Never Alone, Always Joyful

Good morning. Good morning. Nice to see everyone here today. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Katie Hauck. I'm one of the ministers here at New Life, and Pastor David, who never, ever, ever takes a day off, has finally taken a well-deserved vacation day. So we are praying he's having a wonderful time and not missing us too much. I do things a little different than him, so I did hand these out. If anyone didn't receive one and wants one, raise your hand, and Randy is my helper. He's going to pass any out if anyone needs one. It's just something where you can take notes if you don't have a notebook, and just there's four things we're going to talk about today. I'll get to those and what those are in my message. If you want to write them down, you don't have to. But today, we're going to talk about David and the things that we can learn from King David. Now, David was a shepherd, a soldier, and a king. David was referred to 1,118 times in 28 different books of the Bible. There are 66 chapters written about David, which is far more than any other person in the Old Testament. David was the only person ever called a man after God's own heart. His very name means beloved. He was chosen specifically by God to reign over Israel, and he is called one of the greatest kings that ever existed. Now, I knew all of that about David, but to be honest, I never really liked David. I know that's terrible to say he's the David that gave us that amazing story of fighting Goliath. What an incredible story of a little boy that had this amazing faith in God that he beat this giant. But he's also the same David that lusted after a married woman, had an affair with her, got her pregnant, and then sent her husband to the front lines to die. So I was like, why does everyone say all these wonderful, amazing things about David when clearly the Bible is filled with mistake after mistake after mistake that he makes? So I figured, okay, I can't dislike somebody in the Bible. I should study him a little bit more.

And as I studied him, the more that I learned and the deeper that I got and the more that I read his stories, I realized David's human. David's just like us. David makes mistakes. He screws up. He makes bad choices. He does the wrong thing. But the thing about David is that despite his failures, despite his mistakes and his problems, he deeply, deeply loves God. When he first started becoming popular, King Saul, who was king at the time and also his father-in-law, got very jealous because people liked David more than him, because people were praising David more than him. And King Saul wanted to kill David over it. And David had just gotten married to his wife, Michal, and he's newly married, and Saul tries to go into his home and kill him. And his wife, Michal, actually helps him escape, and he has to live in the wilderness, leave his new wife, leave everything that he knows, survive off of the wilderness for years because of King Saul's jealousy. And during that time, twice, he had the opportunity where he snuck up on Saul and could have killed him and put an end to everything, gotten his life back. But he didn't because he said, I could never harm one of God's anointed because he loved God so much that was more important than getting his life back. David always was willing to own up to his faults and ask God to forgive him for the bad choices that he made. That's why so many people talk about how great David was. So David lived in a time where when you sinned or made mistakes, you had to give a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice, an animal sacrifice. It was not an easy thing to do, and a lot of people question, why did they go through all that trouble?

So I want to give you a visual. I want you to imagine that sitting in front of you is a glass of water. It's the purest glass of water you could possibly have on earth. It's just crystal clear. It's perfectly clean. It's fresh from the mountains. It's perfect. And it's sitting in front of you and I just take one little drop of something called botulinum and put it in it Now you might not know what that was, but I've been studying it botulinum is the deadliest substance known to man one drop ingested will kill you a painful horrible death in moments Okay, so if I took one tiny drop of this poison, and I put it in the water Could you drink it? No, you literally cannot drink it you would die, okay? God is that pure glass of water. God is pure and clean and perfect He's crystal clear and our sin is Poison to God and God wants to be in our presence But the teeniest tiniest little drop of sin in our lives Stops us from being in his presence and a lot of people say well. I've lived a good life I'm not that bad. I think I deserve to go to heaven. I've made good choices. I've lived a good life, right? One teeny tiny sin one teeny tiny white lie or evil thought about someone is enough That you cannot literally be in God's presence. That's all it takes That's why in the Old Testament. They had to do sacrifices It was a way of being redeemed and cleansed from their sins They would use the blood of a pure undefiled animal to make atonement for their immoralities but the problem was the moment they left the tabernacle and Sinned they were unrighteous all over again It was a temporary solution that did not last long enough So that's why God came up with a permanent solution God sent Jesus to live the perfect life and make the ultimate Sacrifice for us his blood made the atonement for all of our past sins and all of our future sins

