Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. When you have that song in your heart of confidence in God, people around you start seeing Christ in you, the hope of glory. You may not even see him in your circumstance, but others look at you, and they see something in your worship. They see something in your life. They see something in your song.
It causes them to fear that God has to be real, and they too start trusting in God. Thanks for being with us for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. In this week's message, Carter will tell you about a song, a new song that God wants to give you that doesn't need any words. And it'll be the most powerful worship song that you'll ever sing in your life.
It's put there by God, and it literally exudes the presence of God in your very being. Let's join Carter right now, who asks, are you singing a new song? Psalm 40, beginning at verse 1. David says, I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, not just a pit. A pit is bad enough, but you add the word horrible to a pit, and you get a picture of where David was. And you know, some say it's a season where Saul is chasing him with thousands of soldiers trying to take his life. He's having to hide in the cave.
That very well might be the situation. It could be another time where he had sinned against God and against his fellow man, and he knew that there was no way of getting out of this and finding mercy without God. He brought me up out of a horrible pit out of the miry clay.
That's quicksand he's talking about. In other words, I was sinking in a place where there's no chance to get out of where I am without the mercy of God. Has anybody ever been there?
I've been there. I know exactly what that feels like when you're sinking and you know you can't get out, whether it's into depression, whether you're sinking into a situation that seems to have encircled you. He brought me up out of a horrible pit out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps. In other words, David said, I had nothing left but a cry.
I had no way of getting out. God picked me up and put me on a solid place. Now it may or may not have been visible to people around him, but he knew it was a solid place and established my steps. In other words, God says, I'm not just taking you out of your present situation. I'm showing you a pathway into the future. I'm going to set a pathway before you and if you will follow me, I'll be the voice behind you and I'll be the one that leads you and I will take you out of this place and into a place that only God can. Now he says in verse three, he has put a new song in my mouth. So this song is not something David wrote. David was the sweet Psalmist. David wrote a lot of songs, but he acknowledges I didn't write this song. God put this song in me.
It was the hand of God that wrote this song. Praise to our God. Many will see it and fear and will trust in the Lord. He doesn't say many will hear it.
They will see it. This is a song. This is a type of worship that doesn't need words to honor God or for people to see it.
We'll talk about that in just a moment. I want you to think about the different kinds of songs that we have been called to sing all along this journey. There's the song of the new believer. Does anybody remember the new believers songs?
I wasn't raised in the church, so I thought the choruses were amazing. I never sung anything like this before. You remember I'm a new creation. I'm a brand new man. Anybody ever heard that?
Old things are passed away. I've been born again. More than a conqueror. That's who I am. I'm a new creation.
I'm a brand new man. I remember when I was called to sing those songs in the beginning, those songs of that initial conversion, those songs of when you know that a burden, you can't fully articulate it, but you know that a burden has been lifted off of you. Later on, you begin to understand it's the weight of sin.
It's the weight of what your future would have been without God. You're in church and you're singing these new choruses and you're singing them throughout your day. It's that first love new birth song as it is. And then secondly, we come into the house of God and we begin to sing along with others. I remember the first time coming into a church and hearing people sing. It was amazing.
Anybody here remember that? First time you came into the house of God and there's a whole bunch of people and they're all singing together and they're from different stratas of life and they're from different countries and cultures and languages and some are rich and some are poor and it's just everybody's there together worshiping God. It's an amazing experience when you come into the house of God and you hear other people singing these songs of redemption. Psalm 98, I believe it is verses one to six. This is what the psalmist says. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song for he's done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gotten in the victory. The Lord has made known his salvation, his righteousness. He has revealed in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his mercy and his faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God. Shout joyfully to the Lord.
Didn't we do that today? All the earth break forth in song, rejoice and sing praises. Sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of a song with trumpets and the sound of a horn. Shout joyfully before the Lord.
That's an amazing time. Then we come into the house of God with other believers and here's what he says. It's good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to your name. Most high to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night on an instrument of 10 strings on the lute and the harp with harmonious sound is when we first come into the church and we hear a choir singing for the first time. I have a frame of reference because I remember how I felt when I first heard the choir sing and when I saw musicians that actually knew what they were doing. And you know, some of us have seen musicians that don't know what they're doing, but we come into the house of God and they're playing one song.
