Come and See the Works of God!

Which holdeth our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved. Thou broughtest us into the net. Now just stop and think of what I just read. Thou broughtest us into the net. Thou latest affliction upon our loins.

I will go into thy house with burnt offerings. I will pay thee my vows. I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings with the incense of rams. I will offer bullocks with goats.

Cried unto him with my mouth and he was extolled with my tongue. But verily God hath heard me. He hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Let’s pray together. Our Father, as we come to your word now and to take a few minutes just to study it and to meditate on it and try to learn some truths from it and be reminded of many things that we already know and need to be reassured of, need to be put in remembrance of. We pray that You would bless our study of Your Word. Help us to grow from Your Word and to internalize it and it it become part of the way we think and what we believe and how we act and so bless our time in your word, lord.

Give me wisdom to try and say the things that you want your people to hear, that that we all need to hear to grow. So Lord, we commit this time to you now in Jesus name, amen. Now you’ll notice in verse number one, this is this is the bad singers life verse. Is it not? Make a joyful noise unto god, all you lands. This is actually one of several times, several verses in in scripture that says essentially the same thing. You go on to verse number two, the Bible says this, sing forth the honor of his name and make his praise glorious. I feel like I have a right to say that because I’m one of them and but what’s interesting is this verse is not is not just telling us obviously we joke around about that but this verse the first two verses are telling us something about praise to god and just this is not the main thing we want to cover but I’ll I’ll mention it on the way is there’s three things here mentioned about praise. Number one, in verse number one, it says this, make a joyful noise unto god. So, you have the the attitude of praise and then verse number two says, sing forth the honor of his name, that’s the content of praise.

And then verse number two continues and says, make his praise glorious, and that’s the character of praise. Now, I just pointed that out because although we joke around sometimes about verse number one for those of us that aren’t gifted with the ability to sing, but what we are gifted, what what the Lord wants us to express in our praise to God, and in in this case, because remember this is a song or psalm.

So, when we when we sing to God, the joy part, now we might not have a whole lot of control over how well our voice produces the sound. But we have all the control over how joyful that sound comes out. And one thing that will revolutionize, at least it has for me, maybe revolutionizes a little bit extreme of a word but one thing that that will change and and affect how much you enjoy the singing of the hymns in church and the sing, the music in general is if you’re, if you have joy attached to it, if the sound you make is not just a sound because brother Andrew or Sam or Josh or whoever is leading in the songs and you’re singing the songs but with that is an attitude of joy that goes with it. So you, we bring the songs, you bring the joy.

We bring the songs, you bring the joy. That’s the attitude of praise, and then the content of praise, which is in verse two, it says, sing forth the honor of his name. The idea of the of the name of god is honorable. In other words, whatsoever is related to or touches god’s name and certainly praise and song is one of those things should reflect the honor of his name, right? It should be, in other words, our songs, the content of our song should be should be should be things that reaffirm and express the truth of of god consistent with God’s name, God’s identity as we read in scripture. It should be full of scripture, it should be full of spiritual truth, not empty but full of it. And that’s one reason why we, you’ll notice we often sing all the verses because there are the the songs that we have, the songs that we pick are are just are some of the best songs that there are.

And they’re they’re just full of of scripture and that that’s that’s the content of our praise. But then the last thing in verse number two it says this, make his praise glorious. There is something to be said about skill. There is something to be said about preparation. There is something to be said about, like the scripture says, playing skillfully, because anything that we do, not, you know, you think in your life, the Bible says a righteous and upright life adorns the doctrine of God. Right?

Good works adorn the doctrine of god. They make the the doctrine of god what the lord teaches in scripture although that’s already glorious, it adds to it with a beauty And so it is with this, with praise, is the song when we, I mean, how many of you have ever heard the Hallelujah Chorus? Alright?

I know I’ve been to some church services, that’s not something you often hear in in church, right? You know, the hallelujah course, you just don’t sing that but I I’ve been in a few services and you might have as well where the hallelujah chorus was actually sung and you know, just the skill of that song, not that we who are singing it are necessarily skillful but there’s something about that song that that just uplifts God, and it’s it is like purely from scripture, and so you have the honor of his name, and you also have the glory of it. So our praise, there is something to be be said about the skill of our praise that anything that we can add to it, obviously, that is godly, is makes his praise more glorious.

