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[0:00] And I'd like you to open your Bibles up to the book of the Psalms and find Psalm 34.

[0:12] I'll give you a little brief disclosure for the one or two of you that joined in when we were Zooming.

[0:28] That I preached this sermon back in the Zoom days a while back, but there's an element to it that I was unable to do. And it's been on my heart for the last two weeks to tell you the truth.

[0:41] And so I just felt like, well, let's go for it. Let's go back to it and see if it'll help somebody today. So Psalm 34. And this is a beautiful Psalm.

[0:55] It's a Psalm that's been a help and an encouragement to many, many people for a very, very long time. And I want to read together the first verse.

[1:06] Where the Bible says, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. In my mouth.

[1:19] His praise is going to be in my mouth. Now, it's easy to say that, yeah, I'll bless the Lord at all times. It might be easy to say that. And it may be easy to say that his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

[1:33] It's probably a little harder to fulfill that statement. We don't always feel upbeat. Maybe sometimes you feel beat down. And when those days are on you, or those weeks or months or stages of life, you just don't feel this.

[1:50] And so it's more important to have a grounding and a fellowship with Jesus Christ that goes deeper than your emotions. Because then you'll only praise the Lord when you're emotionally stable and feeling good.

[2:03] And when you're not feeling good and you're hurt or you're in fear and you feel like you're drowning, you're not going to be blessing the Lord at all times. You're going to be, why? You're going to be selfishly saying this shouldn't be.

[2:16] But that's not the psalmist. That's not the word of God. Now, this book directs us to something better than what we feel, better than what we know by our senses, better than how we just develop in this world.

[2:28] This book will try to lift us up out of that to something way better than that. And we don't even understand it unless we get into the Bible. Now, I don't believe God or that the psalmist here is saying that I'm always singing and I'm always glorifying God every step of the way.

[2:46] Singing I go along life's road, praising. I don't think he's saying that's what's happening with his mouth. But rather, I believe what the statement might better be said or understood is that I will bless the Lord at all times.

[3:00] In contrast to my mouth will never, ever curse the Lord. It'll never charge God foolishly. It'll never declare that he did something wrong.

[3:11] But no matter what takes place in this life, I will bless the Lord at all times. Good or bad, I'll bless him regardless. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

[3:22] Blessing the Lord is never going to replace with cursing. And condemning him or declaring him guilty will never take the place of praising him. Now, again, it's easy to say that through the good and the bad.

[3:34] The statement here is my attitude toward God will always be praising and blessing him no matter what comes. Now, I'd like to approach this verse in three ways this morning.

[3:46] And it's really simple. All three parts are simple. But there's something here I think you can get out of this. And the first thing I want to say about this verse, I'll tell you all three right now, is I want you to memorize the verse. I think we should all memorize this verse.

[3:59] Secondly, I think we should meditate upon this verse. And I'm going to help you with that this morning. Spend some time on what it's actually saying. And then thirdly, the best part, the application is you ought to model this verse.

[4:13] You ought to model, imitate. It ought to be part of your life. Now, the Bible says, Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee. In the Proverbs, the word of God, the law of God is said that they're to bind it about their heart, to write it upon the tables of thine heart.

[4:30] We're to get the book inside of us. We're to get the words of God inside of us and hopefully clean out some of the garbage that's in our hearts and expose the deceitfulness of our hearts.

[4:41] It's desperately wicked. So say it, the word of God. We wouldn't believe that unless God said it. And since he said it, we believe it. Amen. Now, I want to help you with this, this thought of memorizing this verse.

[4:54] It's 16 words. Now, I know a portion of you inside, you've used this excuse. I can't memorize. I just can't memorize. I just have this plague, and it's my cross to bear.

[5:08] Kids can, but I can't. I know you've said that, and you're not telling the truth. You're not telling the truth. You can memorize. And you can memorize this. Specifically, you can memorize the scriptures.

