented. We lose all self-orientation as we see the mighty justice of God met by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. It's not insubstantial.

It's not insipid. O sacred head now wounded with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown. Oh sacred head what glory what bliss until now as thine yet though despised and gory I joy to call thee mine. Rejoicing with trembling at the foot of the cross. Rejoicing with trembling.

Oh sing to the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. It's a new song. It's our song. Why is it a new song?

Because every time we sing it, we sing it with our own emotions, yes. Our own commitment. Our own faith. We have again received our own vision of the love of Jesus at the cross of Christ and we sing it again and it's new every time because we have a slightly different perspective, hopefully an added perspective, a deeper perspective, a fuller perspective of what our Savior did for us. It's a new song, it's our song, it's our creativity, our love, our sacrifice of praise.

So it's always a new song in every new generation. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. It's sung to the Lord, it's not sung to ourselves. My little book, The Tattoo of Jesus, where I examine all these different forms of modern worship, I counted all the me's, my's, and I's in a modern song compared to a sacred head now wounded and a number of psalms I said how many me, my's and I's of the me and the my and the I are we focused on the me and the my and the I?

We focus on the he and the him and what God has done and who God is, what is the focus and of course it's orders of magnitude difference between the sorts of songs you hear in the top 40 Christian stations today versus what you would hear from the Word of God and from thousands of years of men and women of deep piety that write the hymns throughout the centuries. It's sung to the Lord. It's not sung to ourselves. It's sung to the Lord. That's a difference.

It's a new song. It's sung to the Lord. Now let's look at the content of the song. It shows forth his salvation from day to day we just declare his salvation and further on in verse 2 we declare his glory among the heathen and his wonders among all people that's verse 2 these are his wonders this is the content of it we're enamored We're taken back by the great work of God and redemptive history. Again, you can write the song at the Red Sea, you can write it on the deck of the Ark, you can write it at the foot of the cross, but write it somewhere in the context of redemptive history and get the picture of what God has accomplished in his mighty works of redemption.

This is the thing that we sing. This is the thing of great awe and wonder in our minds, such that we put it to music and we bring the praise to our God when our Lord breathed his last words it is finished his work was accomplished the father raised him from the dead and that's the gospel that that is the guy that's it first corinthians 15 you know that's the definition of the gospel there's been a little bit of controversy or what's the gospel shouldn't be any controversy at all shouldn't be anything Paul says in first corinthians 15 here's the gospel Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day. What a great story, what a great reality, what a great work accomplished for us. Calvary, the resurrection, this is the work of God, this is the battle waged and won, the thing to be declared to all nations, go tell ISIS it. This should be a message that should empower you and strengthen you and engage you to action, to take it in the most dangerous areas in the world, completing a story of the story of two thousand years of missions around the world for eighth graders and it is amazing the number of people that were martyred, the people who had so much courage to place themselves in the most dangerous, demon possessed, human sacrificing, infant sacrificing, horrendous places on planet earth.

These men would ride straight into the bat cave And they would bring the message of salvation to these people with a voice of victory, and they believed that Jesus had accomplished it. Jesus had beat principalities and powers on that cross. And he was the victor, and they knew it, and they had a message to tell the nations. Go tell ISIS, it's already won. The battle's already won.

It's done. It was accomplished. He said it. It is finished. You tell them that.

Go tell ISIS. Go tell the drug dealers. Go into Saudi Arabia. I don't care. Break down the courts of the communists meeting together in their sacred chambers.

Go to the prison yards, go everywhere. You tell them the battle is won. Go to the tribes that have been under the bondage of the devil for 4, 000 years and you just say it. The Son of God is risen. Period.

And that's all you need to say. That's it. You go and you tell them. Two words. Paul and Mars Hill.

There he is. You're a bunch of idolaters. He is risen and he will judge the earth. See ya. Are you shocked by the little information that was shared on Mars Hill?

That's all that needs to be said. Two words, He's one. I love the mission hymns of the 19th century. I'd encourage you to sing these with your children. Oh, they're they're powerful.

