Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 138, a Psalm of David. I will praise thee of my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cry, thou answerest me and strengthenest me with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord, when they hear the word.

Words of thy mouth. Yay, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord. For great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet have he respect unto the lowly. But the proud he knoweth a far off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies. Thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercies, O Lord, and endureth forever.

Forsake not the works of thine own hands. Let us pray. Father, we come before you today as the work of your hand, not our own work, but rather your work. We thank you, Lord God, for sovereignly calling us to have salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you for calling us to worship you today. And as part of that worship, to consider, contemplate, meditate, and study your word and to let that word do its work in our hearts as your Holy Spirit wields that sword that slices in two but also heals us and brings us to a further wholeness in the understanding of the word of our king the Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray Lord God for your spirit to do its work now that we may understand the scriptures but more importantly that we may apply it with understanding and may praise your holy name for it and for all things. To that end we pray Lord God your blessing upon us now in Jesus name we ask him for the sake of his kingdom. Amen. Please be seated.

We convene together on the Lord’s day in the middle of the final decade of the 20th century. Five years ago, at the beginning of the 1990s, at the end of 1989, and just before the beginning of 1990, I preached on this same psalm and the same basic topic, which is my Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. We stood at the beginning of a new decade then that would lead us into the 21st century. We stand now in the middle of that decade and that decade is coming to a close in five years, and with it will close the second millennium of the Christian church.

The church reorganized, revivified, and in a more mature sense with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll enter the seventh millennia here in five years of created history, if our reckoning of time is correct. We stood at the beginning of the 1990s in this church five years ago and spoke of this sermon, and we did so with great confidence that God would perfect that which concerneth us individually as well as corporately.

I think the sense is there in this text as well as in the rest of scriptures. Within four months, this church was the host church for the 10th annual Christian Reconstruction Conference of the Pacific Northwest. We had, I believe, somewhere between 400 and 450 people on a Friday evening that came out to hear Reverend R.J. Rushdoony and other speakers, Otto Scott, John Lofton. And our church service that Easter Sunday, which was the weekend we held the reconstruction conference, was packed.

I remember to this day and will the rest of my life standing in one of the front rows as we worship God that morning. And there was a number of voices, a great multitude raising up praises to God on that Easter Sunday. R.J. Rushdoony preached and the Fudges, I’m sure, remember that day because one of their children was baptized by Reverend Rushdoony on that day. And we began then, of course. There was much rejoicing.

This was the culmination of nearly a decade of the growth of Reformation Covenant Church. And yet I didn’t find out until last year that very weekend the seeds of the greatest trial of Reformation Covenant Church were already being sown through what I believe to be improper and unbiblical speech. That didn’t come out for years later. That test and trial continued into much of this decade for this church.

We stand at the end of the midpoint of this decade alive, strengthened, vivified, with a deeper understanding of many of the truths of this particular text than we did before. I know that as I meditated on this text for the last two or three weeks, when David writes that when he cried to God, God answered him and he strengthened him with strength in his soul, I know that more fully now, not simply as an intellectual truth or not with the minor trials that God had taken me through up to 1990 and into this decade.

I know that there have been times in my life and undoubtedly probably times in many of your lives as well when you have had to cry out to God for whatever reason, whatever set of external circumstances God has sovereignly brought into your life. You have had to cry out and he strengthens you and strengthen your soul. He doesn’t necessarily immediately change the external circumstances. It doesn’t say that he changed things.

It says in verse three that he strengthened me with strength in my soul—with a knowledge of his presence, with the knowledge of his loving hand guiding and directing us and perfecting all things that concern us.

Well, the 1990s have contained trials for Reformation Covenant Church, but they’ve also contained a set of directions that was developed in the context of those trials. We met in 1991. Essentially, we knew there were some things that were happening. But at the end of 1991, the officers of Reformation Covenant Church—four men and their wives—met in Manzanita and traced out a course that we believed God would have us walk down for the next couple of years.

You remember that if you were here then—that we asked for suggestions from the congregation and input as we went to that meeting to consider the future of Reformation Covenant Church. And there were excellent suggestions, some of which will probably come to fruition this year.

