To MAGNIFY GOD-III—Psalm 34:4(:1-10 )
[VBS Theme—‘Magnified’—Psalm 34:3]
Attention:
On the 23rd day of March, 1743, George Frideric Handel’s, “Messiah” was performed at the Covent Garden Theatre, AKA—the Royal Opera House, for the very first time in London, England. “Messiah” had actually debuted in 1742 in Dublin, Ireland, but had never been heard outside that city. At the London premiere, the king of England, King George-II was in attendance.
It is said, that when the choir sang the words, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” from the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, the entire audience including the king, was so moved, that they all rose to their feet & remained standing until the song’s finale.
From that time on, it has remained a custom for the audience to stand during the chorus whenever it’s performed.
Thus the eternal reign of the omnipotent Lord God is Magnified!
*And so, the Church must Magnify, ‘make much of’, & otherwise elevate, & exalt God, so that the reality of His nature, character, & workings can be easily seen & understood by the world at large!
•So, God’s people, both individually & gathered, must MAGNIFY GOD!
Need:
By God’s design, what is expected of every person on earth to personally ‘Magnify’, exalt, make much of, & otherwise elevate YHWH-God.
However, that expectation for mankind, & God’s calling to mankind, is left to each person’s personal choice, so that every person becomes personally answerable to God, for whether they follow God’s intended design or not!
•And this is a good time to dispel a ubiquitous false belief that God sends people to hell. God does NOT send people to hell...People send themselves to hell by dismissing God’s reality & plan for mankind!
David was a recipient of YHWH-God’s protection(deliverance/rescue), & so David made much of & ‘magnified’ Him.
So simply stated:
God’s people magnify God.
But:
When do we truly magnify God?
When is God magnified in your life?
In verses :1-10 are found:
6 realities necessary for magnifying YHWH-God in your life.
The last time we were in Psalm 34, we found that in order:
To Magnify God In Your Life, God must be...
1. BOAST-WORTHY To You(:1-2a)
2. SHARE-WORTHY To You(:2b-3)
Today, we’ll discover that:
3—To Magnify God In Your Life, God must ALSO be...
FREEING To You(:4)
Explanation:(:4)
:4—“I sought the LORD, & He heard me, And delivered me from all my fears.”
King David gives testimony as to his reasons for “blessing”, “praising”, “boasting in”, finding “gladness” in, “magnifying” & “exalting” YHWH God(:3).
David himself, personally “sought the LORD.” In his doing so, David knew that his seeking YHWH God was “heard.”
•1Jn. 5:14-15—“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
Upon YHWH God’s “hearing” David’s pleas, He then responded to David’s need by “delivering” him “from all his fears.”
What an awe-inspiring freeing relationship we have, when we entrust ourselves to God!
•“All my fears” encompasses the gamut of human experience!
•We are ever “fearful” of anything we do not know...whether it be a person, or a circumstance...We are “fearful” of anything in our ‘future’(immediate or distant) that we are unsure of.
•YHWH-God takes(can potentially take) “all” our “fears” away, whenever we submit them to Him. He is so powerful, so loving, & so compassionate, that He can overcome any uncertainty we may ever face.
?What or Who is it, that you are most fearful of?...
...If you Magnify God in your life it is because He is FREEING To You!
Argumentation:
Jn. 8:31-32, 36—“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, & the truth shall make you free.”.....“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
•The eternal God is the source of perfect truth. Therefore true freedom is found in God alone!
Jn. 16:13-15—“However, when He, the [Holy]Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; & He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine & declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine & declare it to you.
Ps. 25:4-5—“Show me Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth & teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; On You I wait all the day.”
Gen. 2:15-17—“Then the LORD God took the man & put him in the garden of Eden to tend & keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; “but of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””
•We know that, though Adam had been directly instructed by God, that Adam instead, listened to the voice of his wife, who had been duped by the devil to eat of the fruit of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good & evil.’
•You & I are prone to follow Adam’s example. Guys, there are times when your wife has an agenda for you, yet God has an attending agenda for you, that may supercede hers, even if hers has been directed to her from God as well!
I have had that happen to me on occasion. And usually, after I realize that I’ve messed up, & confused God’s perfect direction for me, I will typically say, “Just call me Adam!’
Rom. 3:21-28—“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law & the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all & on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned & fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just & the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”
?Are you in bondage to not pleasing God?(?Are there just too many dos & don’ts for you to be Free?). Then trust Him, & experience true Freedom!
Rom. 6:5-14—“For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be[“united together”] in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, & your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
Illustration:
When my Daddy passed away in 2002, My wife & I owed money on & made monthly payments on our only two vehicles. We got by pretty well on two paychecks—a small-church pastor’s salary, plus my wife’s pay as a ‘registered nurse’ in a small local hospital in Cairo, Georgia.
My father & mother both had a ‘heart of gold’! They considered the future of, not just themselves, but the futures of their 2 boys, their spouses & their grandchildren. So my parents were deliberately frugal, & saved up for sake of the family. Daddy died roughly nine years after Momma did.
When Daddy died, they had saved up enough money & property to provide some inheritance money for me & my wife.
That gift was financially FREEING to us, because we used the inheritance money to pay-off the car loans that we were saddled with. Both physically & spiritually freeing!
That gift also became financially FREEING to the church I pastored, because the tithe we payed from the inheritance, became the seed-money for building a Family-life Center.
•FREEING To You
Application:
?Is YHWH-God FREEING To You?
?Are YOU someone by & in whom God is MAGNIFIED?
?Do YOU MAGNIFY God in your life?
CONCLUSION:
Visualization:
As it remains a custom for London audiences to stand during ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ whenever it’s performed, so the eternal reign of the omnipotent Lord God is Magnified!
*The Church must faithfully Magnify, ‘make much of’, & otherwise elevate, & exalt God, so that the reality of His nature, character, & workings can be easily seen & understood by the world at large!
•So, God’s people, both individually & gathered, must MAGNIFY GOD!
Action:
To Magnify God In Your Life, God must be...
3. FREEING To You(:4)
1. BOAST-WORTHY To You(:1-2a)
2. SHARE-WORTHY To You(:2b-3)
Pnt# 3 only! presented 06/22/2025am to:
Salem Baptist Church
1618 Salem Rd.
Bennettsville, SC 29512
Pnt# 2 only! presented 06/08/2025am to:
Salem Baptist Church
1618 Salem Rd.
Bennettsville, SC 29512