Because of his death on the cross when God looks at us he sees us as pure he sees us as sinless He sees us as righteous and we can boldly stand in the presence of God Now I want to stop for just a moment and I know this isn't how pastor David does it But I just want to stop for a moment and say that if you've never accepted Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior then he doesn't see you as clean but you can do that You can do that right now we don't have to wait to the end of the service if you're watching live pause the video because this is way more important than Anything else that I'm going to say today That if you accept Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior his blood will make you clean He will wipe away all of your sins He will see you as pure and righteous and all you have to do is say I accept it I accept the gift God's giving it to you. It's free. You don't have to do anything but say I accept and Then say God I just want to live for you from now on that's it. It's really that simple So if you've never done that you're here you're at home I'm begging you to just take a break right now and just do it because it's the most important decision you will ever make in your life and If you do we're gonna pray later and if you're here you can come up if you're at home Find someone to pray with you Find someone to celebrate with you Because this is a joyous occasion when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and it's something that should be celebrated When you accept Jesus you get to be in the presence of God now David David didn't have that luxury David couldn't because David lives before Jesus David couldn't just go in the presence of God But David wanted to David deeply desired to be able to go be with God So he came up with a plan and today we're going to read about David's plan Okay. Now his plan is in two places in the Bible. It's in second Chronicles it there first Chronicles It's also in 2nd Samuel chapter 6 today. I'm going to be in first Chronicles We'll start in chapter 13 If you have your Bibles and want to turn there you can if you don't I believe it'll be up on the PowerPoint behind

me But I encourage you tonight when you get home to also read 2nd Samuel chapter 6 it's the same story, but it's told a little bit differently there's some things in there that might be a little bit differently and God has this amazing way of speaking to you when you open the Bible and read it for yourself when you're just spending time alone So I just encourage you to go home tonight read 2nd Samuel chapter 6 read the story and just see what else God has in it for you because we're gonna talk about Four things you can learn but I guarantee there's a lot more than four that you can learn from this story. So before I actually read, though, I do just want to give you a little bit more background. You probably remember the story in the Bible where Moses freed the Israelites from Egypt, right? He went, they were enslaved, and he went to Pharaoh, and he said, let my people go. And he led them out, and God parted the Red Sea, and the Israelites crossed, and they were free. During that time, Moses went up on the mountain, and God gave him the Ten Commandments. What you might not know is while Moses was also up there on the mountain, God told him, build me a sanctuary so that I can be with my people, okay? Because the actual presence of the holy God was going to come into this structure, there were very, very specific details about how that structure had to be built, okay? So what it was was a tabernacle. It was like a tent, and it was portable so that the people could take it down and take it with them when they went places and then reset it back up, okay? So the tent, the outside, the tabernacle, was portable. God also gave instructions on how to build it, but then what to put inside of it, where to put it, how to move it, how to enter, very specific instructions. One of the pieces of furniture that went inside the tabernacle was something called the Ark of the Covenant. Now, the Ark was a different kind of religious symbol than the people of those days were used to.

It was not a statue to represent God, it was not a container for God, and it was not something they worshipped. It was a place where God and man could meet. The Ark was mostly, it was made of wood and it had a gold overlay. Inside of it, they put the tablets with the Ten Commandments on it. They also put Aaron's rod to signify God's miraculous powers, and a pot of manna to remind them of God's great provision. The lid was what was called the mercy seat, okay? There were two gold cherubims facing each other with their wings going upward, kind of covering the seat. The Bible tells us God's presence hovered above the mercy seat. There were gold rings on the side of this container so that long poles could fit through it, and the people could carry it. When it was carried, it had to be veiled or covered. No one but the Levites were supposed to carry it, and if anyone touched it or looked inside of it, they would immediately die because of what it was. Fifteen chapters in Exodus went into detail on how to build all of these things. Fifteen chapters, that's how important it was. So Moses did it, he did everything right, he got it built, he set everything up, everything was perfect. And in Exodus 40, chapter 4, it says, the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And that's where people went to meet God. And it worked this way for a long time, over a hundred years. But things happened. In approximately 1180 BC, the tabernacle is set up in a place called Shiloh, and the Philistines attacked the city, and they took the Ark of the Covenant out of the tabernacle and took it away. From that moment on, the Ark and the tabernacle are never together again. The tabernacle, the next time we see it in the Bible, it's in a place called Nob. We have no idea how it got there.