There was a recommendation by John Thomas relative to outreach, video coffees, and other ways of exposing people in the extended communities that we live in to the truths of Christian Reconstruction and a full-blown reformational theology. There were talks of evangelism that we got from Dan Prenis. These are things that we’re probably moving into with some degree of intensity this coming year.

But it was the belief of the officers—a united belief, I might say—that what we essentially should do for the next couple of years was to build the infrastructure and let God mature us institutionally in preparation for a more extensive outreach into the communities in which we live.

So part of that was the addition, almost immediately, of a second and then a third elder. And in the providence of God, we give him thanks for that. That third elder became the pastor of Christ the Sovereign Covenant Church. And that was a very important step for Reformation Covenant Church—adding a second elder. That was essentially much of the culmination of the four years—it had taken about three and a half or so years after I had gone full-time in calling at this church as a pastor.

It was the culmination of much study and evaluation. We didn’t want to act like every other church acted in the selection of elders, whether that church called itself evangelical or reformed, because we knew the great difficulties and in a very real sense the great apostasy that much of the church in America has gone through for the last 50 or 100 years. And so it was necessary to restudy that issue based on the scriptures and to let God’s work do that perfecting that he speaks of in Psalm 138.

We moved ahead in that. The evaluation was sound. The evaluation worked perfectly for what it was intended to accomplish by God. Some men were demonstrated as being called to office. Others were demonstrated as not being called to office. And still others were demonstrated as those who desired office but were totally unfit.

And so that process had its culmination. God perfected that which concerned us institutionally. Much of these last two or three years has been the fulfilling by the officers of this church of what we believed the building of the infrastructure required in terms of the maturation of us institutionally.

It took us a decade—ten years—to begin the writing of a church constitution. Why? Well, because we knew that most churches immediately wrote constitutions because they wanted tax-exempt status from the IRS. That’s why churches start up and immediately get a constitution in place. They file for their not-for-profit 501(c)(3) status, etc. And we didn’t have any desire to do any of that. We desired to understand what the maturation of an organism into an institution was according to God’s word.

Now this last year—and I didn’t stress it much at the time—but we see the maturation of the organism of the new church in many ways as well. I would say that there is some degree of correlation, limited of course, between the Jerusalem council and our goal for developing a constitution for Reformation Covenant Church—to solidify in writing those elements of God’s word as they give direction to us in terms of institutional maturation.

We developed a set of goals after the conference at the planning session at Manzanita. We reported back to this congregation for most of two years on the progress toward those goals. Let me just remind you of some of them in case you’ve forgotten.

One, as I said, was a sense of increased covenantal union with the extended body of Jesus Christ. And so we’ve developed a series of tracks toward institutional Catholicity—that’s what we talked about it as—part of the developing of the infrastructure at Reformation Covenant Church and then working with other churches in the area. There were four elements of this.

There was an ongoing consideration of actual denominations that has proceeded apace. We’ve investigated denominations that have formed and by now have left, and some that have formed and are still struggling to remain in existence, and other denominations that have been here for a long time. That process continued even into the fall of this year with Reverend Hayes Maynard and myself all attending the Northwest Presbyterian meeting of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church—reminding us of some of the reasons why we’re not in a denomination yet and yet also seeking denominational coordination with other churches to be interdependent instead of independent.

The second element of this four-track toward institutional Catholicity was growing our own denomination. By that we meant establishing covenants between other churches. And indeed that process continues with the writing of a couple of draft covenants between us and CSCC that is finding its way toward maturation as well. And so we’ve continued on that course.

Part of that was the formalization of the governmental infrastructure of Reformation Covenant Church. If you’re seeking covenantal union with other bodies in obedience to our Savior’s command to grow from organic unity that he gives us in the spirit into institutional unity as defined not by existing structures but as defined by the scriptures, then you have to identify who you are to other groups.

Additionally, development of the constitutional material of Reformation Covenant Church gave the members of this congregation, the officers, and the prayer group leaders a tremendous opportunity to study God’s word as it applies to each of the elements that are contained in our constitution—to cause us to mature. God perfecting us, what concerns us as a body institutionally, based on his word, taking the principles and laws of that word, the truth of that word, and putting it into written format relative to this church.