[5:19] There's something special about this book, folks. It's spiritual. It's not just reading the newspaper and memorizing lines from the newspaper or some article online. I know this is holy.

[5:30] This text is even this King James Bible has a cadence and a rhythm to it that is designed by God to get in and to stick. It's syllables.

[5:41] It's too much for me to talk about right now, but it is. It is way, way up there. I think you can memorize this verse right now. There are 16 words there.

[5:59] If you could, for a second, and I'm not going to put the pressure on anybody, but if you could, for a second, don't look at your Bible, and I'm going to say the verse, and I'll stop.

[6:12] And when I stop, just say the next word, if you can. Let's see if you're capable. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

[6:28] Okay, most of you got it. Let's try it again. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Okay, there's two words you got.

[6:39] That's two out of 16. That's one-eighth. What's that equal? Twelve and a half percent you've already memorized. Just like that. I think we're going somewhere. If I kept doing this, we'd have it all down word for word.

[6:54] But I'd rather do something different. I don't generally do silly things like this on Sunday morning, but I like doing stuff like this when I can. I'm going to treat this like it's a youth group here this morning.

[7:05] I'd like to do a little competition. And for that, I'm going to need volunteers. And I'm not going to ask you to recite the verse in the microphone, okay? You're not going to have to say a word. I just want to give you that right ahead.

[7:17] But I need a total of eight. So could I possibly get eight volunteers? If you do, come on up here. And there's three right in the middle. I got three. I need five more. I got, there's Vic.

[7:29] I got four. Riley's five. Samuel, Russ, stay down there. I'm going to put you down there. Sorry. All right, Mark. Where are we at now? One, two, three, four. You guys, okay, we got enough.

[7:41] You four stay there. Russ, come over here. I need four and four. Okay, here's what's going to happen. I have the verse right here. See this?

[7:54] There's two words of the verse on each piece of paper. These are shuffled up exactly the same. So I'm going to set the two stacks down. John and Greg, you're going to be responding.

[8:05] You might want to switch people in the front here. What you're going to do is you guys are going to come up with this verse. Each person has two pieces of paper. One, two.

[8:16] And it should read across. I will bless the Lord at all times. His, it'll be, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. It'll go from one side to the other. And let's see which team has memorized this verse quicker.

[8:31] Now, I don't want to give anybody advantage here. So let's see where that one is. So when I say go, let's see. You guys will have to keep your eyes on it and make sure it's right. If they're right, let us know because I can't see what's in front.

[8:43] If they're wrong, let's laugh at them. Okay, you know what the deal is? You know which way we're reading this? From, yeah, from right to left. This is in Hebrew.

[8:54] Okay, ready? Go. Oh, boy. We've got a plan.

[9:10] This is how they translated the scriptures. Come on. We getting somewhere? Turn around and face everybody.

[9:24] You guys getting there? Face them. I'm not you. Is that right? I wasn't even close. Are we right over here now?

[9:35] Yeah, but they cheated. All right. This side won. You can put those back together. That was tough, huh?

[9:46] Yeah. Did you sabotage it? Did you sabotage it? I'll keep them. Okay. Yeah, I don't want to.

[9:58] All right. Okay. We got winners and we got losers. That's how that goes every time. You don't get any participation things around here. So anyway, that was easy.

[10:12] Do you think you could say it right now? Do you think you could say it right now? I know, John. I know you say the whole song. I'm not going to ask you to. I'm just wondering. Do you think you could? Just right now, I could say the whole verse.

[10:24] I didn't just. It's that quick. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. There's a reason that you ought to memorize this. There's something to this.

[10:36] It sounds fluffy. It sounds, oh, wonderful. It's just to praise the Lord, bless the Lord. It's just, yay, we can raise our hands and wave around. And that's what it means, right?

[10:47] Well, there's a reason you ought to memorize this. There's a reason these kind of scriptures ought to get down inside of you. And there's a reason because you're going to need it. You're absolutely going to need to think this way.