After that, we see it in Gibeon, which is about five miles northwest of Jerusalem. That's the last place that we have it mentioned in the Bible. And people still went there for years and years and years. People went to the tabernacle. They went there and worshipped God. They went and did sacrifices. Even King Solomon went there. But God was not in the tabernacle. Now the Ark, after its separation, went with the Philistines to their capital city. But chaos started happening, because they weren't supposed to have the Ark. People started dying, a plague hit the people. They had giant statues of their false gods falling to the ground. And after seven months, the Philistines were begging the Israelites to come take the Ark back. They actually were giving them expensive gifts to come get their Ark back, because they didn't want it anymore. But the Israelites didn't realize how important this was. And they took it to Abinadab's house. He lived in a place called Kiriath Jerom. And basically, they put it in storage for the next 20 years. They forgot about it, just left it in storage. Now David, David had recently brought all the nations together and he wanted to renew them in the worship of God. To do that, he wants to go get the ark that has been long neglected and bring it to the capital city of Jerusalem. He wants God to be in their midst again. So that's the story we are going to read today. We're starting in 1 Chronicles chapter 13. It says, Then David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds and with every leader. And David said to all the assembly of Israel, If it seems good to you, and if it is of the

Lord our God, let us send out our brethren everywhere who are left in the land of Israel, and with them to the priests and the Levites who are in their cities and in their common lands, that they may gather to us, and let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we have not inquired at it since the days of Saul. Then all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of the people. So basically what that's saying is that David gathered all the leaders of Israel together. He gathered all the people and he told them their plan. Everyone got excited about it. Everyone said, yes, let's do that. They all agreed that it was the right thing to do. Verse 5 says, So David gathered all Israel together from Shehor in Egypt to as far as the entrance of Hamath to bring the ark of God from Kiriath-Jerom. And David and all Israel went up to Bala to Kiriath-Jerom, which belonged to Judah, to bring up there the ark of the Lord, who dwells between the cherubim, where his name is proclaimed. So he wants, what that's saying is he wants this to be a big deal. He wants everyone there. This is important. He wants it to be a big celebration. He wants everyone involved in it. Do you know over 30,000 people showed up to join him in bringing the ark back? 30,000 people showed up to celebrate this great occasion. Verse 7 says, So they carried the ark of God on a new cart from the house of Abinadab, and Uzzah and Ahio drove the cart. Then David and all Israel played music before God with all their might, with singing on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on cymbals, and with trumpets. It's a party. It's like a parade, I imagine, 30,000 people, and they are dancing, and they are singing,

and they are cheering, and they are celebrating. And I imagine it was just a really amazing place to be. Everyone's excited, they're doing the right thing for God, but something happens that changes everything. In verse 9, it says, And when they came to Kiddon's threshing floor, Uzzah put out his hand to hold the ark, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uzzah, and he struck him, because he put his hand on the ark, and he died there before God. He died. Uzzah was trying to pull the cart, and the oxen stumbled, and he reached out his hand to steady the ark, and died on the spot. Remember, a few minutes ago when I said one of the rules was you couldn't touch the ark? But he did. He touched it, he made a mistake, and he lost his life. Verse 11 says, And David became angry because of the Lord's outbreak against Uzzah, and therefore the place is called Perez-Uzzah to this day. David was afraid of God that day, saying, How can I bring the ark of God to me? So David would not move the ark with him into the city of David, but took it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. It says, David was angry. I'm sure he was embarrassed. He didn't understand. This certainly wasn't what he expected to happen. There were 30,000 people there celebrating, and in front of everybody who's expecting this ark to get to Jerusalem, somebody dies. Obviously, the celebrating ended, and David's mad. He doesn't understand. He kind of is pouting.