And then finally, we also talked about increased covenant of union with the extended body of Christ in the greater Portland area. And while we didn’t know what that meant at Manzanita and early on in this process, or the next year as it developed, we now know that much of what God had in plan for us was a growing organic unity between ourselves and churches such as Independent Reformed Church in Salem.

God has perfected that which concerns us in many of those areas. We now have the Oregon Alliance of Reformed Churches, etc. Let me just kick off—and I’ll try not to spend more time on these things. Other things that we talked about at the time that were necessary to do would be the preparation of various pieces of introductory literature relative to Reformation Covenant Church that people might visit.

And again, we’ve accomplished that in the last three years. Following up biblical counseling training—and now all three of us, myself, Deacon Garrett, and Reverend Maynard, have had much training relative to biblical counseling. That happened a couple of years ago, and we’ve applied that.

A visitation of members was also another thing that we thought was important to get solidly in place—to prepare for possible growth or what the next ministry God would have us called to do. And now my schedule, as of this last couple of months, has a day and a half—Wednesday all day, Saturday morning—set apart for family visitation, and that would include member visitation as well if that becomes required. And so that’s now become part of the process of my week.

There are other matters I could talk about—world missions, for instance, etc. In any event, we developed these scenarios, and we didn’t know that the furnace in which God would anneal some of these things biblically in our maturation as a church would be one filled with trials and tribulations. But indeed it was. And so it probably took longer than we would have hoped to accomplish these things.

And yet in the providence of God, there were other important matters going on as well.

Now we’re in a new phase, and I give this talk now at the beginning of 1995 because now most of that stuff is now either completed or in a wrap-up process. We’ve got a very little bit of the constitution left. We’ll have to address that probably in February. But essentially, those tasks are all wrapped up, and now we’re moving into a new phase of what we believe God would have us do and mature institutionally as relative to the next couple of years.

That is a phase that is more outward-oriented. The preparation of infrastructure in the church was to the end that we could then take that message out—have small group studies, have conferences, develop, continue to develop the political action we have relative toward moving toward a Christian political party, etc.

And so we’re now entering into a new phase, after three years roughly of infrastructure building. The overlap now is into the phase of taking that message out again and challenging the extended communities in which we live—the greater Portland area and Oregon—with the truth of God’s word. So that’s what we’re involved with now, and I want to talk about that probably a little more next week.

This week I want to turn to Psalm 138. Think through five basic truths that it teaches to us to help us to lose those truths, to evaluate our past as a church and individually as well. And also, those five truths will be important for helping us to see the direction that God would take us into the last half of this decade as we approach the 21st century.

The great truth in which all of this is put—in the context of which should be of great comfort to you, great joy to you, great consolation—is the promise that God places at the end of Psalm 138. After assuring us that he magnifies his word, his faithfulness above his name, the promise in that word is that he shall perfect that which concerneth me.

The psalmist writes, “And if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you have bowed the knee to a sovereign God, you can understand that. You can claim it, so to speak. You can take it into your heart and give it to have it give you a stability that will get you through whatever trials and tribulations lies ahead in your life individually or in this church’s life corporately as well.

I want to apply this to Reformation Covenant Church. But it is also very important to see that the primary application of the psalm is an individual one. David doesn’t say our God will perfect that which concerns us. He says my God will perfect that which concerneth me.

I reread a chapter from R.J. Rushdoony’s work on the foundations of social order. Is that what it is, Greg? Greg reminded me there’s a chapter in there on the procession of the Holy Ghost. And as you know, there are various elements of different Christian communities that are looking at Eastern Orthodoxy, and a very important chapter that R.J. Rushdoony wrote in that great work.

One of the things he mentioned is that the development of the Nicene Creed was originally written as “we believe this,” and it was changed to “I affirm this” or “I believe that”—that the great creeds make it personal to the person who’s confessing the faith. “I believe these things.” And so it’s very important as well to take this great truth of Psalm 138 and apply it to yourself individually in the five areas that I’m suggesting we can see laid out for us in this psalm.

