Who keeps our soul among the living and does not allow our feet to be moved. For you, O God, have tested us. You have refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the nets. You laid affliction on our backs. You caused men to run over our heads.
We went through fire and through water, but you brought us out to rich fulfillment. I will go into your house with burnt offerings. I will pay you my vows which my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble.
I will offer you burnt sacrifices of fan animals. With the sweet aroma of rams, I will offer bulls with goats. Come and hear all you fear God, and I will declare what he has done for my soul.
I cry to him with my mouth, and he has extolled me with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. Certainly God has heard me. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.
Let us pray to our Lord and Savior. We are thankful, God, for such a wonderful psalm as this, as it gives us reasons to rejoice and to sing praises before you, God Almighty, and not just quietly within our hearts. And, Lord, to know, as the end of the psalm reminds us, yes, we will not regard iniquity in our hearts, and we should not regard it as to take care of it, and hold it, and cuddle it in us. But the Lord will not hear.
Yet, nevertheless, you do hear us, because you are a gracious God, and you cover our sins by the blood of our Lord and Savior, and mercy has not been taken away from us. May we continue in our lives, Lord, to draw close unto you, and to have more reasons to rejoice with our mouth, as well as, especially, above all, in our heart, in the great redemption and the awesome works of our Lord and Savior.
So, there’s much good truth here to digest in the psalm. It’s not the longest psalm, of course, but there’s a lot of things here, and wonderful things to behold. So, I have it broken down, as you see here, into four points, breaking a pattern of three points. It happens once in a while.
We even had a five-point sermon, I think, for a while.
Rejoicing for the Awesome Works of God
So, the first point, joy for awesome works of God, verses one through four. Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth, Sing out the honor of His name.
The joyful shout, verses two and then again in verse four and the like, where they are called to sing praises before Him. How awesome are Your works, O God! The call to rejoice before the Lord. There are times, of course, if you silence, there’s a time to speak forth.
And here, He tells Himself and the rest of us to rejoice. From the rooftops, to yell it out. That’s the idea of shouting.
Of course, He doesn’t mean to be a nuisance, to wake up your neighbor early in the morning, as the Proverbs said. It’s like a curse to hear them. But rather, the idea of shout is to rejoice with a loud voice in the wonders that Christ Jesus has done for us, that God has continued to do for us, even right now, clearly, and not obscurely.
The excitement leads to singing, verses two and four. Sing out the honor of His name. Sing to Him and rejoice, in verse four, and sing praises to Him as well.
And they shall sing praises, again, to your name. You get excited enough, it breaks forth into song. Even if you’re not very good at singing, it will happen one way or the other.
This is part of what it means to live and to be human. Singing is the next step beyond talking, right? Prayer is talking to Him. Singing is extended prayer, except with rhythm, often, or a petition before God.
It is a natural reaction to the happiness of joy and other human emotions in our lives. James tells us that if they are happy, they should rejoice and sing a song. A prayer, as well, is to ask for help.
And this singing of a song, a psalm, spiritual songs and the like, is for whom? All the earth. All the earth, all the land, the word could mean the idea of land there of Israel. But as we’ll see from the next few verses, when he talks about the sons of men, for example, it seems to be more universal than the works of God described there as universal.
And so it is often translated, all the earth. All are called to make a joyful shout to God. That is to talk to Him.
And if it’s to God, it is a prayer, even if it’s a song. Prayer is lifting up our desires before God. And it’s not always, of course, the desire of help, the desire of praise, as well.
And thanksgiving for the goodness that we have in Him and in Christ Jesus. The prayer is to be sung again in verse two and verse four, to sing with our mouth, to sing from our hearts, to sing with gratitude and joy. And not just on Sunday.
He’s not singing. Make a joyful shout to God only on the Sabbath, on the seventh day. The rest of the week, don’t bother me.
Whenever the occasion arises, whenever the occasion arises, make a joyful shout out loud. What he’s saying. With your mouth.
To and unto one another, as we see in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 as well. To sing those songs, the songs, the spiritual songs, unto one another. With joy in the heart.
For what particular? What is he shouting to the God Almighty for? Well, he specifies in verse three, how awesome are your works and the greatness of your power. How glorious is the wonderful works of God. All inspiring is the idea here.
