Well, here we go. Psalm 75. If you've not been here in the last few weeks, just let me bring you up to speed. Psalm 75 is the third Psalm in, in book three of the Psalms. Book three of the Psalms comes after the reign of David. So. Uh, the psalmist Asaph for the, these last three Psalms is dealing with the destruction of the temple.

He is dealing with the fallenness of Israel all around him. Psalm 73, right in the middle, he is overwhelmed by the evil that was all around him. He felt it was vain for him to follow the Lord when he looked around and saw that the wicked seemed to flourish, and then he goes into the temple. So it's a real pivotal, pivotal thing.

He walks into the temple of the Lord and then in the midst of worship, he realizes the glory of God, the wonder of salvation. But then Psalm 74 that we looked at last week, that temple's destroyed. So the place that he could go, the one location he could go away from all the craziness was taken from him.

It was burned, all the signs that were in there that pointed to the glory and the majesty and the work of God's redemption. Those were all burned and they had been replaced, it says, with other signs. And so in Psalm 74, the writer asks, how long, O Lord, forever? And so what that piques in us is probably the number one complaint I find.

Amongst people who walk away from the church, walk away from the Lord, deny the existence of God, and it's the idea of God's justice. How long, oh Lord, Psalm 73. The wicked seem to do whatever they want and they never have to pay. For Psalm 74, this beautiful temple destroyed how long? Oh Lord. It's a question really of justice.

Are you the judge of the world? Do you control everything? And some Christian folks say, and if so, we don't really like the way you're handling things. So Psalm 75, I think stands then kind of as an answer to this flow of thought. Psalm 75, please stand for the reading of God's word. To the choir master, according to Do Not Destroy, a psalm of Asaph.

A song. We give thanks to you, O God. We give thanks for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. At the set time that I appoint, I will judge with equity. When the earth totters and all its inhabitants, it is I who keeps steady its pillars. I say to the boastful, do not boast. And to the wicked, do not lift up your horn.

Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with haughty neck, for not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up. But it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. For in the hand of the Lord, there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours it out from it.

And all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. But I will declare it forever. I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever.

This is the word of God. You may be seated.

This week, the youth took off for Texas for one of their trips, and I have lots of fond memories of road trips for all the years I was a youth pastor. We had several travel rules as I drove a van, I'm not sure all of them would be acceptable now. We had a shut up seat. If you got relegated to that seat, you know, sorry, you're in your, do you know where you're sitting?

Each kid got to ask three questions on the road trip, three questions, and I would share that with people. I would say, you know, you get three questions and I never forget every year there was one person that said, is it true? We get three questions like, yes, really? Yes. You only have one left,

but the on the clock rule, the on the clock rule, maybe every family does this. But we definitely have an on the clock rule when the kids were little and mom would say it. All right, kids, dad is on the clock. He has set a goal. He wants to average from the time we leave to the time we get there. He wants to average 64 miles an hour, including all of the restroom visits.

So right before we got to the exit, five miles before the exit, start finding your shoes, kids. Starfight, we are going to pull in and it is going to be like Formula One. The clock will start and, and, and you have got to go. You are on the clock. I think it was ruined by Tom Tom. You know, Tom Tom, the original GPS, you could stick it on your screen and you put in your where you're going and Tom Tom would say, you're going to get there at 1045.

And every dad who ever looked at the Tom Tom said. Where'd he get their 1040?

Being on the clock, the writer here, he is dealing with all that is broken and fallen and wrestling with it, and he gets an answer to his question. Now it's interesting, if you look at this text, you'll see, uh, it's kind of, uh, interesting in the way that the different pronouns work and you write, who is speaking?

So in the, um, in the, in the intro, in the inscription, in the first verse. It's Aesop in the first person plural saying, uh, we're going to sing about this. And it's interesting, even the tune, this is going to be sung to the tune, do not destroy. I love it. I mean, you could just see some of those Israelites, kind of the heavy metal, do not destroy, right?

Supposed to be sung just, just like that with a gravel in the voice, uh, do not destroy. We give thanks. What do we do in light of all that's gone on? The temple's destroyed. Some very basic instructions. We give thanks. Your name is near. We recount. Uh, and then if you look in your text, it has quotation marks there at verse two.