The five things I want to talk about this week and next week are: First of all, the centrality of praising God. The centrality of praising God. This is the most important corrective probably that we could take out of this psalm, and it is a corrective that needs to be applied again and again and again.

As I’ve said so many times, in America we’re all born and bred good humanists. What we love are people. What we love is ourselves and then others because they’re like us. And what we hate because of that love is a sovereign God. Now that’s who we are in our natural man. And we need to hear again and again and again that the Christian faith is not about theism as opposed to humanism.

Now you know, if you’ve taken the study “Growing Kids God’s Way,” that I’m stepping on some toes already. I’ll get to that in a minute. But it’s very important that this first point—the centrality of praising God—is seen as a very important corrective to apply to ourselves again and again.

Secondly, this psalm talks about the greatness of God’s word. David said, after he says “I’ll praise God if my whole heart”—the centrality of praising him—he goes on to say that you have magnified your word above your name. An amazing assertion that translators hate. And so translators change that verse regularly, not because of any exegetical reasons but because of theological reasons. They do not believe the assertion that is contained in that part of the scriptures. The greatness of God’s word.

Third, the need to speak God’s word to kings. Kings will praise God. It tells us, “All the kings of the earth, not some of them, all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Not when Jesus comes back throwing atomic bombs. Not when they hear free market explanations of the legitimacy of this or that measure. Not when kings hear the logic of a particular proposal.”

None of those things. God says he works through his word. The words of his mouth is what causes kings—kings representing nations—to conversion. And so we have a tremendous need and requirement in our lives individually and corporately to speak God’s word to kings. We do not have a requirement to convert all the civil magistrates. We do not have a requirement to get all Christian laws passed.

Those things shall happen over time. Our requirement is to speak God’s word to kings in the civil arena and rulers of the church arena and rulers in every other sphere as well.

Fourth, the deadliness of pride is pointed out. And I mentioned that at the beginning of this decade, I preached on Psalm 138 and God took us to some real heights by the spring of 1990. But then he took us through some real trials, and this was the source of those trials. After I preached on Psalm 138, the last Sunday in the ’80s and the first Sunday in the ’90s, I began a series of sermons going through the seven deadly sins, and I began with three or four sermons on pride.

And you know, that sermon had an effect on this church that you wouldn’t believe. Deacon Garrett has made me see that and understand that’s what happened. The word went out and it cut and it brought some healing and it brought some division. It did a work in this church, and if there is one great thing that will get in our way in accomplishing what we’re going to accomplish as a church or individually, it is pride.

What does David say? He says, “The Lord is high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud, he knoweth a far off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies. Thy right hand shall save me.”

People are being killed in this last verse. People are being judged and destroyed. Who are they? They’re the ones who think of themselves as proud and lifted up. The proud he knoweth a far off. He turns his back on them. And more than that, he judges them. And if you don’t want this next year to feel God’s word whipping through you—not to heal you, but to separate you from Christian brethren and to separate you from the body of Christ—then leave pride as you leave this place of worship today.

And then finally, the assurance of God’s maturation of us. I believe, of course, in the first place individually, but I believe it also refers to us corporately as well.

Let’s begin to work through some of these things. And we need to understand this psalm before we can apply anything from the scriptures. We’ve got to understand what it says. So let’s spend a little time on each of these five points, making some application as we go along, but mostly trying to understand what is being said.

David begins this psalm at the beginning place of everything that we do and say. He begins this psalm really the same place the Westminster Longer and Shorter Catechisms begin—with the glory of God, our chief purpose. “I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.”

David doesn’t begin with intercession. He doesn’t begin with looking at people. He begins with focusing on the person of God and praising him. I mentioned “Growing Kids God’s Way.” I thank God for that study. I want to put this in—and I don’t want to be, I want to be very careful what I say here. And I thank God to whatever degree it has benefited you in the context of your Christian walk relative to your wife or to your children.

Much of the application I think is sound and has already been helpful in my life as well, and we’re just three or four weeks into it. But understand something here: when he talks in that book about Christian faith being theism instead of humanism. Now, if you’re Vantillian, if you’ve been with us very long and you understand the implications of the one and the many, you already see a problem with that, I hope.

