Called to Worship

[0:00] It is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.! Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name.

[0:12] For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. All right.

[0:27] Good morning, church. All right, cool. Thank you, Catherine. For those of you who don't know me, as Brad said, my name is Kyle Spivey. I'm a member here, a deacon, lead music occasionally, father engineer, but most importantly, a follower of Christ.

[0:42] So this morning, we get to open up and unpack this psalm. It's a psalm of praise. It's got a little bit different flair than what we've had in the past couple weeks. Two weeks ago, Caleb preached on Psalm 88 that has a lot of uncertainty and unsureness and talks about suffering in the midst of the situation.

[0:58] Psalm 82 last week, Brad talked about another psalm that is kind of interesting and it's weird, but it's good. And this one, it's a pretty famous psalm.

[1:10] This is one that in the Trinity hymnal, it's the first song that's sung. So this is one that's referred to as the old hundredth or something like that. So my goal in this psalm is to remind you who God is, who you are, how we can respond to God.

[1:28] But before that, Kevin, this picture has nothing to do with my sermon. That's the pig.

[1:40] It's being roasted right now at the leech's house. Smoked. Sorry, wife. For the pig roast or pig picking, depending on what part of the country you come from.

[1:53] This is purely just propaganda for later. So come on. It's been fun so far. Jordan and I have been up for a long time. So the sermon this morning, Psalm 100, let's pray.

[2:05] God, we thank you for this morning. God, thank you that we can gather here and sing songs of worship. To proclaim that the King is coming, to proclaim that you are good, that your mercy is good.

[2:22] Lord, we thank you for a church body that can gather in this Holiday Inn, Lord, for 10 years now. God, it's been a place that your name has been made great.

[2:34] We pray that you continue to work in and through us today. God, be with me in my words. Let these words be the words that this congregation needs to hear. Not just the words that I put on paper, but God, the words that hopefully you have given me.

[2:50] Lord, your word, your scripture, these words are more than just a text. It is the living and active word of God. So, Lord, be with us as we talk about this text, as we listen.

[3:04] Hopefully, as we learn, God, ultimately that we would worship you in all that we do. Amen. So, worship. What is worship? Titled this, A Call to Worship or Called to Worship.

[3:16] The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a practice of showing respect for God or a God by saying prayers, singing with others, etc. A writer that I saw listening to is actually somebody else quoting somebody else.

[3:31] It's always fun to try to find who they're actually quoting when they don't say who they're quoting. But they defined worship as, Public worship is the open and affectionate work of God's church, gathered in his holy presence through his mercies in Christ, by the spirit in which the church honors God in a believing and obedient response to his word.

[3:50] And hopefully what we'll see from this passage is that each part of that definition is grounded in Psalm 100. The author was actually talking about Psalm 100. So, even that second part of the quote was his.

[4:03] So, why Psalm 100? If you want to flip to it, Kevin. So, it's only five verses. It's short. I didn't try to do what Carl did and take a whole bunch of verses all at once, or what Caleb did and take a psalm that is really depressing at times.

[4:17] So, when the elders asked me about what psalm to pick, I chose Psalm 100. Similar to Brad, this has been a psalm that's kind of come up over the life of our family. When we're not at our house at night, we don't have like the kids' Bibles or whatever we're doing, I'll say, pick a number 1 to 150.

[4:36] More often than not, Owen or Ellis will say 100 because it's a big number. It's a cool number. It's a different number. And so, I'll read Psalm 100. So, I said, you know what? If I have to preach on a psalm again, I'm going to dive into a text that the boys keep asking about.

[4:52] So, next time they ask about it, I'll have a 30-minute sermon to go along with it. There's no way they won't go to sleep after that. And just FYI, they've never picked Psalm 119.

[5:04] I don't know what would happen if they did. We'd probably just break it down. So, as you listen, as you read these verses, it may be reminiscent of other psalms that we've heard. Other psalms that I know Randy Matthews preached on 117.

[5:16] So, if you don't like what I say on praise and prayer and worship of God, you can go back and listen to his. So, from a contextual standpoint, there's not much to go off of.

[5:28] We don't know who wrote it. We don't know when it was written. But it's been part of the psalms. It's written and it's God's word. It comes after what's called the kingship psalms. 95 through 99 are those kingship psalms.

[5:41] So, it's not part of that. One pastor calls it exaltation and edification. He kind of focuses verses 1 and 2 on the exaltation, verse 4 on exaltation, and then verse 3 and 5 as edification.