Not that slang that came out in the 70s and 80s. Oh, that’s awesome, dude. I guess you’re still using it, young people.
I don’t know. The actual word, the amazing fact of what we see and behold of creation or redemption. He’s not specific here.
Although it bleeds into redemption, as we see it in other places. All the earth shall we worship and rejoice. That’s very broad as well.
Twice all the earth is mentioned. And then the sons of men in verse five, as I said as well. The great power here is the emphasis.
Through the greatness of your power is what he’s describing. The awesomeness of his works. Your enemies shall submit themselves to you.
That, of course, will happen at the end of the age when Christ returns. But to speak of the great power of God Almighty with respect to creation, the works of God and his wonderful doing towards the sons of men. Verse five, because not all the sons of men are redeemed.
God’s still working on and towards them. That would be the works of creation, the works of providence. And so I want to talk about that right now.
And the first thing that comes to mind is what? The hailstorms and the rain today and yesterday. That’s God. That’s not nature.
And that’s an awesome, terrifying thing to behold. We were driving home from a conference yesterday. And we were going to turn around and pick up food for today.
The yummy chicken that we had. But no further than a few hundred yards away, we heard a ton, ton, ton, ton, ton, ton, ton, ton. Like we’re in a tin can and someone’s hitting us on the head.
That’s the hail coming down. You don’t want to be caught in the hail. In your car.
If it’s big enough, and it was big enough, south of Highlands Ranch, because we heard the warning on the car. And the signal went out. Warning, warning, stay out.
Danger. It will break glass and windows. Stay away from the windows of the houses, even.
Not just the cars. Just horizontal. It’s that big and that dangerous.
That’s the power of God Almighty. The rain turning into hail and hammering things down, tearing down roofs like it tore down Elder Harvey’s roof two years ago now. Man is not equal to the power of our Lord and Savior.
Of God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. And it is terrifying when it’s bad enough, when you flee from it. We don’t have to see hurricanes and tornadoes.
Again, they had pictures of them out in the east. We’re blessed if you’re on the west side and east side, you’re a little closer to the tornadoes out there. And the further closer you get to Kansas, the bigger it seems the tornadoes get.
They’ve seen the pictures. They’d be terrified. I don’t want to see those.
I saw one once over there on the lakeside, as we know where that is off of I-70 by Federal. Going up and down the hill. Rain was coming down.
It was getting dark and scary. And a funnel was created and forming right over the lake. I saw it while driving in my 1971 Cup of Supreme.
Splashing through a couple of inches of water. That was how much rain was going on at the time. It was scary.
I’m like, I want to get out of here, Lord. That’s the mighty works of God. It doesn’t have to be what the food is giving you, the roof over your head.
Those are also the mighty works of God as well. Specifically, the great, terrifying acts beyond the power of man. Our nuclear power doesn’t equal how much is there in the universe, in the sun, in the center of the earth, in lightning storms.
When man calls nature, we call the hand of God. It’s a terrifying power. We live through it.
Seeing the Awesome Works of God
We realize it’s from Him. But this power is not only exercised towards the sons of men, verse 5, but specifically to the enemies that they shall submit themselves to you. Your enemies shall submit themselves to you.
And so this can be taken either by regeneration or by necessity. Regeneration, right? You’re born again, and thus we were enemies of God, and now we are friends, and we are redeemed. We are the children of God, even.
That’s a wonderful, mighty work of Him who has changed our hearts. Or by the necessity, when Christ returns, when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. It’ll be a terrifying day for them.
It’s best understood in the context of the gravity of the power of God to change the hearts of those who hate Him. Unbelievers will not submit. They will resist our overtures and pleas.
You talk to them, they want nothing to do with you. I recently, I’ve got another story, God’s providence. I go through the Bible.
I’ve been going through the Gospel of John. I’m on chapter 17 at Marsden Lake. Marsden Lake, I have about five to ten people, older people.
They need help or assistance there. It’s kind of an assisted living kind of a place, and you could be there for a long time, perhaps. And they get to hear the Word of God.
I have the opportunity to speak to them and urge them and take questions from them. I’m not preaching in this sense. I’m just sitting down.
I talk and go through the text. They’ve seen me do it. But the owners of that facility that have been there almost two years now, I guess, a year and a half, and before that, I look at two years, about three or four years ago, when COVID hit, everything shut down.