You see that to pit the individual versus the group is always not a good thing because God is one and many. But the critical element here—and I and I pray to God that this is simply a sin of omission, that he simply has forgotten to say it—but he forgets to say it over and over. I’m not, you know, I hate to even, you know, mention it, but it’s important that we—half this church has gone through this study—and I want you to understand one of my concerns so that this doesn’t affect your thinking, or whatever indeed it has.

You move your thinking back to a proper perspective. What the scriptures talk about is biblical theism, not theism or humanism. In the providence of God, Richard printed the first question—the, I guess, the third or fourth question—of the Heidelberg Catechism. “What does God require of us?” We read in the material from “Growing Kids God’s Way” that we want to teach our kids to be other-oriented, that the whole point of the Christian faith is it is other-oriented as opposed to every other faith, which is me-oriented.

That isn’t true. A President Clinton can feel the pain of people and I believe he really does because he is other-oriented. Probably learned it from his Southern Baptist roots, but he didn’t learn it biblically because he doesn’t apply the discernments and judgments of God’s word to how you meet people’s difficulties. You see, everybody makes judgments and evaluations. The question is: are they going to be righteous or unrighteous?

And if our goal in life is to serve other people ultimately, we are going to use unrighteous judgments again and again and again. Our goal in life is to glorify God.

Yeah, we know that, Dennis. But it’s important that my kids learn to serve other people. Well, it is important they learn to serve other people. Kids do come out of the womb completely selfish. There’s no doubt about that. And so, as I said, the application of this truth of serving others is a good one. But please understand that the first and great commandment is printed in the announcements today, as found in the Heidelberg Catechism, is not to love your neighbor.

The first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Jesus says there’s a second like unto it—not more important than it, of secondary importance. It’s very important to see: if we really love God, it’s a great test for us. It does drive us to serve others. But it is like unto it. It is the second commandment, a lesser commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself.

That’s interesting. Amazing too, isn’t it? He doesn’t say to love your neighbor with the abandonment of yourself. He says to love your neighbor as yourself. It assumes the love of self. But there is a proper way in which we take care of ourselves as well. You could apply other-orientedness and completely decapitate your own family, or lay your family down and kill it, in sense of being able to feed and nourish it through serving others.

Now, if that glorifies God, great. But I’m, that is the primary thing we’ve got to get in our minds.

You know, Arminianism is a heresy. We should be praying that God would eliminate, would judge the heresy of Arminianism in the church, and over the next decade begin a purge of the church of Arminianism and its teachings. Now, a lot of people are just confused. They’ve heard bad teaching. But you know, Arminianism—I don’t think—produces humanism. I think humanism produces Arminianism.

If you want the well-being of other people, if that’s your primary goal in life and you’re a person too, then you’re going to turn into an Arminian. You don’t want to think of a sovereign God ordaining people to hell. It is highly offensive to a humanist. And so you become an Arminian. Of course, it’s illogical as can be. I mean, you still end up with the same thing. God could have helped, etc. But see, I think that the reason I’m saying this is that so much evil—I don’t think that’s too strong a word—has come into the church in America and across the world because of an other-orientedness instead of a God-orientedness.

It has got to be the glory of God that is our primary purpose and aim in life. Now that will involve, of course, serving others as defined by his word biblically. Okay? And if you say you love God and are glorifying him and hate your brother, the scriptures say you’re a liar. You’re not telling the truth. And that’s why it’s important to be in the context of community, because you’re going to find out that you don’t really love your neighbor as you thought you did, which means you don’t really love God as you thought you did.

But I’m stressing this because it is so very important. There are many religions around in the world today. Humanism is one of them. That seeks to serve other people. Now, we could argue they’re doing it for prideful reasons, etc. That may well be, but the assertion is an other-orientedness, and the actions actually are in terms of helping other people. But those tender mercies or tender compassions of the wicked are cruel. They don’t help anybody.