Listen, in order to stir on the greatest century of missions the world has ever known. Where guys like John G. Peyton, William Carey. Adoniram Judson, people of unbelievable intrepid courage. Such the world has ever known.

Road into the darkest, most dangerous areas in this world. John Williams killed on Tanna. And just 10 years later, John G. Paton's on the next boat. And he lands there, and he risks his life, loses his wife, his newborn child, and faces down the powers of the demon world over the next number of years almost loses his life 20-30 times.

Now you ask what is it that empowers these men, the spirit of God yes but the word of God and that message that they took here it's put in the mission hymns listen to James Montgomery's hymn lift up your heads ye gates of brass ye bars of iron yield and let the king of glory pass the cross is in the field That banner brighter than the star that leads the train of night shines on their march and guides from far his servants in the fight. Somebody say Amen at this point. Anybody stirred up? I hope you are by now. Though few and small and weak your bands, strong in your captain's strength, go to the conquest of all lands all must be his at length those spoils at his victorious feet you shall rejoice to lay and lay yourselves as trophies meet in his great judgment day Oh fear not faint not halt not now quit you like men be strong to Christ shall all the nation's bow and sing with you this song.

Uplifted are the gates of brass, the bars of iron yield. Behold the King of Glory pass. The cross has won the field. Amen. Clap for Jesus.

Amen. Hallelujah. He has risen. He has won. We are on the victory march.

That's all the missions movement has been for 2, 000 years. We're on a victory march around the globe and just telling everybody, He's won! You say, what about the offer of the gospel that people come and believe in Jesus, that He died on the cross for their sins? Yes! That's the second message, that the first gives him the glory, because he is one.

So see, this is what we're to tell all nations. Look at Psalm 96. Again, sing to the Lord, bless his name, show forth his salvation from day to day, declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. Our goal and objective in the missionary movement is just to get an opportunity to speak to everybody. We got to share this message with everybody.

Could be somebody hasn't heard it yet. If so, let's take it out there and let's declare the great victory that Jesus has won in his resurrection and in his victory on that cross. Declaring the glory of God and the marvelous works of God to the utmost end of the earth. This is the number one objective and of course it is to every tribe and nation because at the end of Revelation 7 verse 9 The whole idea is to bring everybody together to give Jesus the glory for this great work of salvation. That's the end goal That's the objective the whole point is we need a we need a larger choir What we're doing in the missionary movement is we're building a choir around the entire world and Jesus is the great choir master in which he wants every tribe and every nation, every color, everybody together at the final moment in history at the very end of time in eternity.

Revelation 7 verse 9. Let's read this again. The objective, this is where we're headed. This is why missionary work. This is why all Kingdom work.

After this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice. Remember it's every tribe, every nation crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb and all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and they worship God saying amen blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. This is the great objective of all of history, of all of redemptive history, of all the missionary movements around the world. This is it that every tribe, that every nation be gathered to sing these songs and to declare the wonders of Almighty God in the salvation of sinners.

Amen and amen. Say among the heathen the Lord reigns. I'm jumping down to verse 9 because this ties into his works Say among the heathen the Lord reigns and Yes, the kings of the earth have set themselves against the Lord and his anoints. I know that I Know that over the last 15 to 20 years every western nation has has set themselves everyone without exception we just checked out the map that every nation in Europe and North America without exception has joined their arms including Northern Ireland which I didn't think I toppled yet but Northern Ireland as well join their arms and say we will oppose the Lord and his anointed. We will not submit ourselves, we will break the bans, asunder will cast their cords from us.

This is what they're saying. Every Supreme Court, every legislature, Every democracy, every president of major countries, all western countries around the globe have set themselves, they have united against the Lord and His anointed. In the area of marriage and sexuality in just the last ten years, it's all happened. The whole conspiracy's come together. They've joined arms all together.