So about four years total. Slowly, carefully, trying to help them understand the Word of God. And it’s a big open space, kind of like this, for an enclose like this.
Management can hear it. The owners can hear it. And they’ve said, too much fire grips them.
We don’t want to hear that. They’re tired of it. So I’ve been fired.
Although I was never hired as such. No contract. But it’s an example.
Two years of hearing the truth of God’s Word, and they don’t want to hear it anymore. But God can change their hearts. He can overcome that hardness of heart.
The chains of Satan and sin, harder than steel, tempered steel upon them, can be shattered. I know it was shattered in your life, and in my life. But unless he is involved in that, it won’t change.
But the point is to highlight how hardened, how stiff, how difficult. They just resist. I want nothing to do with it.
But it can change, and they have changed. So when you changed, don’t think it was so easy. That’s my point.
It took the almighty power of the Creator of the universe to transform that heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That is a mighty, wonderful, awesome work of God. And we should rejoice in that, brothers and sisters, even though we’re Presbyterian.
Make it smile. Be happy about this. And sing praises before His name, not just on Sunday, but throughout the week, in your car, while walking, while humming, and supplying food for your family.
Brothers and sisters, this is why. We are saved by what? The power of God. And how is that expressed in the Bible? In various and sundry ways.
One way is a picture of a hammer. Do you know that? A hammer that shatters the hardest hearts. Jeremiah 23, 29, we read, Is not my word like a fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? And indeed it is.
That’s the power of God. The awesome work in creation, and especially. And again, it’s all the earth, first of all.
All the earth should worship you and sing praises to you and praise your name. We know it’s going to be all the earth, because it’s also the enemies. It’s not just the earth of the land of Israel, but the earth of the whole world.
They shall acknowledge. And it probably is the idea here that they are regenerated and born again. And so they willingly praise God, because the unbeliever is not going to praise Him the way we praise Him.
Not just the Jews, in other words, but all who are redeemed by our Lord and Savior. As Solomon prayed in his prayer in 1 Kings 8. The second point. Seeing the awesome works of God.
Verses 5 through 7. Come and see the works of God. He is awesome in his doings towards the sons of men. He turned the sea into dry land, and they went through the river on foot, and they will rejoice.
He rules by his power forever. His eyes observe the nations. So they see the awesome works of God here.
Clearly the redemptive awesome work of God and the miracles there of the Red Sea. His power over what? Creation. Over the powers that are greater than us on this earth.
God is greater than those powers around us. Described in the storms and the tornadoes. As I mentioned in verses 3. These two miracles.
Holding back the storm. Holding back the floods. Holding back the earthquakes.
As evidence of his great and awesome power over all things around us. And so here, we’re flushing aside the Red Sea like a blanket. The nations hear about this, because by the time they get to Canaan, they know about what this tribe, this new nation has been birthed out of Egypt is all about.
And they’re scared about it. That’s why they sent some, you know, representatives to spy on them and make a special contract with them. They fell for it.
They ended up being slaves instead of being slaughters. So the pagans were smart, and the Jews got… And so the miracles themselves were known by the pagans. They saw the power of the awesomeness of our Lord and Savior.
How he turned the sea into dry land. They walked right over it. That’s absolutely incredible.
So it wasn’t just moving back the water, if you realize this. You can move back the water, but the ground’s still gonna be soft and hard and difficult to travel, hard to travel upon. But it wasn’t.
It was enough for them to travel over it without a problem, without mud, without difficulty. But of course, it was a problem for Egypt. The miracles evidence a greater power than we see in creation itself.
And it’s a rule by power as well. He rules, verse seven, by his power forever. I have a book.
I’m slowly reading through it by a judge of the Puritan era, greatly respected by all men on all sides of Great Britain. His name is Matthew Hale. He’s even quoted by American jurisprudence at times early on.
And he explains in his book on law that what is a rule? It is meaningless without enforcement. Without power behind the law. God is not taught.
It has never been about taught. And this is why it’s important that we understand the sovereignty of God. Without it, God is nothing.
There is no God. There is no law. There is nothing to enforce his will.
But there’s everything because he has all power in this universe. And the power that we have, even nuclear power as a nation, and your own personal limits and powers over people around you comes from him. And only him.