So we want to place at the beginning of our year an understanding of who we are relative to seeking the glory of God in all that we do and say. We want to look back at this last year and at the first half of this decade individually and institutionally and say: Did we as a church seek to glorify God in spite of the difficulties? And did you as a person seek to glorify God?

Now that is one of the first great truths.

Now, to praise—here, just a couple of explanations of the text. When David says he’ll praise you with my whole heart, what David is talking about is acknowledging who God is. There are various words used for praise in the scriptures. This particular one means to acknowledge. Okay? It’s the same word that can be used in terms of confession of sin. To confess your sins means to agree with God, to acknowledge that what you’ve done is sinful, and to praise God is to acknowledge him and how he has manifested himself to mankind.

David goes on to cite historical acts of God toward him and toward other people. And through these historical acts, David is looking behind each of those and acknowledging God as sovereign in the affairs of man. And so to praise God is to acknowledge sovereignty, to agree that God is the divine one who has ordained whatsoever comes to pass.

And in that things coming to pass, we see manifested elements of the person of God. And we praise him, acknowledging, indeed, Lord God, you have been faithful. Indeed, Lord God, as a church, what we went through should have killed us in the eyes of men. And there were many predictions to that end. And God, not only did you get us through this, you used this to chastise us. You used this to bring us to a place of further love and service to you and acknowledgement of our own sinful weakness.

You vivify us, Lord God, through your chastings. And you might have had a difficult time in your life this last week, month, year, decade. And if you’ve applied the biblical truths of God’s word to it, and the spirit has moved in your life, you know that those very things are ones that have increased your faithfulness to God. And you acknowledge that when you pray, “Is God. You come together to give him praise for who he is and that demonstration of who he is found out by his actions in your lives.

David says that he praises God with his whole heart. Not just externally with his lips, but with his whole heart, all of his being. And that includes your body. You know, the danger is external formalism. Yeah. The danger is also a heart pietism that doesn’t find expression in the limbs of your body. And that’s why in this church we try to praise God with our whole heart, our whole person, with our mind and understanding.

Have you understood why we worship as we do in this church? Have you grown in your understanding of that this last year or this last five years? Well, if you haven’t, why haven’t you? We provided material to you explicitly to draw those things out, and maybe we haven’t made them available as quickly as we could have, but it’s one of the things we did this last year in preparation of infrastructure, so to speak—material to explain why we worship so that you can praise God with your whole heart.

So you can take those words of scripture, how they regulate worship, bring them into your understanding of what we do, and praise God with your whole heart and being. We’ve reformed ourselves the last couple of years to raise our hands now, to involve our bodies more, so that our whole person is involved in praising God. That’s biblical. I don’t know churches—Reformed churches that do this.

I don’t know why they don’t because the scriptures say that’s what you do. The scriptures have various places where it talks about raising your hands in worship. Feels stupid to us. Probably still feels stupid to you. But reform yourselves to the glory of God and praise him with your whole heart.

Now he does, he says that he praises God before the gods—”will I sing praise to you.” What does he mean by gods? Well, this could be rulers frequently. Gods is used that way in the Old Testament. This particular word, Elohim, it means strong one or strong ones. You know, Elijah—my boy’s name is a contraction of Elohim and Yahweh. So “my strong one is the covenant God of Israel.” Joel is the same thing except reversed around—the book of Joel. “Yahweh Elohim, the covenant God of Israel is my strong one. He’s my defender and preserver,” etc.

And so this word means strong one, and it can mean rulers. And certainly David had opportunity to speak God’s word to kings and to come together with rulers to praise God. But another possible translation is angels. This is what Calvin believes this word means. Let me just read a couple of quotes. He says: “This noun Elohim sometimes means angels and sometimes kings and either meaning will suffice with the passage before us. The praise David speaks of is that which is of a public kind. The solemn assembly is so to speak a heavenly theater graced by the presence of attending angels. And one reason why the cherubim overshadowed the ark of the covenant was to let God’s people know that the angels are present when they are come to worship in the sanctuary.”