He says, I don't want anything to do with this ark anymore. He drops it off at Obed-Edom's house, and he goes home. He's blaming God. He starts thinking, well, God must not be so great after all. God must be trying to stop me from doing something. He hardened his heart. tart. He walked away. He gave up. He said, I don't want anything to do with the ark anymore. He no longer cared that much about being in God's presence. He was filled with pride, embarrassment, and anger. He allowed his emotions and his circumstances to make his decisions for us. He sounds really human right now, doesn't he? Have you ever been mad at God because something didn't work out the way that you thought it would? Have you ever started thinking, gosh, maybe this God isn't so great after all. This happened. Well, guess what? God is good. God is good all of the time. And David is about to be reminded of that. Because in verse 14, it says, the ark of God remained with the family of Obed-Edom in his house for three months. And the Lord blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that he had. The house of Obed-Edom was blessed. Clearly, God is good. Clearly, he's filled with blessings for people. So now David's confused. Well, if God is good, and my plan was good, why did it fall apart? Why didn't it work? Why did I have problems? I've asked God that question before. If my plan is good, and you're good, why isn't this working? Have you ever done something, you think it's godly, it's helpful, it's right, it's what the Bible tells us to do, yet it turns out to not work, or it turns into a mess, and you don't understand why. Why would that happen? Well, if we reread that chapter, you would see how David goes before the leaders with his plan, and he goes before the people with his plan. But I didn't read in that chapter where it says he went before God with his plan. It doesn't say he prayed. It doesn't say he consulted his Bible, which he would have had a Torah. Torah is the first five books in the Bible. That's what David would have had. It doesn't say that he read it. It says he went before the people. All the people decided it was good, and he did it. He came up with an idea. It sounded good, but he did things his way. Now, God wanted his ark in Jerusalem. God wanted to be back in the presence of his people, but God has a way of doing things. God has a system. God has a plan. David did things his way, not God's way. I don't know if you've ever done that. We have the best intentions.

Our hearts are right, but our actions actually aren't. How many of us can stand up and honestly in our hearts say that before we do something, we earnestly seek God's approval? We pray intently. We read his word, and then we wait for an answer. I think we all know that's what we're supposed to do. I think sometimes we do that, but maybe you're in the middle of something right now, and you say, I think it's right, but it's not working. Maybe just stop and say, this morning, today, when I woke up, did I ask God to direct my steps? Did I ask him to guide me? Did I ask him to give me the right direction? Because sometimes we're doing the right thing the wrong way. I know when my husband and I, we've adopted a couple kids. I think most of you know that, and my whole life, I felt called to adopt. My whole life, I knew I was going to adopt, and the Bible tells us to adopt, right? It tells us to care for the orphans, so I took that as obviously a godly, biblical thing to do, to adopt, and my husband, who originally was against it, prayed, and God totally changed his heart, and he said, yes, let's adopt, two, let's get three, whatever. So clearly, we felt this is the right thing to do. This is the right path. This is what God wants us to do, so we did it. It took over three years. We went through three different adoption agencies. One of them was raided by the FBI, shut down, stopped from ever doing adoptions again, and almost cost us our children. We almost didn't get them, and I thought to myself, well, I know God has my kids picked out for me, but what I didn't do is sit down with my husband and intently pray, God, how do you want us to do this? We knew God had our kids, and we knew it was the right thing to do, so we just picked an agency and went with it, and I'm sure we prayed along the way, but we never said, God, pick the right agency. God, put the right people in our paths. We just picked one. It took way longer than it should have, way more money than it should have, but thankfully God is good, right? And God gives us mercy when we do things our own way because God brought our children to us. Maybe not in the way that we wanted to, our way was much harder. We need to learn that sometimes if we just seek God's will, things are going to happen much easier, much quicker, less tragic if you do things right the first time. God has a perfect way, and yes, he can fix our mistakes, but if we seek him, there will be less mistakes. David had the instructions. He had a layout, 15 chapters, on exactly what he was supposed to do to get that ark, but he never looked it up, so he realized that, and he regathered all the people together and said,