Does that make sense? It makes it more glorious. And so, and so we thank the Lord for that. Let’s continue. I’ll just read verse number three, say unto God, how terrible art art thou in thy works. We’re gonna come back to the works of God in just a minute. Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee. All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee. They shall sing unto thy name, Selah. Just kind of hint at looking forward to the millennial day when Christ reigns and all the world does indeed worship him for they do not do that at this moment. Verse five says this, come and see the works of God. Now, let’s stop there and take a minute. Let’s stop there and take a minute.

Come and see the works of god. Come and see the works of god. The question that comes into my mind when I read that, this invitation is this, what are the works of god? What are the works of God? Now if you were to say, if I were to ask you, name some works of God. Now I know that’s a broad question, name some works of God. And we might say things like, God answers prayer, or God created the world. We might say that’s a work of God. Well, actually, the Psalmist continues, and he describes the work of God that is first on his list. Notice what it says in verse six.

He turned the sea into dry land. They went through the flood on foot. There did we rejoice in him. So this is what, this is at the, this is on the top line of the, in the mind of the psalmist as a work of God. And what he’s doing is, the Psalmist is citing what is the supreme and the most magnificent display of God’s power and of God’s ability in all of the Old Testament, which is the crossing of the Red Sea. Did you know that? Over and over and over again, probably even more, although I didn’t do a comparative count, probably even more than God’s power shown in creation, is the number of times in the Old Testament that the crossing of the Red Sea is cited as an act of God’s power.

Over and over and over again. In fact, it’s not just that, but it’s cited as kind of a turning point, a pivotal event in the Old Testament. Like everything in Genesis and and the beginning of Exodus leads up to that point and everything from there goes down from that point when you read the Old Testament. Just without the new. You just read the Old Testament. That is a seminal event. It is a it is an identifying event to a to a Jewish person.

In the history of Israel, that was when god delivered them. God identified with them in a miraculous and a an astounding way when he led them on dry ground and parted the sea. Let me show you. Let let’s just, I just wanna take a quick walk through the the Old Testament in order, and I wanna show you how many times that this act of God and act of God’s power is shown. Starting Joshua chapter four, and we’ll just read these verses, we won’t we won’t spend very much time in each one, but I wanna show you, this is a big deal in the Old Testament.

And you know that. You know that the crossing of the Red Sea is is huge. As far as events in the Old Testament but what I want you to see is that not only is it huge but later, it’s understood by the Jewish, the Jewish believers is understood as the main work of god. This is what god did. This is the work of all works and it dwarfed, if you will, all the other works of God that we read about in the Old Testament. And there were many, many battles, many healings, many things like that, but yet the crossing of the Red Sea is cited. Joshua chapter four, look at verse number 23.

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until you were passed over, as the Lord your God did to to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us until we were gone over. Look at chapter 24 of Joshua. Joshua 24.

Verse number seven says this, and when they cried unto the Lord, He put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them, and covered them. And your eyes have seen what I have done in Egypt, and you dwelt in the wilderness a long season. Look now at at Nehemiah. Nehemiah.

Chapter number nine Nehemiah here praying to god says this, chapter nine verse number 11, and thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps as a stone in the into the mighty waters. Look now at Psalm 78. Psalm 78.

Psalm 78 verse number 13. You look at verse 12 to describe the to to kind of help you understand why I say what I said about God’s works. Verse 11, and forgot his works and his wonders that he had showed them. Marvelous things that he did in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt. Here it is, verse 13. He divided the sea and caused them to pass through. He made the waters to stand as an heap. You see that? Mighty works. What works?

The Red Sea. What God did in the Passover, delivering them. Look at Psalm one zero six. Psalm one zero six. Verse eight says this, nevertheless, he saved them. Verse seven mentions the wonders of God, the multitude of his mercies. His might is mentioned in verse number eight, mighty power to be known, verse nine, He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up. So He led them through the depths as through the wilderness.