The natural things, physical, and of course the moral, and the supernatural, is all by Almighty, omnipotent power of God and his sovereignty over this universe. It’s ruled by omniscience as well. In the latter part of verse 7, his eyes observe the nations.
He sees all things, and that’s simultaneously because he has not a body like a man. He exists everywhere at once, simultaneously. It’s the more we can comprehend.
But the idea here of observing the nations, of course, is watching their moral acts. It’s not like he’s kind of interested and we have little ant farms and we hear kids and things like that. That’d be kind of cool to play with him.
No, he’s morally observing them, right, because they’re the enemies of him, unless they submit to him, and he will judge them. And it’s tied here, do not let the rebellious exalt him right after that verse. Well, it’s part of the verse, right after that sentence.
He’s watching them, he’s watching their moral actions, and he will judge accordingly. And the psalmist says, therefore, if they’re not going to repent, judge them. Don’t let the rebellious exalt themselves over God’s people, of course, and over God himself.
The implication being a watching as in watching with intent to bring judgment or redemption if God so pleases. And that’s his prayer. Whatever evil the empires wish to do in secret, they can’t hide from God.
He sees it all. And that’s a good thing because we have lots of problems like in Colorado now with evil laws. God sees the plans behind the plans because they are there and what they’re really up to, and he will judge.
Blessing for the Awesome Works of God
The third point, verses 8 through 15, blessing for the awesome works of God. Oh, bless our God and peoples and make the voice of his praise to be heard, who keeps our soul among the living and does not allow our feet to be moved. And here we bless God more explicitly, verse 8, all who, you people.
And here, not just you peoples across the world, but specifically those who are redeemed, who keeps our soul among the living. We have a special reason to be more than anyone else because of what he has done for us. And he uses the word bless here to bless God.
And I remember hearing this word much when I was growing up as a Christian in the 80s. It kind of seemed strange to me. Is it not true that the greater blesses the lesser? Run across that logic here in Hebrews, in fact.
And that’s true, strictly speaking. So we have a lesser respect of God. What can we give him? What blessing can we bestow upon him? Nothing, really.
We can’t add to his glory. His glory is infinite. So what we are doing here in blessing him is basically giving him credit, public credit, publicly acknowledging his greatness and his worth, infinitely greater than our worth.
That’s the idea of blessing, with respect to the lesser, to the greater. And that’s what he’s doing here. It’s parallel with the voices of praise.
Oh, bless God and make the voice of his praise to be heard. Remember the poetry of Hebrew, Psalms and elsewhere, this synonymous parallelism. They are in parallel to each other, these ideas, and he uses a slightly different word from the other word, verb or noun.
But you clearly see it’s the same idea just mentioned twice. So here, blessing is in parallel with a voice of praise. This is how it’s done.
He preserves our soul, verse nine. Now, it sounds strange in English, but the word soul is often used in the Old Testament. It’s just the way they speak.
We do this as well. We love English words. It doesn’t have to mean soul as such.
It just means the person. He preserves me, myself. And that’s probably the case here.
He even mentions, it does not allow my feet to be moved. My soul doesn’t have a foot, but my body does. So by soul, he means body and soul.
It’s a shorthand way of speaking. It’s pretty common in the Old Testament. So God preserves you, body and soul.
And that’s a glorious truth in our lives. He preserves us, protects us from ourselves, from the evil around us, from evil rulers and powers and empires who wish to destroy the church, from deception, from Satan, conspiracies and the like, that we are able to be here. If you have the blessings over your house and your body’s healthy right now and you have access to doctors, all this is from God preserving you.
The preservation is through ordinary providence. He guides such things in our lives that you have access to good health. And we have to praise him for that because that’s part of the sea, isn’t it? A miracle is easy to see.
And the Jews had many, many miracles even during the time of Christ. And yet many, many did not believe. We don’t have the miracles of food popping out of the heavens or from the dew on the earth, right? Popping out of the ground, the quail and whatnot.
We just have a farmer working the land, transporting it across the land to the grocery store. We go to the grocery store, we pick it up and walk away with it. God, look what I’ve accomplished.
I didn’t accomplish anything. All that whole chain of events is God’s providence and God has all things to provide and preserve your body. And that’s an act of God or a series of acts of God who keeps your soul among the living and does not allow your feet to be moved.