So Calvin says, as Hebrews does, that when we come together to worship God, we come together not in the context of a few little people scattered in the pews. We come into the worship room of God. We come with the heavenly assembly, with the church—in a, in some way mystically—with the church triumphant in heaven. And I’ve talked about this before, but you know, people that we love who have died in the Lord, they’re here with us worshiping God somehow as a spiritual presence. And we come united with the church militant here on earth, and we come with the holy angels, a panoply of angels, a great festival of angels is what the Hebrew text says.

We come together to worship God. And Calvin said that’s one of the reasons why you had angel wings on the ark of the covenant was to remind the people: you come in to worship God, you’re in there with angels. Okay.

Calvin went on to say: “I prefer the former sense, angels, and this because believers in drawing near to God are withdrawn from the world and rise to heaven in the enjoyment of fellowship with angels. So that we find Paul enforcing his address to the Corinthians upon the necessity of decency and order by requiring them to show some respect at least in their public religious assemblies to the angels—1 Corinthians 11:10. The same thing was represented by God long before under the figure of the cherubim, thus giving his people a visible pledge of his presence.”

I wore a tie today, a meaningful tie. Little example—tie. I got an angel on here on my tie today. And I got a movie camera—the angels are watching. Okay, you know, you know, you radicals back in the ’60s—”the whole world is watching.” The whole angelic host is watching as we come to praise God, to acknowledge his sovereignty, to love him and respond to him in great gratitude for what he’s accomplished and for just who he is.

We know that only through his actions toward us. And that’s what David tells us of here. We come together to praise God before the gods. And we should come together with the knowledge of their presence and with a sobriety to our thoughts and actions based upon that knowledge that they’re watching us. Calvin says that’s why God said you got to be careful in public worship services so you don’t offend those angels that are with you.

Now that’s part of developing and maturing an understanding of worship. We’ve got, I don’t know, 20, 25 tapes on why we worship the way we do. And if you think that this worship service is strange or a little different or odd and you don’t like it, listen to those tapes first of all. Read the materials on why we worship the way we do. Listen to the tapes. Try to reform yourself relative to coming here to praise God first and foremost.

We don’t come to fellowship. We begin the day with the praise of God. And so even if we essentially start having Sabbath school classes, we still come together to worship God on this day. That’s the center of what we do—to give God glory, not other-oriented, God-oriented. Okay?

And that forms the model for all of our lives. Evaluate yourself. What do you think of the Sabbath? How do you respond to Christian worship, the worship of this church? Are you growing in your praise before God with your whole heart, with your understanding, with your body, with your mind, with your spirit and with your emotions as well? Is that growing? Have you gone downhill? Have you gone uphill? Make an evaluation.

That’s what we do on the Lord’s day—is be evaluated by God’s word. And then pledge yourself to understand what it is. Maybe we’re doing things wrong in this church. You know, I’m not too likely to get into an extended conversation about changing things with somebody who doesn’t understand why we are where we are. I want you to understand that first. Then we can dialogue in terms of God’s word about alterations to the worship service. You understand what I’m saying?

So start with your new year as we move toward the 21st century—a renewed pledge to root out Christian humanism, rather, in your life and move to a position of Christian theism.

Now that leads very clearly. Well, let me one other thing before we leave this. I may not even get past this today. One other thing David says—he’ll praise him before the gods. He’ll praise him with his whole heart and he’ll sing praises to thee. Yeah, they shall sing. Oh, oh boy, my verses mixed up.

Verse two: “I’ll worship toward thy holy temple. Putting this in corporate sense, although it extends to the life. Praise thy name. What? For thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”

Let’s talk about loving kindness and truth before we get to that last phrase. David says the essence of his praise for God, his acknowledgement of God, involves two things. His loving kindness, that can be translated mercy. It’s that word has said—what are the three things required of man? “To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.” To love mercy.

Mercy has the strong connotation in the scriptures of covenantal faithfulness. Okay? God has loving kindness particularly toward his covenant people. So that’s the first thing that David praises God for. And the second is for his truth. The word truth means faithfulness. The theological wordbook of the Old Testament says that underlying this word truth is the sense of certainty, dependability, and as such is applied in the first sense to God himself—or in other words, some of his attributes.