They're playing the same chords. It's harmonious. And then in verse four, David says of Psalm 92, for you Lord have made me glad through your work. I will triumph in the works of your hands. So in other words, it's a kind of a worship that we experienced corporately where we begin to say, God, God, I'm going to know the victory that these people know. They're singing about something I haven't experienced yet, but I'm going to triumph in the work of your hands. It's so important that those of us who have been walking with God, remember that there are new believers among us. Remember that there are those who are still struggling and still haven't gotten the full victory. It's important for us not to sit on the worship of God.
You understand what I'm saying? It's important for us to lift our hands and shout the praises of God. Even if we've sang this song a hundred thousand times, it's so important to sing it one more time because others are coming in and they're just starting on the journey and they need to know that there's victory in Christ. And it's amazing when we come together and we start singing together and we're making a public declaration that there is victory in Christ.
You're not going to be left behind because you're brand new on this journey, but God's going to be faithful to you just as he is for me. Now, in Exodus chapter 15, we have a song that we sing when those initial victories are won by the power of God. So we sang the song of salvation. We sang corporately together about our futures and then we start to experience these victories of God. In Exodus 15, it says, Moses and the children of Israel sang this song and spoke saying, I will sing to the Lord for he's triumphed gloriously.
The horse and its rider he's thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation.
He is my God and I will praise him. It's a song that says I was being pursued by the old things in my life, but I just lifted up a hand of faith and God parted the waters and he made a way for me to walk through on dry ground and my enemies tried to follow me. They threatened they were going to take over my life again and bring me back into captivity, but they only got partway on that journey. The waters closed and they were drowned in the midst of the sea. They were drowned.
They were drowned in the midst of the sea. Folks, when you hold up your Bible, you hold it in the middle. It's exactly what it looked like when Moses and the children of Israel went through to the Promised Land out of captivity. You look at it, there's the waters on both sides are lined up and when you get in the word of God, you're going to go through to the same victory.
You're going to sing the same songs of victory. Praise be to God. I remember when the Lord set me free, I was reading this book and I read a promise one day.
It just said this, if God be for us, who can be against us? Now there's another song, a new and deeper song that any of us have ever sung before. David had a song history. David once was anointed by Samuel. Samuel walked into his father's house and called him out from among his brothers and poured that that horn of oil upon him, which which indicates your call of God separated by God for a very unique purpose.
That's the initial song. And David would have gone back to his father's flock after that. And I'm sure a song because he was a songwriter. I'm sure songs came into his heart concerning that moment when the touch of God came upon him and he realized he was selected by God and set apart by God as you are. Everyone here has been set apart by God for a divine purpose.
Whether you believe it or not, you are set apart by God for a purpose. Then David began to know the Spirit of God coming upon his life when a lion came to take a lamb out of the flock and then a bear came and he stood up and the Spirit of God came upon him and he was enabled to do things that he had not ever been able to do before and obviously knew he couldn't do. And so there would have been songs written about that. And then later on when he comes into the camp, when Israel and soldiers are fighting the Philistines and the Spirit of God comes upon him, courage comes into his heart and he begins to prophesy, runs into the valley and defeats the entire Philistine army. And then after that, Saul calls for him with his instrument of music and the power of God was in his song and had the ability to drive the devil away from King Saul's life. Saul was now being oppressed by evil spirits.
But when David would sing, these evil spirits had to let go of King Saul and release him. Amazing. The power of worship.
Amazing. The power of a song. But there's another song that was coming into his life, a deeper song, a fuller song than anything that he had ever sung before. And it's described in verse three of Psalm 40 as a song that's put into us or put into him by God himself. It's a song which is described in scripture as being seen rather than heard.
It's a song which causes those who observe it to tremble before the presence of God and shift their trust from other things to the Lord Jesus Christ. He brought me up, he says, out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. I don't know what that was.
I don't think anybody fully does. But we do know from David's testimony, it was a situation he knew he couldn't get out of. You know, somebody here, you might be fighting a terrible depression, an addiction, memories of the past, maybe a sense of hopelessness about the future.
I don't know. It can be different things in different people's lives, loneliness. And you just feel that it's just drawing you down. Your prayers are just a cry now.
It's not even eloquent. It's just a cry. You go home at night and say, Oh, God, Oh, God, you feel like the blind man on the side of the road. This is son of David, have mercy upon me. And then suddenly, God comes down to David and lifts him. Now, I don't know if that's a physical lifting or it's obviously a spiritual lifting lifts him out of the power of that depression. Remember, Jesus said, I came to heal those have been bruised in heart.