Look at verse 22 of the same chapter. Wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. Notice that, again, wonderful works of God. Look at Psalm 114. Psalm 114.

Psalm one fourteen says this, verse three. The sea saw it and fled, Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. What ail thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back. And then he says in verse eight, verse seven, tremble thou earth at the presence of the Lord. So talking about God’s power, again, look at Psalm one thirty six.

Psalm one thirty six. One thirty six verse number 13. Or start in verse 12. With a strong hand and with a stretched out arm for his mercy endureth forever to Him which divided the Red Sea into parts, for His mercy endureth forever, and made Israel to pass through the midst of it, for His mercy endureth forever. Go to Isaiah, look at Isaiah chapter 51.

Isaiah 51 verse number 10. Art not thou it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, that hath made the depths of the sea away for the ransom to pass over? Verse 15. Verse 15 says this, but I am the Lord thy God that divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is His name. And lastly, Isaiah 63, look at that, a few pages over. Isaiah 63.

Isaiah 63 verse number 12. Says this, that led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make himself an everlasting name, that led them through the deep as an horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble. Notice that. So, we’ve gone from Joshua, Nehemiah, Psalms, Isaiah, and there’s there’s other kind of more random verses throughout the Old Testament, but here’s what, again, I’ll just repeat.

When you talk about the works of God, and that’s what we’re talking about here, and I’m going somewhere with this, so just hang with me. Psalm 66 verse number verse number five says this, come and see the works of God. It’s an invitation, come and see the works of God. And the work of God that he cites is the biggest, the most magnificent display of God’s power and his work found in the Old Testament, which is the Red Sea, the Passover and the Red Sea.

So, how does this apply to us? We take this truth in verse number five and we bring it into the New Testament. Because you know what, since the close of the Old Testament, there have been works of God that are greater than the Red Sea. There have been works of God that are greater than the Red Sea. So, if you look at the Old Testament and you see the works of God are many, but the one that outshines them all, the one that is is the the peak is the Red Sea, you come to the New Testament and you see the Lord Jesus and he heals people and people are raised from the dead and you see people speaking in languages they didn’t know before and people, the Lord doing all kinds of things in the New Testament. All, you know, of course the Lord Jesus walks on water. We know Peter also walked on water and feeding of the 5,000, we just go on and on and on with the works of God, and those miracles are called the great works of God. They said, wow, look at what the great work of God in the ministry of Christ, and then later in the apostles. We see the work of God, and later we see the works of God in judgment in the New Testament but there is one work of god that outshines them all.

Look at second Corinthians chapter five. Look at second Corinthians chapter five. We’ll come back to Psalms in just a minute. Second Corinthians chapter five. Everyone seems to fixate on things like answered prayer, which we’ll talk about in just a second. They seem to fixate on God’s providing them what they need, and God healing them of a disease, or God doing these, all these works, and it’s not to deny that those things are works of God, but if we fixate on that and we miss what is the great, magnificent display of God’s work in the New Testament, we have missed it all.

We’ve missed it all. Second Corinthians chapter five, look at verse 19. It says this, to wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God, for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. You know what this is? This is a work of God, but it’s not only that, it’s also verse 20 talks about we’re ambassadors which is the same thing as as we read in Psalm 66 verse five which says, come and see.

Come and see. In the New Testament, the most magnificent display of God’s power is not the mere crossing of the ocean or the parting of the Red Sea. It is what God did for us to deliver us from a foe that is far mightier than a human foe.

Because he destroyed that which destroyed our relationship with him, and that is sin. You talk about work of God, you know, this is the problem, we look at the cross and we, oh yeah, yeah, Jesus died on the cross, that’s great.

But we stand in awe of Jesus walking on the water, when really the cross is the great work of God. In fact, when you read Jesus, I don’t have any references I can show you at the moment, but but search it out. When you read Jesus talking about doing the works of the father, and doing the will of the father, what the father had sent him to do. Yeah, it was a it was a lot of of of of smaller things like healing people and those kinds of things, those are all part of Jesus’ mission, but his ultimate mission, his great work that he was called to do was to go to that cross and reconcile the world to himself. That is the Red Sea of the New Testament and it’s far superior. That work, although it might seem to the human eye to be something minor, you know, just a guy on the cross.

