2 Sam 22:4, "I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; And I am saved from my enemies. 
	In this morning’s passage we have a wonderful declaration of the goodness and the grace and the mercy and the loving kindness and the compassion and the Omnipotence and the Omniscience and the Omnipresence of the Lord as proclaimed in the life of David. He cannot seem to find enough ways to express the majestic splendor and praise and adoration and gratitude that he felt toward Jehovah. It is the manifested heart of this man after God that is presented to all of us in the words that just flow forth declaring the fact that God is worthy to be praised because He is everything that is mentioned plus so much more. 
Accordingly, it strikes me as a time to just lose ourselves in the consideration of the tremendous life that God has set before each of us. We should be concentrating on bringing before Him our praise, our adoration, our thankfulness, our humble submission, to present unto Him the greatest and best of our heart’s worship for Who He is and all that He has done in our lives. We will join ourselves together with a number of those who are presented to us in scripture in their proclamation that Yahweh, Alone, is far more than worthy of every effort of all His creation to sing forth His triumphant essence of Love in our walk on this earth.
Please open to the book of Nehemiah, Chapter 9, verses 1-6. We are presented with the time when the exiles returned to Jerusalem. They brought forth the treasured Torah from the rubble and the decay of the destroyed temple. They were trying to once again express the witness of God’s holiness as His redeemed people on this earth. They declared the cherishing of the Word of God that they were given. They were willing to forego all their pride and arrogance and rather spent time confessing their sins and the sins of their fathers. This was their heartfelt humble effort to let Jehovah know just how much they treasured Him as their God.
Neh 9:1-6, Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dirt upon them. And the descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. While they stood in their place, they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God. Now on the Levites' platform stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani, and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, "Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Thy glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! "Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before Thee. 
	What a joyous celebration of The Lord God Jehovah that emanated forth from the gathered worshippers of God. They knew that they had to confess their sinful unworthiness to so approach the altar of God. They needed to set themselves into that heart position of true repentance and desire to forego their guilty acts and come to Jehovah under the auspices of His grace and mercy. Thus they could declare His glorious praise to the farthest reaches of creation.
	This is what we need to have established in our hearts as we are so forgiven by Our Heavenly Father. We contritely and humbly acknowledge that we are sinners who need to be saved. We earnestly proclaim Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God, Who came to this earth to live a perfect life of obedience to the will of the Father. He was then horribly and torturously crucified, sinless in His life, but taking upon Himself all our sins and leaving them on the death side of the cross. Then He was lifted up gloriously in resurrection life to reign forever on the Throne of Heaven. Because we come to God, covered over by Christ’s righteousness, we too can and should join in that chorus unto the manifested glory of God on high. 
"Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Thy glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! "Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before Thee. 
	Next we turn to the Psalms, so filled with all the praise and adoration of the heart of one who dearly and fully exalted in the God of Israel, the Only True and Living Lord and Creator of all that was, is, and will ever be. Our first passage in the delight and worship of Jehovah is Ps 18:1-3, if you would please open to it.
Ps 18:1-3. "I love Thee, O Lord, my strength." The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies. 
	This short passage is so filled with that proclamation of the magnificence of Our Lord Almighty. He is the strength required for whatever each day presents to us. As we age, we find that our physical strength, alone, is becoming less and less able to make each day a joy as it was in our youthful exuberance. Everything takes longer and requires more and more effort to accomplish. 
	Accordingly, as with the Psalmist, we are counting on the strength of the Lord to see us through the daily chores, routines, needs, and challenges. To deal with each day in the joy of the Lord requires that He be our strength and our ability. When we are simply relying on our physical bodies, we are sorely and consistently let down and saddened and sinking into growing despair at our inabilities to do even the smallest task without making it some major expenditure of time and vigor. 
	Truly, when we are looking at ourselves with our inabilities to cope, each day becomes a further tragic depiction of what we are no longer able to do. That robs us of our delight to see what God will do. Rather, we need to begin the day with our eyes on The Lord, asking Him to give us what is necessary to, not just get through the day, but to find our joy in Him as each day proceeds forth.