Or the idea of stumbling, of course, he uses that often in the Psalms, stumbling from the enemy, stumbling from his own sin. That’s God. God’s behind all the good things in your life.
Preserved through testing, verses 10 through 12. This is more interesting and harder. We put our heads around sometimes.
For you, oh God, have tested us. And it goes on here through a description of God as the tester or the examiner of the hearts of men. You refined us.
You brought us into a net. You let affliction on us. You caused men to run over our heads.
We go through a fire. We go through water. These are all different ways of describing hardships and afflictions in the testing of our God upon us, body and soul.
God is the tester. We say, you test my patience, especially to our siblings. Stop testing my patience.
And yet behind that testing is God testing our patience. We’re not left a blind chance. Testing here is parallel with refining, as I pointed out, with being brought into a net with affliction on our back, with men running over our head, with fire, with water.
Those are all the different ways describing here in this Psalm of testing or examination of you, probation, as it were. They’re not random acts. The hardships of your life don’t come from Satan as such, but God allowing Satan, God allowing difficulties in our life.
He’s guiding all things. And this should be a comfort during difficult times because you will have difficult times. The church must warn new converts.
You come into Christianity, you will have difficult times, afflictions and hardships. But God is behind it all. As a father, using it to mold you and to shape you into the image of his only begotten son.
It’s part of the tapestry of God’s love for us, although it hurts like dross being purified with fire. Afflictions on our back, that’s the sin and its consequences. We talked about a monkey on our back, a hardship, a thing we can’t get off of us.
Perhaps the idea here of the whips of a taskmaster there in Egypt. And it seems like we’ll never go away. God’s behind that, is the point where our father knows what we need and he uses it for us.
Again, Hebrews 7, are you not the children of God? If you are, God’s going to disappoint you. Fire, another picture in the water as well of testing. The fire is obvious, the pain therein, purifying fire, used often as a metaphor there.
You are gold, you have lots of dross or impurities upon you. The way you get rid of it in the furnace is you burn it all off. And God’s burning it all off, a little here, a little there throughout your life, brothers and sisters.
In water, the idea of a flood, perhaps echoing there, back to the Red Sea, although in that case, they were dry. There’s no water, there’s no flooding. Here is the flood of difficulties in your life.
Left and right, pounding upon you, perhaps a sea storm is the image behind here. Buffeting to and fro, it seems like it never ends, but it will. God’s fine.
God knows what’s best for you, for he is the one who tests you. It’s all for your good. We have, therefore, a conclusion of this.
We went through the fire, went through the water, but you brought us out to rich fulfillment, to richness. You see, it’s italicized, the word fulfillment. You brought us out to rich, a richness, rich greatnesses.
But of course, he doesn’t mean riches as in money. Money means the richness of a soul purified by the power of the Holy Spirit, a rich fulfillment in Christ. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sorrow, all these trials, all these hardships, all these refinements of our life.
Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. And through Saint Quotation in particular, this is the tool that he is using. It’s the context, more precisely, that he is pulling us in, here and now, to become more like our Lord and Savior.
And thus, he worships him, verses 13 to 15. I will go to your house. The conclusion of this matter, I’ve had these hardships over and over, as we know, the life of King David and others, the Old Testament, going through things that I would want to go through, and he comes back to God.
Always has to come back to God. We have no one else to go to. So to our Father, our Lord, and our Savior.
He honored God by giving him vow offerings. The hardships prompted him, perhaps, to pray earnestly, as we saw in Darren Hosea and the like, where they have these vows. The vow would be, God, if you preserve me in a difficult time in my life, I’ll give you a freewill offering.
And thus, he does. God takes us through hard times. We don’t have to give offerings anymore, praise the Lord, when we’re animals.
When we’re bleeding sheep to kill. But we can give an extra tithe, an extra offering, an extra bit of your time, if you like, to help in the church, as I mentioned last week. You know, assist the deacons, asking people to help them. Sunday and the like, whatever else you think you can do.
Hearing the Awesome Works of God
Hearing the awesome works of God, verses 16 through 20. Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will declare what he has done for my soul.
Not just creation anymore, now he’s really drilled down to the point of the matter, which is what God has done for him in his own life. And thus, he cries his mouth to God and extols him and praises him all the more, as we ought to as well. It’s a general call to all who fear him.