So verse two to five, it's the Lord himself speaking. So if we had a red letter edition, maybe this would be the blue letter edition. Uh, God the Father is speaking, He's speaking directly to him, saying at that time, right? And then, in verse 6, verses, uh, really through, through 9, uh, it's Asaph again saying, here's, here's how we respond to what the Lord has said, and here's what I'll do.

And then verse 10, there's a controversy over who's speaking here. Is this God? It must be the horns of the wicked. I'm going to cut off the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. So all this is going on. It's kind of this ongoing conversation that we're drawn into that we're invited to sing about our God,

to live actively as a Christian on God's clock, it will give us, uh, not just confidence. Uh, and stability, but it will also help us direct our pursuits for the psalmist is tempted as we are to consider whatever is going on, whatever the current situation is, and to make judgments concerning God and his ability and his worthiness to judge.

So in the first verse, we're told what to do. In the, in the we in first verse, he says, we to give thanks to you. Your name is near. We recount your wondrous needs. We are to give thanks to God, Christian. It's a very simple command and it is a reminder and it is a charge to us. We can always give thanks in any and every situation, this temple has been destroyed.

Everything's been burned. Uh, the enemy has overrun. What do I do in the morning? I will rise in the morning and I will give thanks. You know why a Christian can always give thanks? Because our God is infinitely good. Always. Infinitely good. And regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what we see and what we experience, we can always thank God.

He's infinitely good and he is infinitely in control and he is the righteous. Judge, we give thanks. He lists two specific things here. The first, he says, we give thanks because your name is near. Your name is near, oh God. Now I've been thinking about this song for a couple of weeks and I kept trying to find an illustration of what that would mean for the name to be near and the best I could come up with was Roquefort Holmes.

Does anybody know who Roquefort Holmes is? He's the little mouse in the aristot, the little mouse in Aristot. You and maybe some of you don't remember the aristocrats, but duchess and the kittens, they get taken by evil Edgar, right? And, and, and, and they're, they. They need to be rescued. And this little mouse is told by Thomas O'Malley, the alley cat, go and get my gang.

And this mouse is like, I'm gonna go. To these alley cats. And Thomas O'Malley says, All you need to do is tell him my name. And so when Roquefort Holmes comes and he finds these alley cats, they're singing blues and jazz and one of them is holding up about ready to eat him and the little mouse is struggling for names, struggling for names.

And at the end he says, O'Malley. And it changes everything. A writer says we can give thanks to God always because his name is near. His name is on his people and his people can call and depend upon his name. He is not a God far off. In first Kings, I love it when Elijah is mocking the prophets of Baal.

What does he say? Verse 27. Cry aloud to your, cry aloud to Baal. Either he is musing, or he's relieving himself, or he's on a journey. Perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. And so the prophet mocks the false gods. Why? Because our God is near, and His name is near to His people. And he says, the second thing you're to do is you recount your wondrous deeds.

Deeds. So when you think about worship, children, when you think about worship, all it is doing is recounting the wonderful deeds of our God. Do you know Steph Curry is reportedly to have made 77 three pointers in a row? There's an article in the Wall Street Journal about Steph Curry. He said he made 94 out of 100 three pointers and he had a stretch of 77 in a row to which the Wall Street Journal writer said.

That is Cuckoo Redonk. I didn't know they could put that in the Wall Street Journal. That was Cuckoo Redonk. It was an amazing feat. The psalmist says, we worship God, we, we, we know His name is near, and we recount all of His wondrous deeds. Oh, children of God, be a student of His word. This week just happened to be, my reading was Exodus 10 to 18.

Amazing, the deeds. Of our God, our God rescues, our God feeds. He saves, he proves over and over again. They were given manna every day and we have more than they had. We have the sun. So he says, this is what we're to do in the midst of all of this, in the midst of the wonderings of why we are to give thanks and to praise and to worship.

You will be amazed at how the worship of almighty God answers so many of our putting him in his rightful place recounting it in the community of God's people and then he goes on to this heavy lifting what I call this heavy lifting verse 2 now our God speaks and he answers that question how long the Lord how long will we wait Oh Lord and then the Lord says at the set time that I Now I titled this section in your notes, heavy lifting, but it is God judging and they have all these terms kind of mixed in together, but the God, the righteous judge.

But, but you see over and over this idea of lifting up, right? Being lifted up, being promoted, being given prominence, and God himself is the one who does this. Verse two, he says, I will judge with equity. At the appointed time, I want to say five things quickly about this judgment. Because again, that's what drives this idea, God, the judge, and it's not just a judge that adjudicates, it's a judge more like the judges in the Old Testament.