As compared to an entire Red Sea parting and and a whole host walking through on dry ground, millions of people walking through with their animals, all all of that walking through on dry grounds. To the eye, it might seem that the cross is kind of small small fries but indeed it’s not. In comparison to what Christ did on the cross, the parting of the Red Sea is but minor.

Think about this, the Lord parted the Red Sea with a mere word. But for the cross to reconcile us to God, for a a sinful man to be made right with God, required God himself to come down. Required God himself to take to become sin for us. Required God himself to be the sacrifice. It wasn’t just a word.

God, in fact, let me if I can say it like this reverently, god couldn’t just say a word and reconcile us to himself. Certainly, he would have if he could have. He couldn’t. Because the price was too high. The requirement was too steep. And so the work that Christ did was he came from down from glory, and he took upon the form of a servant, was made in the likeness of men. And he took our sin though he was sinless, took our sin upon himself, and died as a sinner, guilty as a sinner, but it was our sin.

And in doing so, he flung the door of heaven open to anyone that would come to him in faith. He reconciled us to himself because there was no other way for it to be done. He couldn’t just say a word like he did at the Red Sea. God didn’t have to come down to part the Red Sea, did he? He didn’t. Moses lifted up the rod and god just like, done.

But for our salvation, He had to go to the cross. That is the great work of God. Not only that, the Passover and the Red Sea, those events of history actually picture that future greater event that supersedes and eclipses every other event, that every other work that God has done. What is the work of God?

See, the work of God in the New Testament is not it is not just the greatest work of God in the New Testament. No, it eclipses the Red Sea and everything else in the Old Testament as well.

When God Himself in Christ suffered in the place of sinners, that sinners might be made right with Him. You think about those who walked on dry ground in the Red Sea, as marvelous as that was, though they were delivered from that peril in that moment, yet without the cross, those same people who crossed the Red Sea would perish and go to an eternity in the lake of fire.

Right? You see, without Christ, without the cross, without this great and most magnificent work of God, that deliverance was only temporary. They would still perish in their sin. So we can say this, what the Lord did for us is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s power. It is the ultimate work of God, there is no greater. It is it.

The cross is the pinnacle moment not only of the New Testament, but also of the old. So we say, when we go out and share the gospel with people back in Psalm 66, we go back and share the gospel with, we share the gospel with people, what are we essentially doing? We’re saying come and see the works of God. What do we do? When we share the gospel, listen, the primary focus, I wanna make sure we understand this, the primary focus in our evangelism is not let me get you to do a thing.

Sometimes we get we get off balance. Now, if someone if someone wants to trust in Christ, there is a the Lord says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved. But really, evangelism at its core is really about come and see what God has done. And when we frame it like that, that completely turns evangelism around. It’s not about what we do, it’s about what god has done.

The greatest work of god and it really, is it not, is not the cross the greatest thing that we can talk about? We should never get tired of talking about that.

Come and see the works of God. We go to the mission field, that’s what we’re doing, come and see what God has done for you, come and see, we tell people who don’t know Him, who hate Him, come and see. We hope people respond, we want them to respond, we say come and see what God has done to save you.

Man, what a good truth. Now for time sake, of course, we’re not gonna go to every verse, but I do wanna get down, I wanna look it down at verse number 18.

Just say a few comments as to wrap it up tonight. Of course, if you’ve never memorized Psalm sixty six eighteen, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me, I encourage you to do that. That’s a good solid sound verse. That is a Old Testament truth and that is a New Testament truth.

Verse 18, but if I regard iniquity, what is what is regard iniquity? What’s interesting, what you might not know, what’s maybe not totally obvious is that the word regard means the the word that that we have in our Bible in verse 18 as regard is the same word as the word see. In fact, in Genesis one verse four, it says, and God saw the light that it was good, same word.

Look if you would very quickly at Psalm 94, I’ll show you an example of it like this in a parallelism, and we’ve we’ve talked about that before. That’s a good way to help us understand these words and how they’re used. Psalm 94 verse seven, look what it says. Yet they say, the Lord shall not, what does it say? See, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. See how it’s put kind of stacked together?

