Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Worship begins with giving thanks to the Lord, as Pastor Bill Luebkemann explains.

Bill Luebkemann: There's so much to give thanks to the Lord. When we're singing along with these songs on that great radio station in Marlton, we can be worshipping God then. That's the whole point of having the worship music on there. Put on a CD when we're alone with the Lord and worship that way, or just sing in our heart, make melodies to him.

I think worship of God begins with giving thanks to him and calling on his name. We need to know who we're giving the thanks to. It's like the old comedian said, "I'd like to thank my parents for making this job possible and my creditors for making it necessary."

Guest (Male): It's been said that we worship what we value and appreciate. It's a response. So, thanksgiving is the key element of worship. That's reflected in the heart of David and it's our subject today on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

This is a ministry of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We're about to look back at a time of celebration resulting from the Ark of God now being in Jerusalem. The ark represented God's presence in their midst, and now it's in the capital of the country, in the center of their nation. That's cause for great rejoicing and thanksgiving. To set the scene in greater detail from First Chronicles chapter 16, here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: David's psalm of thanks, as it's called here in the NIV, First Chronicles 16, beginning in verse seven. This was, just to set the stage, this was just a terrific psalm. Just to set the scene here, this was after David brought the ark back to Jerusalem or to Jerusalem for the first time, since it had never been there before.

And if you'll recall, he tried to bring the ark one time, and they did it the wrong way. They didn't follow God's instructions. They didn't check with the Lord. They didn't look in the Scriptures to find out how it was to be done. They didn't find out, well, it's supposed to be carried, and it's supposed to be carried only by the priests, and it's supposed to be carried a certain way.

They didn't bother with any of that. They did it their own way in their humanness, if you will. A guy got killed because he touched the ark and thought he was helping God by preventing the ark from falling, and God struck him down because no one was to touch it.

David was very unhappy about that, afraid of God. That was actually in chapter 13, and it said David was angry, and he was afraid of God that day, and he asked, "How can I ever bring the ark of God to me?" So he gave it to some other guy to keep in his house, let him get killed from it.

But then eventually, they caught up on the right way to do this, and a couple chapters later in 13, then in 15, they brought it into Jerusalem, and they did it the right way, and they were successful at it. If you want to know about that, you can read those chapters later on on your own.

It was a time of great rejoicing, a time of happiness. They were excited. They were making offerings, burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, consecrating themselves to God and having peace with God. He was blessing the people and giving away free food.

It was like a big picnic here, if you will, and a worship service and a barbecue all at once. Everybody was taking food home; there was a lot left over. This was the first time when he appointed regular worship leaders to minister before the ark all the time, every day on some kind of a schedule.

Probably not 24 hours a day, but on some kind of a schedule. They were just as high and as happy and as excited as you could be. David wrote this psalm of thanksgiving, which is actually repeated in the book of Psalms in several places. It's not all in one place; it's actually parts of several different psalms that he put together here.

In verse seven, it says that day David first committed to Asaph and his associates this psalm of thanks to the Lord: "Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him, tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles and the judgments he pronounced, O descendants of Israel, his servant, O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones."

This psalm here begins with kind of like a call to praise or a call to worship, the way some church services begin. In a more traditional format, you'll open up your bulletin, and it'll say "Call to Worship" or something. "Let's get ready to worship God," and it seems like that's what the beginning of this psalm is all about.

This really struck me because a few weeks ago, some other Calvary pastors were having a discussion online about what is the definition of worship. Somebody would say the definition and someone else would say, "Well, that's really nice, but where's that in the Bible?"

They would go back and forth and try to come up with what's a definition and how do you worship God and what is it that you do to worship God. You come here and we sing songs and we say we're worshipping God. We have the worship leader or the worship team and the musicians, and we're all worshipping God by singing songs.

Is that really all there is to worshipping God, is just getting together and singing songs? Are we really singing them to the Lord? All the time I've been a Christian, I've heard people say, "Well, the worship wasn't too good today." Why not? "Well, the one singer was off-key."

What's that got to do with our heart before God? Or, "The people weren't really singing." Well, what does it matter what anybody else is doing? "Well, the spirit just wasn't right there." Well, what gift of the spirit is it that you have that allows you to say whether the spirit of the other people was right? Whose place is it to say that?