let's try this again, and he got the right people. He had them prepare themselves in the right way. He studied what he was supposed to do. We're going to jump to chapter 15, verse 13. It says, For because you did not do it the first time right, the Lord our God broke out against us, because we did not consult him about the proper order. So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel, and the children of the Levites bore the ark of God on their shoulders by its poles, as Moses had commanded according to the word of God. It was in there. The instructions were right there in the word of God. David figured it out. They read the instructions and figured out who would carry it, how they would do it, what order, what would they wear, what steps did they have to take, and when they consulted God, when they seeked his will, it succeeded. Verse 25-28 says, So David and the elders of Israel and the captains over thousands went up to bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom with joy. And so it was when God helped the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord that they offered seven bulls and seven rams. David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who bore the ark, the singers, the Kenaniah, the music master with the singers. David also wore a linen ephod. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn, with trumpets and with cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps. They did it. Nobody died. It was a success because they seeked God. And if you're taking notes, that's the first thing that we can learn from David today, is seek God in all you do. Matthew 6.33 says, Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Seek him first. Our hearts may be right, but if we're not following God's direction, it might not turn out the way that we think it should. Seek God in everything you do. Now the story doesn't actually end here.

They're bringing the ark into Jerusalem, and it's wonderful, but the story doesn't end. Verse 29 says, And it happened, as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the city of David, that Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window and saw King David whirling and playing music, and she despised him in her heart. Michal was the wife of David, his first wife. She was Saul's daughter. She was the one who helped David escape when Saul was trying to kill him. But as I said, David went off into the wilderness, and she was left behind. Saul actually gave her in marriage to another man. Okay, and she lived married to this man for a long time. But one day David came back and said, I want my wife back. Now David's been married to many other women since then. He's moved on. Michal's married to her husband, and her husband is deeply in love with her. They have a life together. So he goes to David, and he says, Please, please let me keep her as my wife. Please, she's my only wife. We love each other. You have other wives. You haven't even seen her in years. Please, let us stay husband and wife. And David said, No. No. So as you can imagine, McCall is a little bit angry, she's hurt, right? But she let her hatred for David stop her from celebrating. In this moment, we see such a contrast in emotions. Now most of us would justify McCall's actions, right? We would justify her anger. We would have compassion for her. We can understand what a difficult thing she must be going through. But she was filled with bitterness and resentment. Her heart was vengeful and jealous. If you read the story in 2 Samuel, she basically called her husband a dirty, vulgar old man. She was dishonoring of him.

She had no regard for God or the magnitude of what was happening in her nation right then. Instead, she was worried because she was embarrassed that her husband was dancing around. We need to learn that we cannot let our feelings towards another person get in the way of our love for God. Negative emotions will eat you alive. Negative emotions will steal your joy, they'll steal your peace, they'll steal your love. They lead people to lose faith. They break relationships. How you handle negative emotions will literally impact your life. I have firsthand experience of this just not too long ago. There were three of us, and we were somewhere, and someone did something hurtful to us. I'm not going to go into detail of what that was, but someone did something that really hurt the three of us, really upset us. And person number one, she said she didn't enjoy her day. The moment we were done doing our activity, she was gone, home, done, she's done. Which person in this scenario do you think had the best time that day? Right? Our negative emotions don't affect anyone but our own lives. When you focus on the negative, it affects you. It hurts you. Her day was ruined. The first person, they had a fabulous day. Because they said, I'm not going to let this bother me. The enemy wants to steal your joy. He wants you to focus on all the things going wrong in your life. He wants you to be miserable and unhappy. He wants your heart filled with hatred for the people that hurt you. But we need to choose God through our suffering. When we were here on Wednesday, that's what we talked about, was turning towards God when we were hurting. God wants us to humble ourselves.

