Author: timritanickel@gmail.com

Psalm 97:12 Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

The Lord generously grants deliverance, light and gladness. Our free reception by faith responds by rejoicing and giving thanks. When we hear the Gospel our spirit rejoices in the Lord and naturally gives thanks every time we remember the holiness of the Lord given us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Faith receives the tangible gift of forgiveness, life and salvation.

Our lives are changed from sorrow, death, and despair to powerful hope, joy and life. Through Baptism, Communion, and faith in the Gospel we go from the depths to the heights, from darkness to light. Then our lives are transformed into continual rejoicing in the Lord and daily giving thanks. That is what our life looks like all the time. We need regular reminders of grace and love, because life in this world is hard and gets us down. So we go to church weekly and repent daily.

Our joy is in the Lord, not in the things of the world nor even in ourselves. The joy of the Lord is in us, and nothing and no one can take that away. Expressing that joy and thanks reinforces the truth and reality of God’s love, joy and peace.

Psalm 97:6, 8 The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory….Zion heard, and was glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord.

The sun, moon, sky, stars and planets reveal and shout out the righteousness of the Creator God. There is a beautiful and glorious God who demands holiness of us. We humans are answerable to this God. We see and we hear, and we are filled with gladness and joy. We also rejoice because His judgments against our Sin is just and fair, and because He has judged our enemies, sin, death, and the devil.

When we see the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God and hear the Good News of the saving Gospel, we respond with gladness and joy. Our lives are filled with joy and rejoicing after we hear the gospel weekly and when we see His mercies new every morning. Sin, guilt and all evil is judged and finished by Jesus Christ. We are free to enjoy God’s forgiveness, mercy, grace, love and life. All doubt, fear, guilt, and worry are judged, gone forever. We glory in the cross of Christ.

In the hearing of the Gospel of Creation and Redemption faith, hope, and love takes over and rules our lives every day. We see, hear and rejoice always.

Psalm 97:1 The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.

Because it is the Lord who reigns over the universe, all the earth rejoices. The islands and coastlands and all far off places are glad because the Lord God is in charge. He rules everything that is created and especially His people whom He has redeemed. He is in control of our lives for our good, from birth to eternity. He exercises His almighty, creative power over the earth for our good, for He is good, kind, and merciful forever.

He, who is above all, is our God. Therefore, with the created universe, we rejoice and are glad. “Everything that has breath praises the Lord.” It is not so much a stretch to believe that our Creator God is all-powerful. Just look at nature. But it does stretch our faith to believe that He uses His power for our good, That He loves us unconditionally and eternally is a little more challenging for us to believe. But by faith we “rejoice in the Lord always.”

It is indeed awful to experience the suffering of sin, and it is horrible to see the suffering and death of Christ for our sin. But underneath it all, we see the joy of salvation. Hebrews 12:2: “Looking to Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” “The joy” was our forgiveness, life, salvation, and resurrection to life. Therefore, we rejoice, along with all Creation, looking for Redemption.

Psalm 96:7-9 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, all the earth.

The Lord is great. The Lord is good. And He is an extremely generous giver. In Christ, God has richly blessed us with all good things, including forgiveness, life and salvation. In response, we receive with thanks, believe with strength, and give all glory, praise, honor, credit, worth, and all of ourself to the Lord.

All of our life and our relationship with God can be defined and described as receiving and giving. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” says Jesus. We spend our lives, our thoughts, our words, our actions in giving glory to God. Everything we say and do gives glory to the Lord. Even if we would give God everything we can it would still never match up to what He has given us. The riches of His glory in Christ Jesus are so great.

We worship in the beauty of holiness by faith in Jesus’ righteousness, even though we are incapable of even imagining how beautiful God’s holiness really is.

Psalm96:1-3 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.