There's a great deal in common between them, the Chinese governments that persecutes Christians, the Northern Ireland government that persecutes Christians now for not baking certain cakes. In North Korea, they've all joined arms against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands inside. This is what we say. He that sits in the heavens shall laugh. He shall have them in derision.

He will break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Like nothing. It's the entire world now. It's all the national governments. There's not one, not a single one, that will acknowledge Christ and his rule in the area of sexuality and marriage, you say, at least in the Western world.

It's these governments, these kings, these judges against Jesus. I wonder who's going to win. Kiss the Son lest he be angry and you perish from the way. Lest his wrath be kindled but a little. That's what we say to them.

Why? Because he is King of kings and Lord of lords. You say among the heathen, the Lord reigns. I don't care what you say. I don't care what you have done.

I don't care how many arms are linked against the Lord and his anointed. The Lord reigns, and he will break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. You say, well, these nations today, they are invulnerable. Not like Tyre and Sidon. Not like Assyria, Greece, and Rome.

Listen to me. Jesus Christ is sovereign head over all things to the church. And all that needs to happen is somebody pushes one button and the major nations go up in flames. And you say these nations are invulnerable to the reign of Jesus Christ. Rather fear God.

Have you learned anything this weekend? Rather fear God. Say among the heathen, the Lord reigns. Verses 4 and 5. The Lord is great and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods for all the gods of the heathen are idols but the Lord made the heavens. Now compare Him to the other gods. This is helpful. It's helpful to worship. Because there are competing gods that pull on us.

This is one reason why we have a hard time in worship. Because we are fearing other gods. We have idols. And when we come into worship, we need to cry out, all idols under foot be trod, the Lord is God, the Lord is God. I love that.

It's put to a hymn. I can't remember which hymn it is, but You need to sing it from time to time, but it is effectively Elijah on Mount Carmel reminding that when we come into worship, we're all idols under foot be trod. If there's anything getting in the way of the worship this weekend, all idols under foot be trod. The Lord is God. The Lord is God.

Amen? Amen. Compare them to the other gods. Gods that people worship. They fear.

You know They fear them because they talk about them. People talk about their gods. They talk about it all the time. You know the materialistic god because you're at work hanging around the water cooler, and they're talking about the boat they're going to buy and the entertainment they're going to enjoy next weekend. And you're entering into the worship service by the water cooler.

As we talk about the things we're going to buy, the entertainment we're going to enjoy, this is their god. They talk about it. Be careful about participating in other people's worship services, especially as they worship their gods. It's the God of materialism, the God of the state. Do not negate the significance of the state in most people's perceptions.

Again, it's the responsibility of pastors to identify the gods of the heathen. It's true we don't fall down before idols of stone and steel and so forth, things that happen within other nations, pagan nations like Japan. But we have our gods, The God of the state is very significant, very important in people's minds. Their God is the thing that saves them. And what they're saved from is the thing, the problems they talk about the most.

What are the problems they talk about? They talk about their health, they talk about their wealth, They talk about the potential of losing a job, they talk about their wealth, what they're going to buy, what they're not going to buy, what they sure would like to buy. These are their gods, but the state is supposed to save them from their economic woes. They're supposed to save them from their health issues, their health problems, and all of these things. And when the politicians run, they don't run saying, you know what, the purpose for government is to hang the murder on a Saturday that's the purpose as dictated by Romans 13 and Genesis 9 6 so therefore we're just trying to identify the guy who's going to be most just in determining whether we have two or three witnesses in the case of a murder trial.

Most people aren't thinking that way because they're not thinking that the state's purpose is defense and justice. Most people are saying, will the state save us from our economic woes? Will this guy be the very best economic person to lead the nation? This is the kind of thing that people are thinking of. Will this person be the right one to establish our nation and to be sure that somehow we don't collapse as an empire?

Well, one of these days, these Dagon's of the Federal Reserve and the federal government, anything that's been worshipped, they're coming down. The Dagon's always come down before the Ark of the Covenant, before the true and living God. And when it happens, Christians need to say, good riddance, finally. Finally, the gods are following. There's ever anything of a depression that hits the nation.