[10:58] You're going to need it. Maybe not today, but you're going to need it. And so let's move to the second thought here. We need to not just memorize this verse, but we need to meditate upon this verse. When you meditate upon a scripture, you think, who wrote that?

[11:12] Where were they at? Why did they write it? What's behind the scene or the details of this? How does this even apply to me today? You think of these things. And so when you wonder who wrote it, you study and see that it was a Psalm of David.

[11:27] That's written in the inscription above the first verse. It was a Psalm of David. Well, where was he? When did he write it? Well, take a look at the intro there. If you have that, some of you have that in your Bibles just before verse one.

[11:39] It says, a Psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. So there's an actual setting behind this Psalm.

[11:51] It's not just random words. It's easy to read and just rip right through these. But there's a setting to this. When we meditate upon that verse, we learn that it came from somewhere.

[12:02] It came from a moment in a man's life. Turn back to 1 Samuel 21 and let's get a little bit of an understanding of this time. 1 Samuel 21 because now let's meditate on this verse.

[12:17] Let's study it a little bit. 1 Samuel 21 and start in verse 10 to the end to verse 15.

[12:32] Verse 10 says, He's fainting.

[13:12] He's fainting. He's fainting. He's fainting.

[13:25] That's fake. You see that? He's faking this. Verse 14. He's fainting. He's fainting. He's fainting. He's fainting. Wherefore then have you brought him to me? Have I need of a madman?

[13:36] Or have I need of madmen that you have brought this fellow to play the madman of my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? No. Get him out of here. Get him out of here. Why is David feigning himself to be a lunatic?

[13:52] Why is he pretending to be mentally like he's lost it? His mind is shot. You could look at him and think, well, maybe he did. Maybe it just the war got to him.

[14:04] It just, you know, too much killing, too much blood, too much. He's fried. He's running for his life. The king's trying to kill him. He just does the anxiety that whatever it is. You can't take it.

[14:15] He's done. He's nuts. Get him out of here. Well, why would he say that? Well, you noticed in verse number 10 that he came to Gath.

[14:27] Gath. What do you know about Gath? Look back at chapter 7. Keep your place there. But look back at chapter 17. And be reminded of something.

[14:41] Chapter 17 and verse 4, there went a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath, whose height was, everybody knows about Goliath.

[14:51] And everybody knows who killed Goliath. And everybody knows from that place how he killed Goliath. Come back to chapter 21. Come back to chapter 21 and look just before what we had read and look at verses 8 and 9.

[15:08] And David said unto Ahimelech, And is there not here under thine hand spear or sword? For I neither brought my sword nor my weapons with thee, because the king's business required haste.

[15:18] And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If thou wilt take that, take it. For there is none other say that.

[15:30] David said, There is none like that. Give it me. So David, while running from Saul, who is seeking to kill him, winds up with the sword of the champion of Gath, Goliath.

[15:48] And then he descends from these hills down into the town of Gath. He's running for his life, looking for help or places, who knows what.

[16:01] But wrong place, wrong time. And how better could this king be avenged of this, wasn't that long ago, of this champion that made this town famous, that I killed, and here I stand at his gates with the very sword, as if I'm here to add insult to injury.

[16:24] I'm in a bad spot, David realized. I wasn't planning on doing this. He's just trying to stay alive, and he just brought himself into a more dangerous situation in front of him.

[16:37] So he decides it's time to put on a show for him. It's time to pretend I'm insane, start drooling all over yourself, scratching on the gates.

[16:47] It worked. But what a strange thing. What a strange thing. So David escapes with his life, and because of his actions, he'll live to see another day.

[16:58] And if you look at the next chapter, I already lost my place there, but the next chapter, 22, verse 1, he's running, and he's like, no more cities for me. I'm staying off the grid. I'm not showing up anywhere else like this.

[17:10] Every time he does, they turn him in. Every time he gets in public in any scene or anyone knows where he's at, they turn him into King Saul. So David runs for his life, and then he writes a psalm.