[5:55] But in typical Baptist form, I wanted three words, not two. So, we broke it down into a call, a reminder, and a response. So, the title in most of your Bibles is probably, His steadfast love endures forever, followed by a psalm for giving thanks.

[6:14] So, what are the common words? I want, by each of this, for us to see what God is doing through this. So, the first set of common words. Thanks, Kevin. We see seven commands.

[6:26] Right? These aren't common words, but these are commands. I apologize if the font is weird, or the color, but that's what we're going with. So, verse 1, make. Verse 2, serve and come. Verse 3, no.

[6:37] Verse 4, enter, give, and I also included bless. These are commands. So, what are the psalmists commanding? To praise the Lord. To do things with the knowledge of who God is.

[6:49] And so, what else do we see? It's five verses. We see the Lord called out directly four times. So, this Lord is Jehovah or Yahweh.

[7:01] So, in the five verses, we have the Lord specifically called out four times. And then the next slide. His or he is referenced 12 times.

[7:12] So, in five verses, the Lord or he or his, right? We're all pointing us to the Lord. It's called out 16 times. So, this text, this passage, this word of God is a command focused on the Lord.

[7:28] And so, the psalmist starts in what I call the call. So, if you go to the next slide. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.

[7:40] Come into his presence with singing. So, two verses, three commands. In the ESV, we were just talking about this when we started praying over there. The ESV has these as exclamation points at the end.

[7:52] So, these are like powerful commands. Some of the translations don't have those exclamation points. The ESV does. And Mike started talking about why. And you can ask him more about that afterwards.

[8:04] Because I didn't dive into that. But, these are commands that God has given us through the psalmist. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. It's great that the ESV adds those exclamation points.

[8:15] But, I think they may be toning down that first couple words. Make a joyful noise is actually the Hebrew word ruah. If I pronounce that wrong, I'm sorry.

[8:27] But, it literally means to mar. Not like Kevin. But, to mar or split the ears. So, when you read this, this is actually more of a victory or a battle cry.

[8:37] A war cry. Saying, hey, let's make a loud shout to the Lord. Not just, like we've talked about a little bit today. And not that it's wrong. But, it's not just make a joyful noise. Right?

[8:47] It's not like somebody saying, I can't sing. So, I'm going to sing quietly. And, I'll just make a little joyful noise to the Lord. This is legitimately saying, shout loudly to God. Shout loudly to the Lord.

[9:00] All the earth. This psalm is written to the Israelites. But, it's a command for the entire earth to praise God. There are times when we see Daniel and Christ go into the quiet and worship and serve God and praise God in the quiet.

[9:17] But, there's also times where we see Paul and Silas singing in the midst of the jail. We see Christ with his disciples praising God, singing psalms. We see Daniel dancing in the street.

[9:29] So, that's what this is saying. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Shout joyfully. Shout with jubilance. Jubilance.

[9:41] And then what? Serve the Lord. Not just serve the Lord, but serve the Lord with gladness. Serve.

[9:51] Romans 12, 1-2 talks about offering your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to the Lord. It's your spiritual act of worship.

[10:03] Serve. Priests. Right? The priests are the ones that served in the Israelite time. And we hear, we talk about it as we lead music, as we sing songs, as we preach, that we hear those that are in Christ are priests and are sacrifices ourselves.

[10:23] Right? But this also says, serve the Lord with gladness. This comes after the psalm, proclaiming God is holy. God is the king. God is good.

[10:34] Those are in the kingship psalms. Serving a good king is a good thing. But gladness doesn't mean that there's not sadness. Nehemiah 2, we can see that he's physically sad.

[10:47] Art of Xerxes says, why are you sad? We talked about the Fitzpatricks earlier. I had the opportunity to talk to Rob last week. And what they're going through is tough.

[10:59] But when I talked to him, although it was something they never expected to go through, never wanted to go through, and they don't want anybody to have to go through that.

[11:10] He spoke of the hope that they had. So what did they do? They drove back from PA last weekend to come serve alongside us. To sing songs with us. So that we, as a church body, can serve them.

[11:23] They had a hope that was focused not on themselves, but on who their God was. They were serving the Lord with gladness as they were singing here as we were hugging them.

[11:35] And that seems weird to say that somebody who is going through trauma and suffering can sit there and sing praises to the Lord. Serve the Lord. Make a joyful noise. But they served us by singing alongside us last week.

[11:50] They sang praises to their Lord, to our Lord. They didn't just offer their songs as sacrifices to God, but they served us in their praising. Of their Savior. This isn't superficial.