Because “the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised, and believed above all,” we respond with singing, blessing and telling. Every time, every day, we sing a new song, not necessarily new to us nor new to God, but it is from a heart that has been refreshed and made new by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. Singing is to the Lord, not a performance to others. Although we feel better, it is not to make us feel good. Instead, singing blesses the Lord and makes Him feel better, as if He needed it. So we sing praises in the congregation of believers weekly and in private day by day, “making melody in our hearts to the Lord.”

In addition, we tell His salvation daily in our living, we declare His glory among a godless generation, and we support the preaching of the wonderful gospel to all people. The Good News is so wonderful we cannot help but pray for others to know the same great salvation.

Psalm 95:8, 10 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness….Forty years long I was grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.

Even after the Lord had shown His mighty power and great love for His people in the deliverance of the Exodus, they still hardened their heart with complaining and unbelief. But God still provided water and food for them in the desert. However, God was still grieved with them for forty years because of their hard heart of unbelief. They made a mistake in their perception of God and their relationship to Him. They did not know the Lord, His character, and His ways.

”These things were written for our learning.” In spite of the goodness of God and our deliverance by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we still complain and harden our heart. Life is not as good as we want it. We also are mistaken in our perception of God’s ways, for they are higher than ours. There are times when our faith is weakened and our relationship with God is strained. But the Lord knows us, forgives us, and welcomes us into His loving arms all the time.

Psalm 96:6 O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our maker.

Our response to the awesome Creation and Redemption of the Lord our Maker is to worship Him in spirit and truth at all times. Included in our life of worship is a worship life of daily private worship and weekly public worship. Our worship life feeds and informs our life of worship.

We worship God as our Creator and Redeemer by bowing down and kneeling before Him. We come before the Lord our Maker in the humble posture of submission to His Lordship, at least in our minds. We acknowledge Him to be our God in every circumstance of life, knowing that His will is good, and believing that He will use His power to show mercy and love. We don’t bow down and kneel just because He is stronger than we, but because He is gracious, kind, loving, and merciful. Therefore, our response is willing submission to a good God.

Psalm 95:1-2 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.

Songs, shouts, gratitude, and praise erupt from those gathered to worship the Lord. While Scriptures gives examples of appropriate times of stillness and silence in God’s presence, it also gives many examples of raucous worship. Both peaceful silence and enthusiastic praise are appropriate expressions of worship to our great God. This response is because the Lord is a great God and a great King.

Noise is a helpful response to the great God who brings Good News of great Joy. It reminds us of the goodness and mercy of the great God who loved us so much He gave His only Son. Exuberant worship, along with peaceful stillness, makes us feel better, for with it we remember the extravagant love of a great God. A joyful noise lifts the spirit.

Psalm 94:18-19 When I said, My foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up. In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.

Because of my sin and sin in the world around me, I make mistakes (my foot slips), I sin against God’s Law and find myself in trouble. Sins and errors are bound to happen with sinners, but the mercy of the Lord holds me up, keeps me from falling, and puts my feet back on the right path. Thank God for His mercy and love, which is stronger than sin and death.

It has been said that a person has one hundred thousand thoughts go through his head every day. Surely, out of that many thoughts some will be sinful, even harmful. But the Lord is present with mercy, and some of those flowing thoughts will be good and right, for they come from the Lord. The Spirit uses some thoughts to comfort me. These delight my soul, and my response is to delight in Him. This cycle defines our life: mistakes, mercy, comfort, and the delight that results. Thus, “the joy of the Lord is my strength.”

Psalm 92:13-14 Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bring forth fruit in old age: they shall be fat and flourishing.

Through faith in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit plants us in the house of the Lord, that is, the Spirit enters our bodies and dwells there with His Presence. The body houses the Spirit of God which causes us to flourish and bring forth fruit. Flourishing is the believer’s response to the indwelling Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc,) is worked in by the Spirit and then worked out in our lives. The pleasant outcome is a fruitful flourishing of God’s beautiful life in us and through us. This comes about through faith in the gospel which plants us firmly in Him. We abide in Christ and so bear much fruit. Christ is the vine and we are the branches. We plant ourselves in Him by hearing the Word weekly and daily.