[17:26] I imagine he cleaned up his appearance. I imagine he kind of changed his apparel or his look before he worshiped the Lord. But it's there.

[17:38] It's in that moment, that place in his life that he writes the psalm. When we meditate upon where this is coming from, it's a little bit more going on, isn't it, than just somebody saying, oh, everything's wonderful, so I'm praising Jesus.

[17:54] It's actually not so wonderful if we look at it a little closer. There's more. In Psalm 34, I want you to take a look back there.

[18:06] In Psalm 34, you notice the number of verses in this psalm. Now, the chapter or verses didn't come until years later, until an English translation, but this one was an easy one to divide up because it was already divided up in the psalm itself.

[18:25] Notice there's 22 verses. And the reason there's 22 is because there's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And the reason the divisions are there is because the psalmist, David, wrote this with the very first letter in Hebrew, Aleph, and then Beth was the verse.

[18:44] So he went through, if it was English, it'd be A, B, C, D, E, all the way 26 letters. And what he did in Hebrew was took the first letter and then the second letter for verse 2, and he began with that letter.

[18:55] So what we call this is an acrostic. This is a psalm. It's a poetic form, a writing, but it's in an acrostic form where the Aleph, Beth, Gimel, you know in Psalm 119 you see all those headings?

[19:11] It's the same thing going on in Psalm 119. There's 22 stanzas, and the first eight verses all start with Aleph or the A. And then the next eight verses start with Beth, the next letter, those next eight verses.

[19:24] Same thing here in Psalm 34. The point I'm getting across that is this is hardly the writings of an insane man, is it? He's not crazy at all.

[19:35] As a matter of fact, this shows that this has been thought out extensively. This shows that the author, it's not just like 32 and 30. This is something special here. The writer of Psalm 34 is a master of words and expression and is very sane, very sound.

[19:56] He took his time with this one. There's something else. Understand that this writing and this thought and this expression, it's not being written of bless the Lord and praise him.

[20:09] It's not being written after he took the throne. It's not being written after his brothers received him and exalted him in Hebron and then later into Jerusalem to take the throne and assemble all the tribes and you be our ruler, David.

[20:23] It wasn't written then. It wasn't written when there was a birth of a child into his family and he's rejoicing in the Lord because of this gift from God. It's not rejoicing over that.

[20:35] He's not celebrating a marriage or any pleasure in life. And so understand what David wrote was written because he had a fellowship with God that was closer than any trial in life could sever and could separate.

[20:54] His fellowship with God was so real and tight that circumstances could not affect it. And what a response then to the circumstance it was.

[21:04] What a response to tribulation. What a way to live life. To bless the Lord at all times, no matter what comes. I had a man when I was in Pennsylvania there.

[21:16] The pastor was away and a man stopped by the church. He went to the office, the front office, and he says, Pastor, I need to talk to him. And he said, no, but Brother Walsh, he's back there.

[21:27] You can talk to him if you want. And he said, yeah, I need to talk to somebody. And so I was back in my office way in the back of the building, way back there. And so this guy comes, and I want to say it was like 9.30 in the morning.

[21:40] And this fellow, he had attended the church, not super faithful, but he attended. And I knew who he was. I recognized him. And he came in and sat down. And there was something wrong. Something was off. He was jittery.

[21:52] He was upset. He was a little shook. And I'm just looking at him, just thinking, what's his deal? What's going on? I tried to get him to start talking. And I said, what's going on? And he said, I just need to talk to somebody.

[22:04] He said, I'm on my way to the doctors right now. And he started unloading on me. He said, I've got some things going on, and I'm afraid that I might have cancer. And his statement right out of his mouth was, if I have cancer, I'm afraid I'm going to blow my brains out.

[22:20] And I was like, whoa. Hello, Monday morning. Well, and so I just keep talking. Got him talking more.