[12:01] This is serving God in a way that God has called them to. To sing in the midst of the good, the bad, the ugly. This psalm is telling us to do this. This psalm starts with the focus not on ourselves, but who God is.

[12:14] This psalm, when he preached, preached about a psalm that was all about what is going on in his life, in the life of the psalmist. And this psalmist starts here with a praise of God, a call and a focus, not on ourselves, but who God is.

[12:27] And then come into his presence. Right? The Israelites go into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies or in their temple. We come into his presence wherever we are. The temple curtain has been ripped in two from top to bottom.

[12:40] God has made a way for us to enter his presence, whether it's here at the Holiday Inn, whether it's in a community group, whether it's in Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, wherever it is. God has called us to come into his presence with singing.

[12:53] And that word singing is actually joyful singing. It's not just to come and sing because Matt picked a couple good songs, but it's to come joyfully because of what God has done. We meet him here.

[13:07] When you walk into the Holiday Inn, it's not like something magical happens when you walk through those doors, when you're greeted by the Allens, whoever it is out there. But we get to choose to come into his presence with singing.

[13:21] This is a command that the psalmist, whoever it is, is giving. Right? The psalmist doesn't start with focusing on himself. The start of this passage, the start of this, the word of God here, is not on his physical position, not his mental position, or anything else about himself, but he starts by calling us with a focus on God.

[13:42] Commanding God's people to shout, to serve, and to sing joyfully. And two of those things are not quiet. And I'm glad that we can sing here, and we can sing out loud and sing joyfully, and we don't have to be quiet here.

[14:00] Right? Around the world, there are places where people do have to stay a little quiet because of what the situation is. Right? But we're called here to make a joyful noise, to shout joyfully, to shout with a joyful yee-haw to the Lord, a rowdy amen.

[14:17] To serve the Lord independent of what is going on in your life, and to come into his presence with thanksgiving. So if you go to the next slide, this is the reminder.

[14:29] Right? So it starts with this focus on praising God, but then the psalmist steps back and kind of gives the why. The tone changes.

[14:41] The psalmist is explaining why we get to do those things, why he's calling us to do those things. The no, here one commentary says, this no is in the sense of experiencing and being completely assured of truth.

[14:53] This is the head knowledge that's combined with the heart experience. It's the head knowledge combined with remembering things. It's not just memorization of facts, but it's remembering who God is.

[15:06] Those of us that are called by Christ, that are in Christ, are born again. The Lord here is called both Yahweh and Elohim. This no that the psalmist talks about when he says, no, the Lord, he is God, is a deep reutterance of knowledge.

[15:25] This is a reminder to remind ourselves of who God is. That he is God. This is Jehovah. This is who the Israelites would call their God. But then not only is it their God, he is the God.

[15:38] Brad talked about God last week and he showed us that the word Elohim can be used in two different ways. And this is the same word. God in this text is used as Elohim.

[15:53] But this isn't just talking about a God. This is talking about the God. And why is this important? It's the same God Brad talked about. It's the same God we always talk about.

[16:03] It's important because he's God. And it's he who made us. Not only is the Lord God, but the Lord made us.

[16:15] The Lord created his people. And in this text, right, the psalmist is talking to the Israelites. So when it says he made us, it's also like he chose. He continues to choose. He loves.

[16:25] He cares. It is God who made us. It is he who made us. And we are his. That should give us great comfort.

[16:38] Right? This is the psalmist talking to the Israelites. But what does that mean for us here? Those who are in Christ are called by Christ. And so we can say the same thing.

[16:50] He made us. He created us. He called us. He chose us. And we are his. One of the times that this text was picked was Owen and I were in the hospital with Owen.

[17:11] I don't know why I get emotional all the time, but it happens. So we were in the hospital with Owen. It was just him and I. It was a test. It wasn't like a last second emergency thing.

[17:21] But he was sitting there with like a bunch of electrodes on his head while we were trying to figure out what's going on with his epilepsy. And he picked Psalm 100 and it was such a beautiful reminder that we can sit here now and say that he made us.

[17:38] We are his. There's a confidence that the Owen is young and he may not have chosen Christ yet. But I can have a confidence in my God and my Savior because he made us.

[17:52] We are created in his image and we are his. It was a wonderful reminder of the God that we serve. He's a God who created.

[18:03] But not only did he create, but he sustains. Right? We are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. A shepherd is one who is in the muck and the mire with the sheep.