There's anything of a problem with the state or the government and people begin to lose faith in government. Praise God. Praise God. There's the God of man, the God of science, the God of technology, medicine, health. These are the gods.

These are the gods. People's gods are the gods that save them from their health problems, from their wealth. They reverence the stars. They reverence the sports stars, the entertainment stars. They think all the time of the Olympics and who's winning and who's not winning Well, the gods of the nations are idols that is they're empty.

There's nothing to them I'll just say one thing Bruce Jenner was on the Wheaties Box in 1976. Bruce Jenner, the star, the god of 1976. Now where is he? Bruce Jenner, It's a shameful God. It's a flawed God.

The gods of the heathen are flawed gods. Now people prefer the flawed gods. You'll find they're constantly reported on in National Enquirer. They want their gods to be flawed. Augustine says in his confessions.

Yeah, they had gods back in the Roman days too, but he preferred the flawed gods. There always had to be a flawed god. Why? Because that god would look a lot like a human and it would justify them and who they were and how they were acting. But a flawed God is a flawed God.

Really, really flawed. Exceedingly flawed. And as you travel down the highway in Denver on a Sunday morning or a Sunday afternoon trying to get to church and you run through a gigantic traffic jam I'll tell you what it is not because people are flocking into the churches it's because the stadiums are filling with 40, 000 60, 000 80, 000 people for the worship service of the day that's that's that's what people are doing that's their God These are the things that get them excited. These are the things they talk about. But as I mentioned, the gods will always fail us.

You know in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, I think it was R.J. Rush, who wrote a book called The Messianic State of American Education. And what's ironic, and it's true, as you were reading these writers from John Dewey onwards, There was these high expectations of education, of saving a nation, saving its economy, yes, but saving us from all of our ills, at least the problems that they were thinking, the character issues of the nation, or whatever it was. It was great faith in the public schools, but do you know where the messianic schools are today? Public school confidence, the confidence that most people have in public schools, has dropped off from about 55% in the 1970s to 30% now.

And their confidence in Congress has been even worse. It was up around the 50 percentile some 30, 40 years ago, now it's barely bumping over 10%. Why is that? Because inevitably, once we try to create a god out of the state, a god out of education or whatever it is, those gods will always disappoint. Through time, over a period of a generation or two or three, the gods will show themselves to be what they really are.

Failures, failures, cruel disappointments, The gods of the heathen are idols, but the Lord made the heavens." Think of the story of the scientists who finally figured out they could make a human being. So they called God down. This is just a story, it's just an allegory. They called God down. We can make a human being now, God.

So let's do a little contest here. Ready, set, go! The scientists leaned down to grab a little dust and God said, wait a minute, you go get your own dust. That's just one illustration of the science of the day. Man thinks he understands something, but he has barely scratched the surface.

What there is to know about the atom or the cell, we know that. Man the more he learns, the more he realizes he doesn't know it's the way the universe is made. The stronger the telescopes they can reach out into the universe, the more they reveal another 10 billion galaxies they never saw before. And then they get another one that'll go even further a God's designed the universe to blow our minds the gods of the nations are idols but the Lord made the heavens When it comes to the state somehow sovereignly controlling the economies, you know that's not going to happen because economies are based on human motivation. And you know what?

The state cannot in any way Transform one single human heart or one single human soul They cannot sovereignly ordain that a single millennial will To motivate him to work to get out of bed in the morning to get his pants on straight and get out there and salvage the economy The civil magistrate he can't do that They can't even affect one person one one person's soul The gods of the heathen are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. And they come back and say, yeah, but they can adjust the prime rate. The prime rate. It's a joke. Like that's going to save the economy.

The gods of the heathen are idols. They're just idols. But the Lord made the heavens. Let's talk about the heavens for a moment. Imagine the earth to be just a golf ball.

Just a golf ball. Now, you would be smaller than that. Children take this whole globe, somewhat 16, 000 miles across, with its 6 billion people running around on the surface of this globe, and you reduce it to the size of a golf ball, the sun would be 15 feet in diameter. Alright? That's huge.