	Then, in this passage, there is that surety of God as our Rock and our Fortress. He surrounds us with His Omnipotence and Omniscience as we experience His Omnipresence in the midst of the most violent of storms. He speaks peace and our hearts respond, knowing that He absolutely and completely has all things well in His Hands. We are secure in the comprehension that we belong fully and wholly unto Him. Therefore, we face the storms of life with that confident assurance that He will see us through as He surrounds us with the awesome splendor of His heart of love in action.
	The final aspect of this Psalm that we will consider is that we can call on Him in the midst of those storms. Whenever we are distracted, shaken, violently assaulted, and we lose sight of Our Rock and Our Savior, we can cry unto Him and He hears and He responds. He is there. We can seek Him with all our hearts, though they may be filled with doubt and disturbance and fear, yet He will hear our cry and He will make a way in the depths of our despair, where there seemed to be no way at all. He will always and eternally respond to the one who puts all trust in Him and cries unto Him from the raging and swirling and crashing waves of those storms in our lives. 
	The next Psalm to consider is Ps 34:1-9. As we read it together, let us join in that praise and that worship of Who God is and all that He has done in our lives. This is how we are to be as His people in the midst of each day. There should be those songs of praise and adoration that just can’t but well up and burst forth from the depths of our beings. 
	Ps 34:1-9, I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, And delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, And their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, And saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, And rescues them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! O fear the Lord, you His saints; For to those who fear Him, there is no want. 
	Oh the depths of the heart of worship that should characterize and present unto God the joy of His people as we consider the glorious manner in which He has chosen each of us in Christ Jesus. This is the outworking of His great and awesome plan of salvation from before the eternal ages were ever put into place. God had known each one of us, with all our spots and wrinkles and stains, and yet He decided, for the reason that He Alone knows, that we should be rescued and redeemed unto His family. He determined to love us unto Himself at a cost that none of us could ever fathom. 
	Therefore, we should be a fountain of living praise which honors and magnifies and adores and proclaims His Excellencies minute after minute. For all the reasons that we have already highlighted in the previous verses, there is to be a constant well-spring of joy in Christ Jesus which should serve to express, in the manner in which we live our lives on this earth, the manifold will of God in action. There is to be that gathered celebration of His goodness and love and mercy as we proclaim together that God, Alone, is worthy of all praise and glory and worship. And our lives should be a witness, as God works to cleanse away all the stains and the residue of that old nature, just how much He means to you and to me.
	Our final Psalm for this morning, but not for this consideration, is Ps 50:7-15. This Psalm shows the heart of God and what He is seeking in His people. The previous passages had the highlight on what God has done for us. Now we need to come to understand something of God’s heart as He is seeking to establish that living relationship of fellowship with His people.
	Ps 50:7-15, "Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. "I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me. "I shall take no young bull out of your house, Nor male goats out of your folds. "For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. "I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. "If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all it contains. "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of male goats? "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High; And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me." 
	Mankind is so adept at making himself the center, of even our sacrifices unto the Lord. We treat our time of entering before Him as something that is merely a ritual or a custom that carries with it consequences if we fail to properly attend to our religious duties. The gathering together on Sunday, for some, is just to showcase our religiosity and our standing within the dutiful responsibility that we carry from childhood. There is no true understanding of seeking after that which will honor and bless God. 
	Everything is approached in terms of what man thinks should be done. The Lord is considered, not with the thoughts of His tremendous presence and essence, but simply with the idea of treating Him like any other powerful or wealthy human entity. There is the idea of appeasement that will showcase our sense of piety and presence, but not what would truly please and honor and reverence Jehovah.
	He needs nothing from us that we could supply with money or advertising or ritual. What He desires is that His people come unto Him with thanksgiving for the opportunity that He has presented unto us in Jesus Christ. He is looking at our hearts, looking for those for whom this relationship means everything and who are willingly offering to Him, not gold, not incense, not sacrifices of wealth or acclaim or anything other than unadulterated love. 
We should be so honoring Him that we come to Our Heavenly Father, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Beloved Holy Spirit with hearts bursting with utmost thankfulness for the opportunity and the privilege to be united as one in Him. He is looking for those people who will present to the world the love with which He has loved us, thus declaring the magnificence of the family of God that He has brought into being. So be it!
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; And I am saved from my enemies. Amen.

	
This morning’s benediction is 1 Thess 5:16-18. Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Amen.