The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. It’s because that’s what it’s talking about. To see it, to regard iniquity, to see it is to be mindful of it, to know about it. So, the verse is not saying, God will not hear me if sin is present, and if sin is present. Well, first John tells, the first chapter first John tells us if a man say, he has no sin.

So who’s gonna say that? God will only hear me if I have no sin. Forget that, that’s, first of all, that’s not what the Bible says. Number two, that’s not what this verse says. Number three, anybody who says that’s a liar, from first John chapter one. Who knows all the sins we’ve committed? There’s there’s thousands, hundreds of thousands of sins that we’ve committed, that we’ve gotten all about in our in our since, you know, in our life, have we not? Of course.

But this verse is not saying if the sin is there, but if you see it, if you regard it, if you’re mindful of it. That’s the catch. If I see and am aware of sin in my heart, God will not hear me. This is, of course, backed up by the New Testament in first John, which we’ll look at to close in just a minute.

But one thing this truth reminds us of is this, sometimes we look at things like answered prayer which is what this is talking about and we derive a sense of assurance. Well, I know that I’m a Christian because God answers my prayer. What about this guy?

Who sees sin in his heart, unwilling to confess it, unwilling to get it right with God. Is God hearing him? So, it is possible. It is absolutely possible for a child of God to have unanswered prayer because God refuses to hear. Now, remember, what this verse is saying is not that God can’t hear, or not that god said no but god as an act of his will refused it.

You know, we look at verses like and these are fine verses. Matthew twenty one twenty two and all things, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened. Seek and you shall find and we look at those verses in isolation but you gotta remember that that’s part of an entire teaching of scripture on prayer and one of the teachings of scriptures on prayer is not, you could just, you could disregard everything in your life and you expect god to hear you. No, the the god is the lord, not us.

We don’t have God over a barrel with prayer. Well, I asked, so you No. No. No. No. No. So, answered prayer is not a reliable way to get assurance before God Because there are times when the children of God don’t get their prayers answered, because they regard iniquity in their heart. But this verse also shows us, because it says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, it also shows us that it’s not just the outward sin that will keep God from hearing us, but the inward sin as well.

It’s the inward sin as well. Look, if you would, at one John, we’ll finish here, chapter five. Verse 14. Same truth stated differently, but the same truth. First John five fourteen, and this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.

If we ask anything according to His will. Looking at one’s own sin and ignoring it is not His will. Right? So we, as Christian, and you know as well as I what it’s like, we might have the ability to go to our prayer time and totally ignore the sin that is staring at us in our life, staring at us in the face. We might be able to push that to the back of our mind, we might be able to just blank it out and ignore it and go on our merry way and go through our prayer list and feel good about ourselves that we prayed, but I wanna tell you something, God isn’t listening.

Even if, here’s the thing, here’s the kicker, even if we feel good about the prayer, even if we go out of the prayer closet and we feel energized and we feel accomplished and we feel like we’ve done the right thing, that doesn’t matter.

If we stare at sin, we see it, we know it, we regard it, and do nothing about it, no matter how we feel about it, the Lord is not hearing us. Right?

This is one reason why one of the first things we should do when we go to prayer is confess, Lord, search me, and search our hearts, and make sure there’s nothing. And sometimes, if we’re honest, we should probably get stuck at the very beginning, right?

Know, grappling with this thing that we see that we don’t really exactly wanna get rid of, that we don’t really wanna confess and repent of, don’t really wanna get it right with God. Sometimes prayer just has to stop at that point until we’re ready to get that thing right. Would the Lord really hang some sin in my heart that I see over my head in that way?

Yeah, he would, he does. It’s that important. Yeah, he does. But man, what a good reason. You know what that means? That reminds us of the fact that our relationship to God, the Lord really really does want our relationship to God to be right as a matter of priority, such that He’s willing to just plug His ears to us unless we get that thing right. It’s important to Him.

And so it is a mechanism to get us right with Him, you see. To get those sins taken care of and to confess them so that we can go on and serve Him and live for Him. Let’s pray together.