I've heard so many explanations of worship and so many comments, and most of them wrong. This psalm here struck me because this is just a great explanation of ways to worship God. I'm not going to say that this is complete and covers every way, but it's pretty good. It's starting out: "Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name."

You could almost parallel this to the Lord's Prayer. Jesus said, "When you pray, pray this way." Over here, here's ways to worship God, starting out by giving thanks to the Lord. These people here had a lot to give thanks for. They had peace in their kingdom. David was their king. Saul was gone. Most of the battles were behind them; there was a few more that were going to come ahead.

They had a new king. They had brought the ark there. The ark represented God's presence in their midst. David, the pinnacle of ancient Israel was probably when Solomon was king because there was peace then all around. David was kind of just as they approached the peak, and after the reign of Solomon, it kind of went downhill after that, and they never recovered.

These people here were kind of at the zenith of the nation, as high as it got. They had a lot to be thankful for, but we all have a lot to be thankful for in our own lives. You know what you should be thanking God for. Maybe it's just the fact that you have food on the table.

People today in a lot of nations don't have enough food. They don't eat as well as we do. In America, the obesity rate is huge. When you look at the people in Africa, you can see the bones coming through the skin. The contrast is sharp. We need to be giving thanks to the Lord for everything that he's done in our lives.

For all the things we have in the physical sense, but also for our relationship with him and the fact that we know we're going to be with him for eternity in heaven. We have food, we have a house over our head—roof, that is—we have heat and probably air conditioning. Most of us have at least one car; we can get where we're going.

When I look back on my life and think the number of times I could have messed myself up, and only by God's grace I didn't, even before I got saved. I didn't get saved until after college. So there was lots of things I could have got involved in in college, and for some reason, I didn't.

I was always on the roof of the college building fooling with the ham antennas, actually. I was into a different world sort of, maybe. And maybe that was God's way of protecting me from the other things that were going on around. Because when I see how many people got fouled up on so many things, I can only give thanks to him that he saw me through all that.

I'm glad that I didn't get sucked into drugs or whatever was going around at that time. Many of us can give thanks for the same types of things. Or if we did get sucked into those things, we can give thanks that we're out of them. We can give thanks that we have a job and that we are able to provide for our families.

If we don't have a job, we can give thanks that the Lord is going to provide one. There's so much to give thanks to the Lord when we worship God here, when we gather together each Sunday to worship, but when we worship him alone. Maybe when we're driving in our car singing along with these songs on that great radio station in Marlton, we can be worshipping God then.

That's the whole point of having the worship music on there. Put on a CD when we're alone with the Lord and worship that way, or just sing in our heart, make melodies to him. I think worship of God begins with giving thanks to him and calling on his name.

Know who we're giving the thanks to. Like the old comedian said, "I'd like to thank my parents for making this job possible and my creditors for making it necessary." We call on his name and know that he's the one that made it all possible, that he made possible what's possible and necessary what's necessary.

We need to know where it came from. So many people today are thankful for all they have, but they thank the wrong person, or they don't thank anyone at all. They don't realize how blessed they are. Or maybe worse than that, they're under the delusion that they have what they have because they earned it.

Or they're entitled to it, or they worked for it, or they're so smart that they went to college and learned how to do something, and now they can make a lot of money, and look at all they have. There's the old saying: you can't hook a U-Haul to a hearse.

You can have it all here, and you can't take any of it with you. But when you have a relationship with Christ, that transcends this earth, and that lasts forever. So there's, in the physical sense and the spiritual, so much to be thankful for to the Lord. We could probably spend all day just going through the things we have to be thankful for and calling on his name.

Then it goes on to say, "Make known among the nations what he has done." In other words, don't keep it a secret. If you're a Christian and nobody can tell, you're probably missing out on something. People should be able to tell, either because you're talking about it or because you just look happy all the time.

I got saved because I saw someone that always looked happy, and I had the good fortune of telling a guy, "I wish I had what she had." She was born again, and so was the guy. This was in the Catholic Church, St. Joan's in fact, and I was sitting in the pew next to a guy that was born again.

I pointed out one of the people playing the guitar up front. Every week, she just looked so stinking happy. And I thought, what's her secret? What's she doing? Does she got something going on the side or something? I said to this guy, who happened to also be born again as she was, and he happened to know her.