But now, take some of the stars. I'm not talking about a galaxy, I'm talking about a single star that God has made. Again, I want you to think about this. The gods of the heathen are idols. Yes, even the Federal Reserve is an idol.

The greatest conceptions that man has come up with is a nothing. But the Lord made the heavens. Betelgeuse is the second largest star in the universe, at least as far as we know at this point, you can get 652 trillion earths inside of Betelgeuse. 652 trillion earths? If the earth was a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be six times the size of the Empire State Building.

Six Empire State Buildings. If Betelgeuse was a football stadium, you could fill it up with the golf balls the size of the earth 3, 000 times The Lord made the heavens but there's Canis Majoris that's the largest If the earth was a golf ball Canis Majoris would be the height of Mount Everest. Okay, golf ball. Now, how big are you on the golf ball? Very tiny.

Everest, Canis Majoris. You can get seven quadrillion earths within the Canis Majoris. And I just, I was still struggling with this and I thought, well, now I'm still trying to understand how big this is. You know if you were to explore every square mile of Earth, not every square foot, every square mile. If you were to explore every square mile of Earth, it would take you 6, 000 years to do it by walking around.

6, 000 years. You'd use up about 2, 000 pairs of tennis shoes. But if you were going to explore Canis Majoris, the largest star, the largest single body in the universe as far as we know, it would take you 10 quadrillion years to explore that thing. One of the reasons I did this is I wanted to know if there was enough to explore once we got into eternity. You know how you want to get, I don't know, when we get into new heavens, new earth, it'd be nice to get some tennis shoes on and start exploring God's universe and I wanted to be sure there was enough to explore if we were going to have a couple of quadrillion years to do that.

It was a carnal reason but I thought it would be interesting, you know, just take one of the celestial bodies in our universe today. How long would it take you to explore one star? Did you know there's more than one star in the universe? There's a lot of stars. I'm overwhelmed at these conceptions.

Is anybody else overwhelmed at this point? I can hardly go on. Now that's the immensity of God's creation. Just, you know, again, remember God said, let there be light and God said, let there be stars in the heavens and it was so that's just it was there but not just the think about the energy of the star systems he's gigantic fusion reactors in the sky they can go on for a long time. We do a fusion reactor, we do something of a carbon-based reactor that will last about 10 years before it breaks down, or you need some kind of repair job on it, you realize our star can last for 5 billion years, and some stars, they say, can go on burning for 10 trillion years.

You say, well if that's the case, why did God make a star to burn for 10 trillion years and just for a moment, brothers and sisters, the God who creates a star, quadrillion times larger than our earth to burn for 200 billion years is the God who created hell to burn and burn and burn. Don't trifle with him. And He's the God whose love overwhelms his justice and his wrath at the cross. We see a picture of his judgment in these stars, don't we? But his love, his wrath certainly poured out upon his Son, but His love transcends His wrath at the cross of Jesus Christ.

Now do you see the magnitude of it, the power of it, the energy of it, of His judgment and His mercy? Do you see them again there at the cross? And you've got to, as you think about these things, you're barely thinking about them. Our minds cannot get in anywhere close to the transcendent wisdom of Almighty God and creating all these things and scientists over at MIT are explaining the universe like ants explaining the construction of aircraft carriers on their little whiteboards. What do ants know about aircraft carriers?

What do men know about God and His creation? His character is deserving of great praise as well. We find that in verses 6 through 9. Honor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.

Give to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due to His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him all the earth." I love the sunsets in the state of Colorado across the Rocky Mountain range.

We live a little higher, 7, 000 feet, so we can see it across the great mountain range. We say to ourselves, a 60-mile canvas of the most amazing artwork you've ever seen. Ever seen an artist do a little art on a piece of canvas about yea big? Have you ever seen an artist do a beautiful panoramic view over 60 mile length of canvas and then erase it every about 10 minutes or so saying let's do something different bring some more in here okay how about that okay race it again all 60 miles of it okay how about That looks pretty good. And then he does it again.