[18:15] A shepherd's boots are not clean. They don't buy their cowboy boots so they can have fancy cowboy boots. They buy their cowboy boots because they need them or whatever they wear.

[18:27] I don't know. But it's in the muck and the mire. God is there and he's saying we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. God is in the muck and the mire with each one of us.

[18:40] So these words, these words that we're reading are not just a text. When we were meeting at the leeches house for the sermon prep a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago at this point, Carl reminded us that this isn't just a text.

[18:57] This is God's word. So when God says we are his people, he's the sheep of his pasture, he's saying he's going to protect us. He's going to comfort us. He's going to be there with us. If we walk away, he's going to find us.

[19:08] He won't let us walk away. And so what does the psalmist say? He says, know that the Lord, remember that he is God. We're reading The Silver Chair with the boys.

[19:19] We go through a process of reading books to them at night. We go through the Narnia series. The Silver Chair is great. It's one of my favorites. I think no matter what book I'm going to talk about for Narnia, I'll always say it's one of my favorites because they're all great.

[19:32] So Aslan tells Jill Pohl at the beginning of the book to, here are the four things you need to remember and you need to repeat to yourself. I'm sorry if there's spoilers.

[19:44] The book's decades old at this point. Jill becomes so fixated. So when Aslan says that, he says, repeat to me. Remind me. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

[19:55] He doesn't let Jill just go after he said, here's your directions and go. I hope you're doing okay. He says, repeat to me. And he forces Jill to repeat until it's ingrained in her brain.

[20:08] And the book continues on, right? That's like a paragraph. And the book continues on and halfway through the book, quarter of the way through the book, she stops repeating and she stops remembering. She comes in contact with, you know, the bad witch.

[20:24] Who doesn't look bad, looks great, looks beautiful. And the witch says, if you want comfort, you can go to that castle. If you want to go over there, find there, they'll give you warmth and food.

[20:36] What she doesn't know is that the witch is saying, you go there, they'll give you warmth and food because they're actually going to plump you up and make you into a pie. And so Jill becomes so fixated on the warmth that she needs or she desires that she forgot and she forgets to repeat.

[20:54] So they go through and they're walking through and it's miserable out. It's like snowing sideways. It's miserable. They're falling down into like these cracks. But all they see is the light in the castle.

[21:07] And that's all they want and that's their desire. She forgets to repeat. It's not until they get to the castle, they get their comfort that they want, that they realize they're in a bad situation.

[21:19] And in that moment, they remember that. What are those things that Asleen told us to remember? What are those things that Asleen told us to repeat? And they do it and they look out and they see exactly the places where they were tripping up, the places where they were walking through was exactly where Asleen told them to be.

[21:36] If they had been repeating themselves what Asleen had said, they would remember and would have been able to stay out of harm's way because of what Asleen said. So they don't get turned into pie.

[21:50] They escape and they move on with life. But the point there is they chose to focus on their own lives and their own wants and their own desires. And they focused on them and they walked in the direction that happened to be in the direction that they needed to go, but their focus was on something completely else.

[22:08] In my job, I can focus on what I want, but if it's not within what Christ is desiring for me, I might be able to get that thing. But it's going to be separate from God and so things will go wrong.

[22:19] And it may not be that it's going to be a job-related thing. It could be that my focus is so far off of who God is that I start down a path that's not good.

[22:31] So the psalmist, I believe here, when he says, know that the Lord, right, we keep repeating that word know. That know is a deep reutterance of knowledge. Remember, remind yourself.

[22:43] For those of us who have called the name of Christ, he saved us from the pit of hell. That's crazy. Remember that.

[22:54] Amongst everything else that we see God do in our lives, the suffering that we see happen, remember who God is. So now what's our response?

[23:05] The next slide there, Kevin. Turned my page too quick. So what's the final response here? So we know, we share, we do it, sing and shout joyfully.

[23:20] In this final section, we see more exclamation points. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. Enter his gates with thanksgiving.

[23:33] What are gates? I think the youth group may have talked about gates. Brad's nodding his head yes. Gates are things that can keep you out, but it's also gates are things that you can go through.

[23:50] So enter his gates with thanksgiving. There's a place that we go to praise and honor God. And we can do that with thanksgiving no matter where we are. Right? The Israelites, the gate that they would have walked through when they knew that they were going to go praise God was into the temple.

[24:03] Right? They walk through the gate, they go into the temple, and they're thankful. And just so like we can walk in here this morning, right? This is a call to worship. We walked in through these doors this morning and we're thankful.