[22:31] He just unloaded everything that he was carrying. He unloaded on me the way he was raised and the abuse that he didn't deserve in his home as a child and growing up in a horrible situation.

[22:45] He unloaded some things with marriages and problems. He unloaded his son having grandchildren in his home and just is driving him insane.

[22:57] And there's so much going on building up in his life. And now if he has cancer, I can't take this anymore. He's done is the way he felt.

[23:08] And he was on his way to the doctors, and he was coming nearby the church, and he just said, I need to talk to somebody. Because he was, you could understand, just all inside of him ready to explode.

[23:21] And I sat there and heard him talk and talk and talk and prayed, Lord, I don't have any experience being abused as a child.

[23:32] I don't have any experience with this home life like that and all the frustrations. And I don't have any experience with health like that. What am I going to offer him? And the Lord said, I got something.

[23:45] And so I said, let's look at this. Let's look at the book of Job. And we looked at Job, and we saw a man that had everything taken away. His health, his wife was turning on him, his kids were dead, and his cattle, his substances, all left.

[24:01] And what did he do? He blessed the Lord. He blessed the Lord. How in the world did he do that? I don't know, but he did it.

[24:12] And then I took him to David. And this very thought here, where David was in such a low place, he wasn't with his wife or wives.

[24:23] He wasn't with his children. He wasn't with his family. He was on the run and on the run and on the run and scared for his life. And everywhere he went, burning bridges behind him so he wouldn't get caught. And here he almost just leaps or limps into a situation that was worse than all of it.

[24:42] And what did David end up doing? Blessing the Lord. Blessing the Lord. Even though he escaped with his life, he didn't have his home life fixed. He wasn't home. He didn't have his king off his back.

[24:55] All of that was still there, but he blessed the Lord. And he said, I'll praise you continually. And so I showed that man and those things, and we prayed together, and he didn't do any damage to himself.

[25:08] And I can't recall the end of this whole story there. But the point was that the scripture gives us examples. Examples how we can respond in hard times and how we can respond right to the trials that we face.

[25:23] Because there's going to be problems. There's going to be problems at home. There's going to be problems at work. There's going to be problems with your health, with your family, with your friends, with your business or at your job.

[25:34] And all the problems can mount up, but you can do right. You can. You can do right. You can say, I will bless the Lord at all times.

[25:47] And so memorize that verse. And as we meditate on that verse, understand there's substance to that verse. When we meditate and squeeze it a little bit, we find out it's not fluff at all.

[26:02] This isn't just tasty morsels and dainties. No, this is like rubber meets the road. Hard stuff. And it's actually a lesson to how we can respond right.

[26:16] Now, lastly, I told you I want to challenge you to model this verse. He says, I, and as you memorize, you say, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

[26:30] My mouth. It's going to be my mouth that blesses the Lord and praises the Lord. That's how you model this verse. You make it personal. And you allow the word of God, much like this, to renew your mind and to conform you to the image of his dear son and stop talking about yourself, stop complaining about your problems and the things you don't like and learn to turn it to him and bless him at all times.

[26:57] That's not easy. But that's how you model this verse. Truth is, you talk too much about yourself already. You do.

[27:08] And if somebody needs to tell you, I'll tell you. You talk too much about yourself. You talk too much about what you think and about how you feel. And I'm not suggesting you have to wake up and walk around your house.

[27:19] The Lord did this. The Lord did this. Okay. You can express yourself. But don't dwell on yourself. If you're going to dwell and meditate, meditate on him. And let other people know that too.

[27:32] His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Some people have their own praise in their mouth. They talk about themselves all the time. Some people's praise is the president or the person they want to be the president.

[27:47] Some people's praise is celebrities and stars and athletes and people we look up to and the rich and the wealthy and the successful and the pretty, the beautiful. And they talk about them.

[28:00] Their praise is in their mouth. This one says, No, his praise shall continually be in my mouth. Let's model this first.