He wants us to respond to difficult situations with love and grace. He wants us to stop focusing on us and ourselves and what we're going through and the negative things in our life and just focus on God. McCall, she acted wrongly. She was stuck focusing on the bad things in her life, stuck focusing on the negative things going on and how much she hated David. She turned away from God. She's not going to celebrate God. And that's the opposite of what we need to do when we're hurting. So what's the best way to turn towards God? It's worship. When I say worship, I don't mean singing along to a song on the radio or moving your mouth to the words when Kenzie's up here singing. I mean true, heartfelt worship. When we lay our hearts before God and meditate and reflect on who he is, when we worship, we position our hearts to receive. We open our eyes to see, and we open our minds to understand what's going on. During real, true worship, healing, restoration, and feelings of immense joy can take place because we are focusing on God. The Bible not only commands us to be joyful, but it actually glorifies God when we are. McCall should have chosen to rejoice in the Lord, rejoice despite her situations. She should have gone down there with the rest of them and worshiped God. Psalm 118.24 says, this is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And that's the second thing we can learn from this story is to choose joy. Choose joy. And if you can't choose joy, then use worship to get there. But we can choose to not let the people around us steal our joy by taking our focus off of us and focusing on God. Now David, David was genuinely worshiping God. He was completely vulnerable.

His heart was wide open and he was going to celebrate regardless of what it looks like or what people thought of him. It didn't matter that he was the king of Israel dancing around with all the regular people. He was worshiping because it was just about him and God. I can remember when I was younger sitting in church and we had gone to this worship night and the worship band was playing and it was, it was beautiful. And this woman was really getting into the worship. And I kind of kept looking at her because I was new to all of this and I'm kind of looking at her and she's cheering and suddenly some song comes on and she gets so overwhelmed with her love for God. She starts running up and down the aisles yelling. She's like, running up and down. And I'm like, what is wrong with that lady? I'm like, are you kidding me? How embarrassing, how undignified to be running up and down yelling. You're an adult. That was my first thought. But the longer I watched her run, the more I realized I was a little bit jealous. I was a little bit jealous that she could just let everything go, not care what anyone around her thought. It was her and God at that moment. And she was so filled with her love for God. It didn't matter who was in the room. It didn't matter who hurt her. She was going to celebrate her God and I'm standing there, I can't even lift my arms up because I'm worried about what the people next to me are going to think. That's worship. That's real worship and our God is worthy of that kind of worship. He is worthy of that kind of praise.

And we need to get to a point where we care more about what he thinks of us than the person sitting next to us. When you are deeply and intimately worshiping God, his approval is the only approval you need. David shows us that we can't let the negative views of other people, the glares and the stares and the comments of other people, stop us from worshiping our God. I love what Paul says in Galatians 1.10. He says, does it sound as if I'm trying to win human approval? No, indeed. What I want is God's approval. He says, am I trying to be popular with people? Because if I were, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. Number three is God's opinion is the only one that matters. It doesn't matter what our friends think. It doesn't matter what our neighbors think. It doesn't matter what our coworkers think. God's opinion is the only one that matters and David teaches us that. He shows us that because Michael is glaring at him, disapproving of him, commenting, calling him out, and he says, I don't care, I'm worshiping my God because he truly, deeply loved God. Chapter 16, verse 1a, so they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. It was done. It was in the city. It was done. It was right where David wanted it. His plan is complete. God helped him do what it was he was called to do. So David says, I'm not going to mess it up this time. So he does a lot of studying. He figures out exactly what his next step is, who to put in charge of it, how to take

care of it. He chooses people. He chooses a worship leader. And then in chapter 16, he gives us a beautiful song and prayer. It's one of his psalms. It's actually interesting because if you study this psalm, it's made up from other psalms. He took a bunch of other psalms that he'd written to make this one. And I want to read this today. We're going to start in verse 8. He starts with, Oh, give thanks. to the Lord. Give thanks. That's how we should start everything, right? Give thanks to the Lord. That's number one. A call to praise. And then he goes on in the next several verses telling us how to give praise to God. Not just say give praise to God. How do we do that? He goes on to say, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people. Sing to him. Sing psalms to him. Talk of all his wondrous works. Glory in his holy name. Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord. Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face evermore. Remember his marvelous works which he has done. His wonders in the judgment of his mouth. O seed of Israel, his servant, you children of Jacob, his chosen ones. There are many ways to praise God. Call upon him. Tell others about his deeds. Sing to him. Give him glory. Rejoice. Seek him. Remember him. In order to do the first three things that David taught us, in order to