Come to him, all you who fear God. I don’t care who you are. David knows this.
King Solomon knows this. Foreigners will rejoice in God. We are those foreigners.
We are filled with this. Cry, cry to the whole earth. It has been answered in the New Testament age, brothers and sisters.
Our forefathers were brought up in paganism, and that’s the rise of Western civilization. Recognizing faith and fear, King Solomon and King David here acknowledge this. Yes, this is the way.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Jew or not. You can come before God, all you who fear him. Declare what he has done.
Here, of course, he wants to say to my soul, here, come to me, and I will rejoice. We’ll rejoice together, and I’ll tell you the wonderful things he has done for my redemption, purifying me and loving me with an everlasting love. Declare it to our friends.
Declare it to ourselves. Declare it to our family. Declare it in worship, here this evening and in the morning.
This is the point of what we should be thanking our God for. That’s why we have these psalms and these hymns. Chosen out to try to pick some words that best fit and best describe what needs to be described in earthly terms the best we can to rejoice before God.
What he has done for us, he continues to do for us. Declaring, decrying, and crying out, describing and extolling him. We read there in verse 17 how wonderful he is.
And we know God hears, verse 18. I can cry out to him with my mouth, the implication being he will hear me, verse 19, and perhaps verse 18 should be parenthetical, put parentheses there. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.
It seems out of place. Why is his verse here? Because he says before, I’m going to cry to him. And he knows he’s struggled with difficulties.
This is why God has purified him. From what? Sin, obviously sin. And in verse 19 and 20, but certainly God has heard me.
Bless God who has not turned away my prayer. He’s not saying I’m good enough, therefore God will not hear me. But rather, because of what? His mercy, nor his mercy from me has not turned away his prayer, my prayer from him, nor his mercy from me.
Saying two different ways. Which means he heard because of mercy, not anything to do with his righteousness. David never believed he was good enough.
That’s why God heard his prayer. And so he’s giving the description here, verse 18. If I regard iniquity in my heart, if I harbor it, hold it, the Lord will not hear.
And he should not hear because the Lord God Almighty will not abide in sin and wickedness. He’ll bring punishment upon them. But nevertheless, he does hear.
That’s why you see here in verse 9, but certainly, and he has attended, blessed be God for hearing me in spite of my sins. It’s the clear implication. Never forget that, brothers and sisters.
You go through the trials and tribulations. You know God’s testing you and refining you. And you feel like I’ve got these sins, they’re not disappearing.
How can God hear my prayers? And yet we know David, the sins that David did, he murdered a man. He was a mastermind of murder. And even today, if you’re a mastermind behind crimes, they’re coming after you.
And it’s wicked. God heard him when he cried out for mercy. Never forget that.
It’s an awesome work of God. Do you realize that? What’s the awesome work of God here? He hears you when he does not need to hear you at all. But through Christ Jesus and his blood and his love for you, he does and will hear you.
And that’s why we bless him. So he says it again. Blessed be God.
I praise you, Lord. I’ve got nothing to give you. I’m the lesser blessed the greater.
I can just give you my mouth, my heart, my life. I thank you all the days till I have breath. So the awesome works of God are a cause for prayer and for praise.
That is singing and rejoicing with our mouth throughout the week. To sing to him of his great might in creation, the thunderstorms and the tornadoes and the hail and the wind, and especially for redemption. That’s a saving of your soul day by day preserves you even here and now.
That desire to hear his word comes from the power of the spirit in your life. A power greater than your heart is powerful. Let us never lose sight of his almighty love in Christ, even in the midst of trials and tribulations, but always focus upon his awesome works in creation and especially in redemption of our souls.
Let us go before him and pray. We rejoice and we thank you God almighty that we have opportunity to meet and to sing praises, to have these psalms and songs and spiritual songs and to rejoice with our heart and our mouth, God, to shout for joy, to be thankful, we pray to meditate upon these things, not only on Sunday, God almighty, but through our trials and tribulations and throughout the week, even during the quiet times, when something good or especially bad is happening. Lord, we take a little time here and there that we can work upon our hearts to be joyful, to be excited, to have a happiness that can only be found in our Lord and Savior.
We pray these things, amen.