[28:10] David did. David wrote words. I think David sang these words. They're written to be put to music. David wrote these words and he sang them and these words have traveled this entire globe.

[28:24] You think about that. He penned them in a moment in his life under inspiration of the spirit of God penned these holy words and they've traveled the entire globe.

[28:36] And here we are years and years, generations later, continents later, and we're reading them and we're considering these words and seeking to model these words.

[28:48] These words have pointed the human race to the God that delivered him, the God that he called his refuge and his strong tower. He calls for the world to praise his God.

[29:00] He calls for instruments to be played with skill in praising his God. He calls for nature together to lift it up and to praise his God.

[29:12] Let's model this verse. Let's bless the Lord when it's good and let's bless the Lord when it's bad. Let's praise the one, the one that gave his life to redeem you from your sins, the one who saw fit to love you to rescue your sorry soul from hell, to rescue you.

[29:34] If you can't open your mouth, if you can't sing or praise him, there's something wrong with your heart, something wrong, dead wrong with your heart that you can't open your mouth and praise him.

[29:47] Let it be in your mouth continually. And I think this verse can help us with that. I think this verse can help us if we model it. Here's something I want to read to you.

[29:59] It's from Ephesians chapter 2. And if you know Jesus Christ as your savior, then you have something to bless him with for. The Bible says, As in time past, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

[30:32] But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace you're saved, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

[31:06] Now that's just one little one I plucked out of so much. But in my opinion, that one should never ever get old to you.

[31:18] What Jesus Christ has done for you when you were dead in your sins, when you were led and driven by the lust of your flesh, and that he gave his life for you.

[31:28] Thank you. You should never get older what God has done for you through Christ Jesus. I don't think there's anything in this life that should be able to take you so low that you can't lift up your heart and your voice to God and bless him for that one.

[31:45] It could be, you could be drug through the mud like that man I talked to you about felt like he was. And if you're saved, you can still say, Lord, thank you for saving me. Thank you for giving me eternal life and for forgiving me of my sins.

[32:01] Thank you for Calvary. This life stinks right now, but thank you for that. Thank you for the hope I have in Christ. Let's model this verse.

[32:13] Let's open our mouths and bless him publicly. It'd be good for you to do that. Turn back to Psalm 63. We're almost finished. Look at Psalm 63.

[32:24] Let's catch a few verses here.

[32:38] Psalm 63, verse one. O God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is to see thy power and thy glory.

[32:53] So as I have seen thee in the sanctuary, because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live.

[33:03] I will lift up mine hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied with thy marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches.

[33:19] You can model that, can't you? Look at Psalm 66. Psalm 66, in the first two verses, say, make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands.

[33:30] Sing forth the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. He's calling for the lands, for the world to be rejoicing and glorifying God.

[33:41] Now look down at verse number eight. O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard. Here he's talking specifically about the people of God.

[33:55] They need to do that too, collectively, the church house today. But then come down to verse 16 where it gets real personal. Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I, I will declare what he hath done for my soul.

[34:12] It's the world, all the lands, they need to be lifted up and praising God. Amen. It's the people of God as a people collectively, as a body, ought to be, yeah, amen.

[34:25] But then somebody else should be doing that in their own life, from their own lips, in their own heart, regardless of who else does. And blessing the Lord with your mouth.

[34:37] I could go on and on and the Psalms are just loaded, totally just loaded with this idea of praising the Lord God.

[34:49] But it's up to you then. My question is, will you model this verse? Will you make an attempt to outwardly bless and praise and glorify with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ?

[35:03] If times are tough, that's where it needs to be put to practice. That's why you memorize the word of God. Times start getting tough and the scripture comes to you and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[35:18] Oh, we're not going there. We're going to bless the Lord instead. We're going to praise his name. Maybe you're here this morning and you sit here and you hear this talk and you're like, I just don't feel that on the inside at all.