They rule over everything, but it's even greater than them. It's they judge, they rule, but he is also God. And he is making judgments about what is right for you, what tomorrow will look like and the day after that and the day after that. Five things I want to say about his judgment. First, it's at the right time.

At the appointed time. God's clock. There is a time that our God has set. How many of you have misjudged something because you judged too soon? Type rule number five. Ready, shoot, aim.

You judge too soon. You haven't had enough time. You haven't had enough information. Maybe even worse are the times we judge too late. Boy, I should have listened to that person. Boy, I wish I would have done that differently.

God's judge at the right time. Paul preaching at the Areopagus in Acts 17. He tells all those who would listen that the times of ignorance God has overlooked. But now all time, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness.

By a man whom He has appointed, and of this He's given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. His judgment is at the right time. Secondly, His judgment is the right standards. It's God's holy standards that He judges by. We are not to wonder how He judges, what He thinks is right, what will count, what won't count.

He has given it to us. It has been written, it has been attested, it's been proved, and it's been lived out in Jesus Christ. It'll be right standards. Thirdly, it'll be rightly administered by the righteous, all knowing, all seeing God. He will administer his justice on time, according to the right standards, and it will be rightly administered.

Fourthly, it will be rightly declared unimpeachable. There's no room or grounds for appeals. There's no possibility of a mistrial. There is no corruption. There is no bribes. Our God will judge righteously, and it will be rightly just, fifthly. The righteous judge at the right time. It's one of the reasons Christians we hold so dearly to substitutionary atonement.

For the righteous judge will judge rightly according to the standard he has set. And the only hope for the Christians. It is a righteousness that comes from someone else given to us through Christ by faith. So he does this heavy lifting. He says he will judge the earth at the right time. He says in verse three that the earth and its pillars, uh, he will hold that steady.

Very similar to what we sang about the earth being melted away, that God is control over the whole earth. It is him. Amen. Amen. Amen. He lifts and holds the earth. And then he says that he will also speak. Verses four and five, God speaks and he gives three instructions, pretty, pretty basic instructions. He says, because of all this, because of all this, don't boast, don't boast.

Secondly, don't lift up your own horn. Now, I brought a visual aid. I've never done this before in a sermon.

This is not a horn, it's actually an antler. But it's the closest thing we got to horns. Found this antler in the woods of Missouri. Now, uh, when you're an avid deer hunter, you have cameras out, you look and you decide, you know, which one am I after, right? And even in the field, when a buck walks out and it has, you know, these majestic antlers, It's as if all the other bucks like, Ooh,

I mean, you see it, their tail goes down, their body language goes down. You know, I have this antler because it fell off. It's called a shed. Buck walks around, then the antler falls off and then all the bucks go in a giant hole in the ground. We never, ever see them. It's like they're embarrassed. They go hide somewhere.

You just know, you never find them until they start growing back. They're all ashamed, you know, that we, they've lost every bit of grandeur. And that's why the scripture uses things like horn. And so he says, you don't, don't, don't boast in what you say. And don't lift your own horn up. We even use that, right?

We say, don't toot your own horn, right? And so you see this all through scripture, the exaltation of a horn in revelation. There is a horn that makes all these loud boasts, right? And it's cut off and it regrows. I keep this in my office. It's on a shelf in my office and I keep it for the reasons in scripture.

It's temporary. This one actually had been chewed on by rodents. If you don't pick them up after a while, they disappear. The grandeur. The pomp, the pride. Fades. So I keep it on my shelf. to remind me that man in all his glory and all that we could ever seek to accomplish will one day just be cast aside eaten by the mice and the rats

and so he says don't lift up your horn don't walk about thirdly he says with this haughty neck your posture because God is going to judge

And then he says we should be purposefully humble because he lifts up verse 67 and eight. You will not be lifted up with the help of the direction of the east or the west or from the wilderness. You see God telling Israel, don't go back to Egypt. They're not the ones who are going to save you. They can't and they won't.

Only God can lift you up. Verse seven, he is the one that lifts and the one that tears down. Don't lift up your horn against him. Now in your notes, I have heavy drinking as the third part, probably should be, um, included in here in verse eight, um, there's a cup of God's wrath. So he gives all of these reasons, but remember he's now, he is speaking that God set a time and God is going to judge.