[24:14] We've got a friend with us. We have a family with us. We've got whoever. We're entering into this time of worship. And we can be thankful because of who God is. It's not like leave your baggage at the door and pick it up on the way out.

[24:28] It's lay your burdens at the foot of the cross. Come to the cross. Come into this worship setting with thanksgiving. Nehemiah, right?

[24:38] He was sad in Nehemiah 2, but at the end, he gathers choirs together to give thanks because of what God has done at the dedication of the wall. Each week, we get to gather and give thanks to the lamb that is slain.

[24:51] The Israelites looked forward to a coming salvation. We can look back at what Christ has done 2,000 years ago and be thankful that a man who lived 2,000 years ago, lived a life crucified, buried, and rose from the grave.

[25:15] That's a historically accurate fact with huge implication. We know these things, right? Verse 3. So we give thanks.

[25:28] We praise him because he is God. And again, what we look at here is this is independent of my situation. This psalm has nothing to do with where the psalmist is, what they're doing.

[25:41] This isn't David writing, saying somebody's coming to attack me. I'm hiding in a cave. God, protect me. But I'm thankful, right? It's not one of those psalms. This is a psalm completely independent of the situation.

[25:54] But in reality, no matter when the psalmist wrote this, in the time of Israel, they're either just coming out of or getting ready to go into more suffering. There's rarely a time in Israel's history where there's just like peace.

[26:09] There's no war. And even when there is peace in the time of Solomon, we have books of Solomon that are talking about how there's not peace in his heart. Right?

[26:19] So this is completely independent of our situation. We've seen and experienced a lot of suffering. We've seen and experienced a lot of salvation too, which is awesome. When the Israelites were wandering through the wilderness, God was with them.

[26:32] They were called to praise and serve God, yet they were grumbling as meat and bread rained from the sky. They were grumbling even though they were being blessed at that moment.

[26:42] When we're wandering through the wilderness, whether it's sickness, death, life questions, shingles for the fourth time, an unsure future, whatever it is, we're reminded that we can enter.

[26:56] Not only that we can enter, but we're called to enter with thanksgiving because we know what God has done. This is laying your burdens at the foot of the cross.

[27:08] This is going to Christ because he is sufficient, because he is God. He is Jehovah. He is Elohim. He is the God. And then the last verse, five.

[27:22] For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever in his faithfulness to all generations. This for, I believe, refers back to the no. What do we know?

[27:34] We know that the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever, as Matt was saying, and his faithfulness to all generations. At this point in history, right, the psalmist is writing to a group of people who most likely understand the Torah, understand the history of Israel.

[27:49] As we go through the Old Testament, we see in Psalm 78, just a couple chapters earlier, there's 72 verses recounting the beauty and the majesty, how God is faithful, steadfast, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and mercy.

[28:05] But for those of us who are not of Jewish descent, we look back and we know that that God is the God who sent his son to live a life that we could not live, to die the death that we deserve.

[28:16] He's a good God. Amen. This is the God that sent his son. The God who, in Genesis 3, made a promise that in the Gospels we see its fulfillment.

[28:29] And we see his steadfast love throughout all of the Old Testament. We see his steadfast love throughout all of the New Testament. And we see his steadfast love in each of our lives. Right? This isn't just what we see in Scripture, but we, this no, is to remember what God has done in your life for those who are called by Christ.

[28:48] This God kept his promise and he is good. Good shows up about 500 times in the Old Testament with about 300 of them being referred directly to God or something that he's done.

[28:58] Matthew 19, Jesus says, why do you call me good? No one is good but the Father. God is good. And that's like an understatement in our language.

[29:13] Right? The word good there, I feel like should be translated as like awesome, almighty, amazing. Whatever other word you want to throw in there, that's what God is. So this head knowledge produces an opportunity for us to reflect on who God is.

[29:31] And it should produce a continual desire to worship him. But I know that it doesn't. Man has sinned. Talk about Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.

[29:42] But we also know that in our own lives, each of us today, this morning, have made a conscious decision to turn from God. Whether it's you're getting ready and the kids aren't listening and you're yelling at them because they're being disobedient and you're raising your voice and you're getting angry.

[30:00] Or any other multitude of things. But we see that God is good. He is worthy to be worshiped. So when there are things that distract us, remember that he is good.

[30:15] Our hope is not in ourselves or our situations, but in a God who has proven himself over and over again. We see in Job's suffering, but we see God's goodness and his salvation in Job.