He said, "I'll invite you to their prayer meeting." I said, "Does she go?" "Yep, she goes." "I'll be there." And that's where I met the Lord, in that prayer meeting there at St. Joan's, right down the street. I was there three weeks in a row. On the third week is when I accepted the Lord.

She was making known his presence in her life just by her demeanor, just by her attitude, just by the way she carried herself. Someone said, share the gospel anyway you can, and when necessary, use words. So you don't always have to use words, although you can use words and you can use deeds.

We got a great letter this week from a parent at Joyful Noise who's got cancer and not doing too well, and the staff at Joyful Noise really been trying to minister to her and bring meals over to the house and just help out in whatever way they can.

She wrote such a touching thank-you letter for how they have ministered to her, making known the Lord in the actions and in words and telling people about it. "Make known among the nations what he has done." David was the king, so it makes sense that, well, he's the king, and he hobnobs with other kings from time to time.

He keeps in touch with them, and he can share what he knows about God with the people he comes in contact in his sphere of influence. We all have some kind of a sphere of influence, and it may not be kings and presidents that are in our sphere of influence. But it could be our neighbor or our relatives or the people that we work with or hang out with.

We can make him known. If not, it's like we're keeping a secret. Why would we want to do that? Want to praise the Lord, want to worship the Lord, make him known. "Sing to him." See, singing songs is biblical. "Sing praise to him, tell of all his wonderful acts."

We should be singing the songs. When you come here and I see people holding the song sheet and not singing, hey, open up. We're not going to call your mother and tell her what a bad singer you are. Nobody ever called my mother and told her what a bad singer I was, and if they did, she would say, "Well, I already knew that."

We're singing to him. We're not singing to impress the person standing next to us or the worship leader or anything like that. We're singing to him, and we're singing praise to him. I remember one of my relatives one day when I said, "Praise the Lord," sarcastically making fun of me and saying, "Well, from your lips to his ears."

As if he didn't believe there was a Lord, or he didn't believe the Lord cared, or didn't believe the Lord was listening. I'm not sure what he meant exactly by it, except that it was not really said in the best of intentions. Or maybe he was just making fun of it.

We should be singing praise to him, and we should be telling of all his wonderful acts. Look, he has lots of them. They're written in this book, but they're also written in our heart and in our life and all around us. We can all tell about the things that he's done in our hearts and in our lives and as we've prayed and seen him answer our prayers.

Keep a journal. Write down what you pray for and write down when it gets answered. It's easy to forget all the things that we've been through and how the Lord has seen us through it. It's easy to forget. If you write it down, you can read that over. You can remember.

We're going to see that in a few more verses, he says to remember also. "Sing to him, sing praise to him, tell of all his wonderful acts, glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice." In other words, relax, enjoy his presence. Give glory to his name.

Consider how wonderful he is, how high above all the earth he is. As far as the moon is above the earth, he's even higher and farther and greater and even bigger than the universe. That video I watched about the privileged planet, it was called—Julia recommended it to me one day.

We're going to show it on a Tuesday night. But they had an animation on there where they showed the Earth, and as the camera backed out, they showed the whole solar system. And as the camera backed out farther, showed how our solar system was placed within the Milky Way galaxy.

As the camera backed out farther, it showed other galaxies. I've seen people do this before, but this one took it even further. It just kept backing out and backing out and backing out till you could see lots of galaxies, and then clusters of galaxies, while the galaxies are clustered.

It was an animation of what the whole universe might look like from outside. Where almost every dot you saw was not just a solar system or a galaxy, but it was a cluster of galaxies, billions and billions and billions of stars. To think that our God is bigger than all of that.

He can hold all that in the palm of his hand. He just says a word, and things happen. When we give glory to his holy name, we realize how high above us he is. He doesn't operate on our level, our puny little earthling level, if you will. Humanness, our humanness.

He doesn't operate that way. We need to remember that. He is high, high above us, but yet he takes the time to know us, and he wants to forgive us, and he wants to walk with us, and he wants us to walk with him, and he wants us to know him in our hearts.

How many times we drag him down to our level? If we're having a dispute with somebody, we think he's on our side. Or if we have a problem at work or what have you, we just imagine where would God—we use our own logic to think where would God fit into this, when he transcends all that.