And here's how we live in that. We don't have this self promotion. We don't even worry about it. We also don't worry about it when other people seem to promote things that are ungodly or unholy because there is a cup that our God is preparing. And again, that too is symbolic all throughout the scriptures.

In the hand of the Lord, there's a cup and it's foaming.

It's as if God's wrath has been made from all the grapes of wrath and put together. Revelation refers to it, the full measure of God's anger. You know, I'm a Dune fan. Uh, of the movies, and there's so many kind of messianic things that creep into it. I like the story because it reminds me of the story of the gospel.

Their savior is, uh, you know, he incarnates into, uh, the people that he is to save. But there's also a scene where he has to drink a cup, right? And they're like, is he worthy? Men aren't supposed to drink this cup. What's going to happen? The Lord is preparing. A cup of wrath, Jeremiah 25, he says, the Lord, the God of Israel said to me, take from my hand this cup of wine of wrath and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Isaiah, he says, Jerusalem, you have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, drunk the dregs to the bowl, the cup of staggering. The warning and revelation, if anyone worships this beast and its image, they will receive a mark on his forehead and his hand, but he will also drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength from the cup of his anger.

Now where do we also read about the cup? And as I said earlier, we have greater attestation to the work of God than Asaph had.

Jesus in Gethsemane, praying the cross looming just ahead of him, my father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

The author decides to live on the clock of God, and he speaks again in verse nine. In light of all of this, in light of the belief that God, the righteous judge, will judge with equity, he says, then I will declare it forever. Worshiping God is the cure for sinful pride. Worshiping and repenting is the cure for the boastful, arrogant, haughty necked people that we want to be.

So I will worship it. I will declare and I will sing. Praise. And then this simple truth is reiterated in verse 10. All the horns of the wicked, I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. Boy, does this not resonate all through the scriptures? We studied the prodigal son, right? Two sons.

One humbled himself and one lifted himself. It's very simple. The proud and the wicked will have their horns cut off and the righteous shall be lifted up. And how do we apply this as Christians living in the day we live? Well, we look to Christ because he's promised that he is the one that will drink this cup of God's wrath.

He will drink the wrath that we have all put the grapes in for our own pride and arrogance and rebellion. Amen. Are judging the righteous judge saying, surely God, you're not acting rightly here. This is not fair. This should not be John three. Jesus says early in his ministry, Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness.

So the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. And John eight, when you have lifted up the son of man. You'll know that I'm he John 12. My soul's troubled, what shall I say, father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose, I've come, father, glorify your name. And a voice came from heaven.

I've glorified it and I will glorify it again. And the crowd stood there and they heard it and it thundered another set. An angels spoken to him. Jesus answered, this voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out and I. When I am lifted up from the earth.

We'll draw people all people to my self. The Son of God has been lifted up. After he drank the wine of God's fury and he invites you to himself. Lay your horns down at the altar. Confess your pride and your boasting and your haughtiness, confess it and run to your Savior. In a few moments we'll drink a cup and we'll eat from the body as we celebrate Holy Communion.

Christ has been lifted up. I'm not sure about the plans of the building. Do you all notice I pointed that way? Where is it? Is it that way? Yeah. The center direction of a lemming. Uh, I don't know if we'll put a steeple on it. But if we do, you know what'll be on top of that steeple? A cross. A cross will be on top.

It's the reason we carry that symbol. The sun was lifted high. He drew us to himself. We had an exchange student living with us a few years back and he had a necklace that was some kind of Hindu symbol. Sorry, Buddhist symbol. And Um, he lost it at some point, was overwhelmed with grief and concern over this and, and, and we found it.

And, um, he started coming to church with us and, um, I believe he was converted and he went to a store and he came to me and he goes, look what I did, I got rid of that necklace and I have this one. Only it was a crucifix.

And I was like, Oh no, this is the wrong one. And he said, You didn't teach me. You didn't teach me. Why is this the wrong one? I'm like, Because he's not on there anymore. He's now sitting at the Father's hand. And he's interceding for all of us who boast, who are arrogant, and who find that our God is going to cut the horns of us off.

So that in safety. So that in true love, we run to him. Indeed, to live on God's clock, it will give us not just confidence and security, but it does affect our pursuits. Our pursuits aren't about making a name for ourselves. We've come in the biggest or the best or the fastest or the strongest. Our pursuits are to make much of him.

Oh, father, thank you for your word and thank you for the reality.