He does it again. Amen? Is this amazing? This is our God. He brings such beauty together with strength and power.

This is worthy of our praise and our awe. And oh, that we would never get used to what He is doing. Power and holiness, honor and majesty, power and beauty. You know, our conception of God's holiness and righteousness is so tainted, and I think this is what gets in the way of our worship, that we would again be able to see more, perhaps, of the distance between ourselves and God. Something more of Christ, who is the holy Lamb of God, whose holy blood enables us to approach His throne room and draws us in.

Yes, sinful creatures that we are are able to approach the holy God by way of the Holy blood of a dying Savior on the cross. God is a million times more holy, more just than anything we can conceive of. His holiness, His beauty, His power, these are the character traits that we worship our God for. Our duty therefore will end it here. What is our duty therefore?

Here it is in the last few verses. It's three things. Give to the Lord the glory due unto His name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and fear before him all the earth." Those three things were admonished to give to the Lord the glory due to his name. Bring an offering.

Bring an offering of thanksgiving to him. And you know what? Our offerings are a little shabby sometimes. It maybe is not the best. It's like a little child has a little cookie to bring to daddy.

He brings the cookie up to daddy, and I made this for you. He trips and falls and puts it in the mud puddle. He's got a little mud on him. He has to wipe it off in his pants. Here you go, dad.

And he receives it. Our fathers receive it, right? Because we're blood-bought, because we're his children, because we're already his children. So they're not the greatest sacrifices, but bring the sacrifices to Jesus. It is his glory, it's his nature, it's his works that demand this glory.

It's the duty that God has hard-wired into our very beings. And as we become increasingly sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God, we more and more warm up to His worship. We're more and more drawn into His worship. It seems more appropriate to the the thing that we were made for, and it's such a beautiful thing to give God the glory as you walk away from a service in which you did. Praise God by the working of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Your eyes were open to the glory of God. You were able to raise your hearts, maybe your hands, your voices And you were able to praise like you never praised before. It's a glorious thing. It's a glorious, it's a beautiful thing. It's a delightful thing to praise the glorious God.

It's the most beautiful thing that we can do. We should never ever tire of bringing God to glory because we're giving glory to this most glorious God, and the process of doing it is the most glorious thing that we can possibly do. It's the highest thing that man ever accomplishes in his life. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, in the beauty of Christ's holiness, by the holy blood of Jesus that leads the way, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before Him all the earth. And I'll end on a few applications.

How many more minutes do I have, brother? I don't wanna go over. I have a tendency to do that. Five minutes. Thank you, brother.

In application, fear before them all of the earth, an application that's come back to my mind again and again over the entire weekend is the proverb that says, live in the fear of God all the day long. This is one of the problems that we come into worship and expecting somehow we'll turn on the worship button, we'll begin to fear God this morning when we have lived the dualistic life and we have been apart from the glory of God, the worship of God, the fear of God for the other six days out of the week. So we've separated out these two aspects and that's why family worship is so essential but it really needs to flow through all the day long. The fear of God needs to go throughout our entire lives. The beginning of knowledge and wisdom, of course, is the fear of God.

And wherever you're involved in education or in the transference of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, be sure that you're bringing in the fear of God is absolutely essential absolutely basic to That dissipation of knowledge if you're in a homeschooling conference that doesn't even mention the fear of God get out of there If you're in a private school a Christian school public school doesn't even mention the fear of God as the beginning of knowledge. Get out. Get out immediately. This is so essential. It is so basic.

Be sure that the fear of God is shot through the curriculum. Every page of the history books, Every page of the science books, literature books, it ought to be intertwined. And it ought to be written, all these books need to be written by men who fear God. And it needs to bleed through the pages. That's why a Christian curriculum, the Christian classics, absolutely preferred.

Over the pagan classics, We need a radical transformation of the way we do high school, college, in terms of the liberal arts. This is essential, I believe, because we need to fear God and bring it back. I know it hasn't been in academics for a hundred years. Doesn't matter. We gotta bring it back again.