Secondly, it’s also applied to God’s words. And because it is a characteristic of God revealed to men, it is found in those who have come to God. And because truth is an attribute of God, there is no truth outside of God. All men cut off from God by their sin are liars.

Loving kindness and truth—these are found together a number of times in the Old Testament. And they’re also found together, the correlary words grace and truth, in the New Testament. John 1:17—”The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” If “but” is in your translation, exit out—it’s not in the Greek. There’s no opposition being played there between the law of Moses and grace and truth through Jesus Christ. There’s a difference; there’s an expansion.

We praise God’s holy name that we can look on this side of the cross at the coming of Jesus Christ and the impact of it. But it is a continuation of what God did with the giving of the law through Moses. If you want to contrast them, then you’ve got to contrast the law of God with truth. How can you do that? There’s no contrast between grace and law. It’s a development though, and it’s one that is very important, because the text is pointing out that with Jesus Christ coming, there is a tremendous development, maturation, of God’s demonstration of his grace and truthfulness to us.

His faithfulness would be a better word maybe than truth. It has an idea of truth, but it has a very strong context of faithfulness. In Psalm 25:10, “All the ways of Jehovah, all the ways of Jehovah are kindness and truth to those who keep his covenant.”

There’s a conditional aspect to it. Those who keep his covenant—not as if we can keep his covenant apart from ourselves, not as if we can give it perfectly. But your life should be characterized by an essential conformity to the covenant words of God. That is not impossible to do. It is not impossible to avoid murdering people and stealing and adultery and the base thoughts that lead to all those things as well. You see?

So God says, David says, that he praises God for grace and for truth. Those are elements in which God is praised for by David.

Now application. Have you this last year grown in your dependableness? No. Grown in your dependence on the faithfulness of God and his mercy to you? Or have you grown in doubt? One is a progression. The other is a devolution. God has brought you through things this last year, and he does it that you may at the end of those things praise him for his faithfulness to you, his faithfulness, and for his grace.

And then secondly, have you grown more a lover of grace, covenantal faithfulness, mercy—the extension of that, particularly in the context of the covenant people? Have you come to more of a position of loving the service of God by serving his people? You don’t serve other people ultimately. You serve God. But God says, “You’re ministers of me when you serve the body of Jesus Christ. And when you minister to them, in this last year, these last five years, have you grown in your love of service, the demonstration of said mercy, covenantal faithfulness to members of your family, to members of this church, the extended church of Christ as well?

Have you done that? And have you grown in your faithfulness? God exhibits these things and calls us to be holy for he is holy. We’re to communicate these attributes, these actions rather, of God in our lives and be lights in this world. What’s the one thing required of a steward? That he be found faithful. See, without faithfulness, all intellectual knowledge, all gifts and abilities—either natural or miraculously given by God to a person—are indictments against that person, not something to be relied upon.

If you’re faithless, then God takes those very gifts and holds you more accountable because you failed to exercise them in said covenantal faithfulness, loyalty, and then truthfulness, faithfulness, stability in what you do.

The expression of all this comes to the next portion of this verse. “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”

Now, so far we’ve talked really only about the first point—the centrality of praising God. That the glory of God is the chief end of man and our purpose here on earth, not to serve others but to serve God and to glorify him. And then secondly, we do that in the context of a great love and understanding the great significance that God gives to his word.

I mentioned verse three—I’m sorry, verse two, end of verse two. “Thou must magnify thy word above thy name.” Translators hate that. They say, “Oh, it must be a copious error or something,” because certainly, you know, the name of a person is all that a person is. It’s not like us. We name things and we don’t think it has significance. Names are very significant in the scriptures. They contain all that the person is. They talk about the person himself.

And this text tells us very clearly in the Hebrew that God has magnified his word, his covenant word, and certainly that would take precedence or take form in his inscripturated word. He has magnified that word above his very person, above his name. This is an incredible assertion. No doubt hyperbole on the part of God. But nonetheless, he wants us to understand how faithful he is. Psalm 115, who comes together to worship God? How do you get in? One of the things you got to demonstrate is you swear to your own hurt.

God says that he swears to his own hurt. Okay? And what was the great demonstration of that? The way