In other words, those whose hearts are so broken, they'll never recover in their own strength. David said he lifted me and he put my feet in a solid place. In other words, I wasn't sinking anymore. There was something underneath me met whether he could see it or not.
It was underneath his feet. And he said he's and he established my steps. He gave me a future. God will do that for you today. Give you a future. He'll give you a member one of the reasons Jesus came is to give sight to the blind.
It wasn't talking just physically blind, but those that are spiritually blind, those who can't understand the power of God or see a way forward into their own futures. He comes and he establishes our steps is my son, my daughter, let me show you what I have for your future. Let me show you what I'm able to do in your life. So David said he lifted me out of this, this horrible pit that I was in. And he set my feet on a rock and he established my steps. And then he put a new song in my mouth. He put it in me. David didn't say I wrote it.
No, he put it in me. It was a song of praise or confidence in God, a song that many will see and fear and it will cause them to trust in the Lord. Now it's a song in my opinion that we're incapable of learning on our own.
Therefore, God himself has to plant it within us. It is. I want to call it the final song. I want to call it the ultimate worship song. As a matter of fact, it doesn't require words.
Isn't that amazing? We can worship without words. It's a song of confidence in God that comes into us that we don't have to say anything.
We don't have to sing. It's our whole body becomes a worship service. Hallelujah.
Our faces, our eyes, our voice, the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we touch, the hope that we have in our voices, the optimism that God plants in the human heart. It's a song that's like a continuous worship service in church. Don't forget, we are the church of the living God. And he is willing to plant a song inside of us that becomes a continuous worship service for anybody that encounters you throughout the day.
They should go home feeling like they've been to church. I kid you not. I mean, it's totally amazing. God plants this song. It's birthed in us when we're in a place that there's no deliverance or escape by any human means. It's a trial through which even those who are the strongest know that they couldn't overcome it by human strength alone. It's a song of confidence in God that's not dependent on circumstance. It's a new song of trust in God, even in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death. David said that in Psalm 23. Hallelujah. Though I walk through the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid for your rod and your staff.
They comfort me and you prepare a table. The next verse says for me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil and my cup runs over. In other words, even my enemies are there saying, where does this guy get this strength from? We're all around him. We're surrounding him. We're threatening him, but he's seemingly confident sitting at a table just eating some supply that we don't even know what that supply is. We have no idea what it is, but David says, not only that, but my cup runs over.
I'm not just eating for myself, but it starts running over from my life to others around me. David said, it's a song in my mouth that many will see it and fear and begin to trust in the Lord. The keeping power of God becomes visible to those who are now living outside of it. I want you to think for a moment of Nebuchadnezzar, a king, a foreign king became very enamored with himself and created a new system of religion as it was in that time and demanded that everybody bow down to it. But three Hebrew boys, they said, no, we're not going to bow down to your religion. And they declared their confidence in God.
They said, God can deliver us and he might, but if he chooses not to, we're still not bowing down to your new form of religion or your way that you say that religion should be. And the King Nebuchadnezzar was furious and he commanded the furnace to be heated seven times hotter. That's a horrible pit.
It really is. It was so hot that the people who threw these three boys into the furnace died just from the heat from the furnace. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished. Daniel 3 24 and he rose in haste and spoke saying to his counselors, did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? And they said to the king, true.
Okay. Look, he answered, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire and they're not hurt. And the form of the fourth is like the son of God. Verse 29 he says, therefore I make a decree. Remember David said they will see it and fear and trust in God. I make a decree that any people, nation or language would speaks anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego shall be cut in pieces. Their houses shall be made an ash heap because there is no other God who can deliver like this. And so the four were walking in the fire.
Three Hebrew boys are thrown in. Now they're standing and they're not standing still. They're walking. Now I'm assuming it's only an assumption on my part that they are praying or worshiping. I don't know about you, but if I was there, I'd be inclined to open my mouth and start thanking God. If the furnace all around me, I'm walking in the midst of the fire and it's not burning me, I would say, I love you Lord.
And I lift my voice. I don't know what they were doing. Now I'm not sure that they saw the fourth man in the fire, but I am sure that Nebuchadnezzar saw the fourth man in the fire. And when you have that song, he didn't hear what they were singing.