[30:28] Randy talked about Psalm 117, a psalm of praise to God, but he also said the same thing, that in the midst of the chaos, I'm comforted because God is king. And God is good.

[30:40] God is king of the chaos. It doesn't mean he's a chaotic God. We were reminded last week, just because we don't understand, we might see chaos in the world.

[30:55] It doesn't mean that it's not under control and that God's not working. As Brad said, circumstances, and I think Brad said this, circumstances I don't understand shows my limited understanding of what God is or can be doing.

[31:08] So our hope for our lives is not rooted in our own selves. Our hope for our lives and our salvation and eternal life with God is rooted in who God is. It's rooted in a good God, a Lord who is God, a God who is the shepherd.

[31:25] And those are just the three things from this verse. So in the midst of the situation that you're in, no matter what it is, who are you looking to? God calls us to worship him.

[31:38] We are created to worship. And we get to do that every week as a body here, but we also get to do that throughout the week. Right? And the good, the bad, the ugly, on a plane, train, or automobile, God is exactly who he says he is and he's worthy to be worshiped.

[31:59] So this sermon, this talk, these words that I'm saying are very much intended to be an encouragement to those who know Christ. But for those who are here that don't, I want to ask you if you've looked at who God is, and you've asked yourself, is he worthy?

[32:18] If you read these voices, or if you read these verses, you listen to the voices, and you hear the verses, if you don't know Christ, you can make a noise.

[32:29] If you go to the next slide, I think, Kevin, we'll just have the whole text there, yeah. If you don't know Christ, you can make a noise. It may not be joyful. If you serve the Lord, it's probably not with gladness.

[32:41] You can come into his presence, but it's probably not with joyful singing or thanksgiving. You can enter, but it's not with thanksgiving. Apart from the Lord, these things are impossible to do. For those who haven't listened to the call that God has made on your life, I encourage you to reflect and to think about those.

[33:02] I'm encouraging people to sing in the midst of suffering. I'm encouraging people to look around, and it's strange. It's such a beautiful thing when we know that people are suffering.

[33:15] Not that that's beautiful, but when we know people are suffering, and we can look at, we can see them singing joyfully, loudly, with tears streaming down their eyes. I know for myself and Megan, when we're up here leading music, there are songs that we'll look at each other, like, we can't make eye contact with these people during the song, or else we're going to lose it.

[33:39] It's going to be a distraction, but we can see that they are worshiping their Savior in the midst of their suffering. So our minds and our hearts get connected when we allow the mind to fuel that white hot affection of our heart.

[33:56] So to know that knowledge in verse three is what fuels these things, right? It's we're commanded to make a joyful noise. We're commanded to serve the Lord and to come into his presence, to enter his gates and give thanks to him.

[34:11] It's not easy to do that. So I'm not up here saying, everybody do that. It's easy. I'm up here saying, it's not easy. But in those moments, remember who God is. Remember what Christ has done.

[34:24] And sing loudly, proclaiming that even in the lowest valley will praise you because of who you are. So if you don't know this hope, if you look around and see people singing loudly with tears streaming down their eyes, remember and listen to the words of Christ from Matthew 11, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

[34:51] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It says rest for your souls.

[35:03] This isn't a promise from Christ to solve all your physical afflictions. He doesn't do that. He can. We see Christ sad when he says, when Lazarus died, but then we see him raise him from the dead.

[35:14] So we know Christ has power over sickness and death. But we can have hope that when we walk in the deepest valley, as Brad was reading from Psalm 23, and as we get to see from Psalm 23 next week, hey, though I walk through the valley, the shadow of death, he is with me.

[35:32] He is guiding me. He is comforting me. We saw that in Brother Frank's life. When he was sick, he was comforted because of who Christ is and who he knew Christ to be.

[35:45] Christ is worth it. God is good and will provide rest for your soul. And for the Christian this morning, remember these things. Remember to remember, remember to remind, repeat and reflect on his word.

[36:01] Write things on note cards, share them with your friends, with your spouse, with your family, with your kids, whoever it is, and remember that God is good. That his mercy is good.

[36:13] That his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generation. And he actually saved you from the pit of hell. And he's done so much else.

[36:24] God is gracious. He's good. He's kind. So as we sing this last song, shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.

[36:36] Come into his presence with singing. Why? Because the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

[36:48] Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations.

[36:59] So let's get ready to stand as Matt comes back up. And remember, in the days to come, here in church, on the car ride home, wherever you find yourself, praise the Lord.

[37:10] So let's pray. Let's pray.