We live in a godless age in our interest as disciplers. I didn't say teachers. There shouldn't be even an idea of a teacher that teaches apart from the fear of God and disciples in the fear of God as beginning of knowledge and wisdom. We don't want our chemistry teachers teaching chemistry first and foremost. We want them teaching the fear of God as the beginning of chemistry in the chemistry laboratory.

That is the fear of God, not separate from chemistry, but fear of God in the chemistry classroom such that As we review the marvels of God's creation in biology or in the construction of the atom, eventually the teacher is on his face before God, raising his hands and saying, class, at this point, I can't go on unless we raise our hands, our voices, our hearts, and we praise the true and living God for this amazing creation. That's the way chemistry needs to be taught. It needs to be taught by men and women of deep piety, worshippers, God-fearers. I'm not interested in teaching theology apart from the fear of God in the seminary classroom. The seminary professor is not a professor.

He's a discipler in the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom or he has vastly perverted the subject of theology in his classroom. It's so essential, it's so basic. It ought to be so thorough through the teaching that the fear of God is taken as something that needs to be discipled into the students in our classrooms, whether it's theology or chemistry, either way. Every teacher should have in their business card, I am a discipler in the fear of God. I'm not here to teach logic, I'm not here to teach rhetoric.

I'm here to teach the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. We ought to fear him in politics. Instead of this pragmatism, there's fear of the empire following. I've been reviewing the writings of those who want to vote for Donald Trump and those who want to vote for Hillary Clinton. They're evangelicals on both sides.

And so these evangelicals are telling us to vote for Hillary Clinton, And other evangelical leaders are telling us to vote for Donald Trump, and you ask why. We've got to save the empire. We've got to save the empire. It's like Uzzah, super pragmatic Uzzah, flies in to save the ark from touching the ground. And God had said, keep your hands off of that.

And God killed him for his pains. These pragmatists, They don't realize the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge and the fear of God is essential, absolutely essential for anybody who leads among the children of men. This absence of a fear of God in politics has been devastating for the nation. Election after election after election after election not just with the politicians but with evangelicals that will vote for them someone 12 also says praise the Lord blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments, his offspring will be mighty in the earth, the generation of the upright will be blessed. And I thank God my father was a God-fearing man, a humble, God-fearing man.

I'm going to see him in about four hours and in a hardly way. He raised me in a God-fearing household, always put God's kingdom absolutely first and foremost. God's word first and foremost. Lost half of his support when he turned to a sovereignty of God perspective on salvation. He saw God as absolutely sovereign over all reality, including the area of man's salvation, and he lost half of his support.

We lived on bread crusts for about four or five years as kids out there in the Japanese islands. My father would take books that had a little bit of minstos, gosh darn it all to heck, these sorts of things in the books and he would black them out. He wouldn't allow any of that in our home. He didn't allow puns or jokes. Any kind of pun or joke that had anything to do with something God said in his word.

He was very careful. He respected God's word, God's name. He was a man who feared God. So I just want to give my father a little tribute and thank God for such a godly father. And We learned something of the fear of God from my godly father and my godly mother.

We talk about the things of the Lord constantly. I call her up on the phone. We're going to talk about the Lord. We're going to pray together. She's 81 years of age.

She prays for us hours and hours every single day. I'm so thankful that really Psalm 112 applied in my household, blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments. His offspring will be mighty in the earth. So, may I encourage you, brothers, to be men of God who fear God and delight greatly in his commandments. Why?

Because of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of course feared God and indeed took the wrath of God and our sin on himself for us at that cross. Give him the glory. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we raise up our adoration, our exaltation.

We clap. We say, amen. We say, hallelujah, because you are worthy. Oh, Father, you are worthy. Well, praise and adoration and glory.

Oh, what a universe you've created. But even more importantly, Father, what a great salvation we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to God. He is risen and he is our Savior. Amen.

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