[35:31] I don't even know what you're talking about. Supposed to sing? Supposed to sing in a choir or something? What are you talking about? Maybe you're here and you just, it sounds foreign. It sounds religious to talk about the Lord and maybe you can't bless him.

[35:46] Maybe you can't praise him for the only reason that you don't know him. Maybe what I read in Ephesians has never been real to you. You've never tasted the mercy of God, the forgiveness of your sins, the salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ.

[36:01] If you can't praise him because you don't know him, then you need to get to know him. You need to get saved. We call it getting saved.

[36:12] You need to believe on Jesus Christ and receive the gift of eternal life and receive his righteousness in place of your sin and receive his forgiveness that Jesus Christ paid for with his blood to cleanse you and wash you of all your sins.

[36:29] when you get that, when you receive the gift of eternal life, you know what he did for you. You understand then how close you were to dropping off into hell and all you want to do then is praise him and lift him up.

[36:48] Getting saved won't fix everything in your life, but it'll fix the biggest thing you got going wrong with you. But on top of that, if you reject Jesus Christ and his salvation, you won't ever be able to bless him because you'll die and go to hell and you'll curse him and you'll grit your teeth and hate him and you'll say he's unrighteous and he's unjust and you'll curse and never experience the blessing and gift of eternal life.

[37:17] You'll say he condemned you and you'll think you were right, you were a good person. Now moving back to where we are this morning, I challenge you to memorize this verse because it'll help you because it'll be there inside when you need it.

[37:33] That's why. And then I challenge you this morning to memorize, I'm sorry, meditate on this verse and find out that it's not fluffy and it's not just twinkle toes and cotton candy and fun times and rainbows, but rather know there's substance in the scripture and it comes out of real life pain.

[37:55] And then thirdly, finally, model this verse because God deserves your praise and as far as I can tell, I'm quite sure he's earned your praise. I think he deserves more than you give him.

[38:08] So, there it is. Now these guys, the winners this morning, they put that verse together, I want you to put that verse together in your own heart.

[38:20] Put that verse together when you walk out these doors. Walk out of here and as you go throughout your day to day and as you go to bed tonight, as you wake up tomorrow, consider that God is calling you, he's drawing it out of you, bless me, praise me, know me.

[38:37] If you don't know him, again, it's just dead. There's nothing really that you can't understand it. But if you've been born of the spirit, you know what he's calling you to do. You know what he's calling you to do.

[38:50] So, let's bow together. We'll be dismissed here with this. Maybe this morning as you bow your head, I'd ask you just to spend a moment in repose and meditation here, a quiet moment to consider a personal question do I bless the Lord?

[39:14] Do I? Has he heard my voice lately? Have I lifted up any praise to him lately with my mouth? Or am I consumed with other things?

[39:29] Am I busy praising myself or this world or these vain talkers around me? Ask yourself that question.

[39:41] doesn't God deserve more?

[39:54] Does your neighbor know that you love the Lord? the Bible says if a man loved God, the same is known of him.

[40:12] And it's known because it comes out of his mouth. I'm going to challenge you this morning to model this verse to make it a goal that what's going to come out of your mouth always, at all times, good or bad, is to bless the Lord.

[40:28] God, you can always find something to bless him for. Father, please take the words this morning, take the thought, take this example embedded in our hearts.

[40:44] Lord, may it renew our minds and our thinking on the trials and problems that do come up. please use this to speak to hearts, to get our attention back on you and away from us and away from our world around us.

[41:03] And Lord, understanding that one day you're going to put all this behind us and it's just going to be you. And so may we focus and set our affections on things above. God, I pray that you'll give courage to somebody here who's not been faithful in witnessing or opening their mouth for you.

[41:22] Strengthen them in their inner man that they would take courage, that they would have desire to bless your name publicly, that others would know it.

[41:33] We pray that Christ would be exalted by our mouths and by our lives and may it be known of us. Lord, we love you. We pray that you'll help us in this area and that we'll respond right to it.

[41:47]  We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. You got a number?