rejoice in him, to seek him, to only care about his opinion, we need to remember the things God has done for us. We need to remember how great our God is. And when we get focused on other things, we sometimes forget. We can never forget what our God has done for us. So if you're in a place where you're struggling, just stop and say I'm gonna think about it. Make a jar. I see these people that make jars and every day they write one thing they're thankful for down, just one thing, and they stick it in a jar. And then when they're feeling bad, they start pulling them out and remembering, oh, remember when God blessed me with this. Oh, remember when this happened. Oh. Suddenly it changes everything. Changes everything. Because we start focusing on how good our God is. And we have to remember, like that last line said, that we are his chosen. People. Verse 14. Says, he is the Lord our God. His judgments are on all the earth. Remember his covenant forever. The word which he commanded for a thousand generations. The covenant which he made with Abraham and his oath to Isaac. And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute. To Israel for an everlasting covenant. Saying, to you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance. And when you were few in number, indeed very few, and strangers in it. And they went from one nation to another. And from one kingdom to another people. He permitted no man to do them wrong. Yes, he rebuked kings for their sakes. Saying, do not touch my anointed ones. And do my prophets no harm. David is reminding us of God's great covenant with us. Of his promises of protection. That no one can do us wrong. But our covenant, today, it's even better than the covenant that David had. We have a new covenant. A new covenant filled with promises that God gives us. Promises of his blessings. His never-failing love. His forgiveness. Promises that he will always be our God. And we will always be his children. We have the new covenant of Jesus Christ.

We have the new covenant of Jesus Christ. David didn't have that. But we do. Verse 23 says, sing to the Lord all the earth. Proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations. His wonders among the people. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. For he is also to be feared above all gods. For all gods of the people are idols. But the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and gladness are in his place. Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Tremble before him all the earth. The world also is firmly established. It shall not be moved. Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. And let them say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Let the sea roar and all its fullness. And let the field rejoice and all that is in it. And then let the trees of the wood shall rejoice before the Lord. For he is coming to judge the earth. He's saying all of the earth should sing his praise. praises. His glory is something to be celebrated. His love, his grace, his mercy are beautiful. Creation itself is a testimony to its amazing creator. There's a song that Kenzie sings sometimes called So Will I, and I just love that because that is so fitting for this part of this psalm because it says if creation sings your praises, so will I. If the stars were made to worship, so will I. If the mountains bow in reverence, so will I. The oceans roar your greatness, then so will I. All creation sings of his greatness, and that's why we're here to sing of his glory and his greatness and his majesty because he deserves it. And then it says tell others that God is coming to judge the world, but he has a plan of salvation. That's our commission. Jesus gives us that commission in the New Testament, but David knew it even back then. David knew even back then that we needed to tell everybody about him. God has a plan. It says, oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever, and say save us, oh God, for our salvation. Gather us together and deliver us from the Gentiles to give thanks to your holy name, to triumph in your praise.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting, and all the people said amen and praised the Lord. We need to have confidence in God. We need to be motivated to give thanks and praise because God is good, and his mercy endures forever. And that last line says all the people said amen. When we see all the people, it is a beautiful example of a group of believers coming together to praise the Lord in one accord. It's not just David singing this psalm. It's the people. It's church. It's us. We should be so excited. We should be so filled with praise. If the people of Israel can rejoice this much, how much more with Jesus Christ in our lives should we be rejoicing? We don't have to go to a tabernacle to be in God's presence. We are so blessed that God's presence is not limited to the ark and where the ark is. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, God lives inside of us. We can talk to him anytime we want to. He is always there to listen to us, to comfort us, and to guide us, and that's number four. The fourth thing that we can learn from David is that God is always with us. Joshua 1.9 says God is with you wherever you go. And Matthew 18.20 says I am with you always to the very end of the age. God is always with us. So today, having learned those four things, I have four challenges for you. We learned first from David that we should seek God. We learned that we should choose joy. We learned that only God's opinion matters. And we learned that God is always with us. So my first challenge is every morning when you wake up, pray. And maybe you do. But start your day asking God what his will for you is that day. Ask him to guide your path. Ask him to be a light to your step. Start every single morning seeking God and seeking his plan for your life. Challenge number two, choose joy. Things aren't always going to go your way. People are going to hurt you. That's the world that we live in. But choose to have joy despite it. Choose not to let other people ruin your day. Choose forgiveness, grace and love. Choose to always have joy regardless of what's going on around you. Challenge number three, don't worry what other people think of you. Do something a little crazy. Sing out loud in your car and not worry about the person driving next to you looking at you funny. Ask your server, can I pray for you? That's something we started doing recently when we're out at a restaurant. or a server, we're about to say grace over our meal today. Is there anything we can pray for you while we do it?