He's above all that and beyond all that. Yet he loves us. "Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice." Rejoice because of what he's done, rejoice because of his promises, rejoice because of what he's going to do by allowing us to live in his kingdom forever.

Rejoice because he's chosen us as we've accepted him. Rejoice. "In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer," because we're not of the world. When the tribulation comes, we know something better is coming. It's not just a little better, ten percent better, twenty percent better.

It's not even a thousand percent better; it's unbelievably different. I suppose if we could see what it was like in heaven, our eyes might pop out of their sockets. They might melt or might fry our brain; we might not be able to handle the input, if you will.

We have so much to be thankful for. And the Lord is a righteous judge. If you look around in the world today at all the unrighteousness that's going on and it makes you upset and mad when you see things that are not right going on and being promoted—and now in California, there's a thing going on where they're trying to indoctrinate the kindergartners with the gay agenda.

With the reasoning the school board says—the reasoning is, we don't want them to persecute somebody who's gay. Funny thing is, they're not teaching them not to persecute people who are black or white or fat or skinny or tall. There's a lot more fat kids that get persecuted than there are gay kids that get persecuted, just because there's a lot more fat kids.

Or ugly, by the world's standards. There are so many ways the little kids pick on one another. We all know it; we were there. We either were engaged in it or we were the victim of it. But either way, there are so many ways. We're going to just elevate this one way, this one problem of persecution.

No kid should be persecuted regardless of anything. But when we see unrighteousness in the world, we need to know God is not of this world. "Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice" that we have a promise and we have his presence in our life, and that he will see us through whatever comes our way.

"Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always." There's a whole mouthful right there. Look to the Lord and his strength. So whatever the problem is in your life, whatever it is that you're facing—can't pay your bills this month? "Look to the Lord," it says.

You're sick and the doctors can't figure it out, or worse yet, they figured it out and it's not good? "Look to the Lord." You say, "I hope the doctor can fix this." Look to the Lord for that. When everything breaks at once, look to the Lord. We get so wrapped up in ourselves sometimes.

I wasn't looking at the Lord when I was in a traffic jam on I-95 the other day and my head—whatever it's called—the head gasket, when the head gasket blew out. My temperature got real hot and I heard a bang under the hood, and the temperature got real hot. It was rush hour.

I was just thinking, where do all these people come from? Why are they all out here at the same time I'm here? Why don't they go away so I can drive home? I had to stop and get dinner and wait for the rush hour to be over so I could get myself home. I was not looking at the Lord, but I should have been.

Look to the Lord and his strength. I got off the bridge and I was going to get on I-95 to go down to the airport, and I observed it was backed up. No problem. I know my way around South Philly. I'll just go down past the sports stadiums. Why would I ever think a Phillies game wouldn't be letting out at that precise moment?

People, just millions of them, crossing the street right in the middle of the block. I saw one guy almost get himself killed. A car must have been going forty miles an hour, and he just figured, well, they'll step on their brakes. And they did, but it was close.

Look to the Lord and his strength. When you're sitting with the doctor and he tells you what they're going to do to you with their sharp, pointy objects, look to the Lord and his strength. He's got the strength; you don't. He's God; you got to know where to get it from.

If you say, "I'm going to get myself through it," it won't happen. If you say, "The Lord will see me through it," then it will happen. Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always. Not just when we have a problem. "Oh yeah, I sought the Lord's face last year when I had a problem, and I'll seek him again next year when something else melts down."

No, seek his face always. Because then you'll be prepared when these things happen. I always take my Bible and read the same verse—I'll tell you what it is—Isaiah 41:10: "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

I take my Bible with me every year when I go to the urologist and I read this verse over and over again, and I try to remind myself that God is there holding me by the right hand. Somebody gave me that verse a long time ago when I was going to have my wisdom teeth out, and I took my Bible with me then. I remember God is with me and he'll see me through this. But we don't want to just seek him when those things happen. We want to seek him always.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of First Chronicles. If you'd like to hear this message again, you have several options. Visit our website at ccmarlton.org, download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find podcasts.

If you've been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton where Bill serves as pastor, we'd love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at ten. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also livestream from home when you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

For more information, go to ccmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon. Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're learning from this series. You can easily email us at our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662.

There's more to come from Bill's study of First Chronicles, and we'll have that for you next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.