He only saw them worshiping God. And when you have that song in your heart of confidence in God, people around you start seeing Christ in you, the hope of glory. You may not even see him in your circumstance, but others look at you and they see something in your worship. They see something in your life.
They see something in your song. It causes them to fear that God has to be real and they too start trusting in God. It's amazing. It's a worship that is so deep that words are not necessary. It exudes from your whole being.
Everything inside of you begins to worship. It's a confidence that God places in the hearts of his people that I'm not governed by the news. I'm not governed by my circumstance. I'm not governed by my situation. I'm not governed by voices of hell and darkness that want to bombard me every day. I am governed by the promises of God, the inward presence of the Holy Spirit. And I happen to believe that God is in control of all things.
I happen to believe that all things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. I happen to believe that no mountain, no valley, no trial, no things present, nothing to come, no name that is named under heaven or under earth can separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord. I happen to believe that I am secure in the hand of God, the father, as Jesus said I was and told me that nobody can take me out of the father's hand.
I am convinced. I am persuaded that everything I put in his hand, he's able to keep until that day that we appear together before the throne of God. I am persuaded that my family will be saved. Everything I put into the hands of God, God is able to keep against that day. I am persuaded that I will walk the rest of my days on this earth, praising him, singing songs to him, having confidence in him, loving him, trusting him. I am persuaded that I don't need words to sing this song. I'm persuaded. Hallelujah to the lamb of God.
Hallelujah. That song that's in your life when you have confidence in God, in spite of your circumstance, exudes the praise of God through your life, just carrying your groceries home from the supermarket. It's the way you walk. It's the way you bury yourself. It's the way you hold your head. It's the way you greet people on the street. It's the way you talk to people in the elevator. It's the way you walk down the hall. It's the way you show kindness to a neighbor. It's everything in you is giving praise to God.
A song that doesn't have to have words. Hallelujah to the lamb of God. Thank you, Lord.
Thank you, Lord. Book of Hebrews Chapter 10. I'm going to close with this verse of scripture, verses 35 to 39. The writer says, Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. You know, when you come into trouble, there's a tendency to throw away our confidence. Almost like every song we've ever sung, every everything we've ever learned, we just check it out the window because difficulty comes our way. He says in verse 36, you have need of endurance so that after you've done the will of God, you may receive the promise. You have need of this inner ability planted by God to believe that no matter what comes my way, I'm going to make it through and I'm going to make it through with a song.
And I don't need words for this song. This song will be playing in me all the time. Hallelujah. I trust in God. David, the psalmist could say, Even though the mountains shake and fall into the sea, even though the seas overflow their borders, even though the stars cease to shine in the sky, yet my heart is fixed. I will trust in God. I will trust in God.
I'm not driven by my circumstances any longer. There's a trust in my heart. You have need of endurance after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise for yet a little while and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. The just shall live by faith. But if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. We have need of endurance.
I want to tell you something. If you've gotten to the point where you find it even hard to sing, now it's God's turn to put a song in you that does it's not on the screen. And you don't have to come into church on Sunday to get your spiritual fix so you can try to last till Tuesday. This song stays. This song does not leave by circumstance. This song doesn't abandon you on Monday afternoon. This song stays with you.
It walks. I'm telling you, you have a constant worship service going on in your life. And the root of that worship service is confidence in God. I believe God. I believe that God's in control of all things. I believe that I am in the hand of God. I believe that my sins are forgiven. I believe that heaven is my eternal home. I believe that God will carry me. I believe that Jesus Christ is interwoven.
The honor of his very name and not letting me be overthrown by any of my circumstance or my enemies. I happen to believe that with all my heart. Therefore, my song is no longer confined to just a little bit here and a little piece there and a little piece there. But it's a constant song that's going through my life seven days a week, twenty four seven. Praise be to God.
You have need of endurance, the writer says. And here's a question that just came to me as I was preparing this. What if there's no other way that those around you can witness the power of God until they see this song in you? You see, Nebuchadnezzar was not interested.
I'm sure the Hebrew boys and then they had numerous times told them all kinds of truths, I guess, but he wasn't really interested until he saw the power of God able to keep them where other people could not be kept. Oh God, give me this song. Oh God, give me this song. Oh God.
Oh God, give me this song. Let that be the cry of your heart today. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Times Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Plan to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