Usually they're a little caught off guard because not that many people do it, but you know what, I think we should all do it. I think every Christian should always be offering to pray for people. So step outside your comfort zone a little bit and ask a stranger if you can pray for them. Invite somebody to church. Be bold, because their opinion doesn't matter. Who cares if they look at you funny? Who cares if they said no? God is gonna be looking down very happy, and his opinion is the one that mattered. And step number four is just to challenge you to always remember that God is always with you. Turn to him in times of need, but not just times of need. I think we get stuck sometimes on turning to God when we're in a bad place, but then when things start going well, we're just focused on ourself again, because we've got it under control now. We don't need God as much. So I'm challenging you to spend more time with God in the good moments too. Pray, talk with him. Just try to deepen your relationship with him. Kenzie, you can come on up any time. Act like when you're young and you're dating, and you first get a boyfriend or girlfriend for the first time,

and you just can't wait to spend time with them. You can't wait to ask questions. You can't wait to find out everything about them. God wants to have that same kind of relationship with you. He wants you to be excited to spend time with him. He wants you to be excited to learn things about him. And guess what? He's always with us. He's not going anywhere, so you might as well start learning about him. You might as well start learning about the blessings and learning about who he is, because he's not going anywhere. Now, David taught us a lot of things. He actually taught way more than four. We know that he made a lot of mistakes, just like we do. But we also know, as I said in the beginning, that David was known as great. Because of Jesus Christ, God looks at us as great too. David's very name meant beloved, and because of Jesus Christ, our name is beloved to God too. God looks at us as his beloved children. God chose David, but God chose you too. God chose you. He has a plan for your life, just like he did David. So just remember how loved you are by God. So I said earlier, we kind of talked about accepting Jesus if you've never done that. I just want to say, if there's anybody

that hasn't accepted Jesus that's here today, that said, I did that earlier, or I'm ready to do that now, this is your opportunity. If there's anyone at home that says, well, I've thought about it, but I've never taken that step, I'm asking you right now, this very moment, to take that step, to say, Jesus, come into my heart. Jesus, I want to be forgiven. Jesus, I want to be seen as pure. I want to seek you. You can do that now, and maybe you say, I already know God, I've already accepted Jesus, but I haven't been doing these things, I haven't really been seeking God. Now's your chance. I haven't been choosing joy because I'm letting my negative emotions rule me and I'm going through life and life's pretty tough right now. We want to pray for you. If you just said, I need my joy back, we want to help remind you of all the things God's done in your life. Or maybe you say, I'm just really worried about what other people think of me and I'm trying to have boldness. You can have boldness. It's a fact. My favorite story in the Bible is Peter. Peter, who was so scared to admit that he knew Jesus,

he denied him three times. And just a little while later, stood before thousands of people preaching about Jesus. That's one extreme to the other because he'd met the Holy Spirit. And you can too. You can have that same boldness. Maybe you forget that God's with you all the time. Maybe you just need prayer for a situation, for something going on and you say, I just need to be reminded. If there's anyone today that needs prayer at all, we want to pray with you. We're going to let Kenzie sing a song and if you want prayer, you can come up and our ministers will pray with you. But if you don't, then let's just use this song as an opportunity to just worship our God. Let's just use this as a chance to say, God, I put you first. I don't care what's going on in my world. I'm going to truly worship. you right now.