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By Pastor Glenn Pease
1. GOD IS WORTHY OF PRAISE
Based on Psa. 145
2. THE POWER OF PRAISE Based on Psalm 149:1‑9
3. THE PINNACLE OF PRAISE Based
on Psa. 150
4. UNIVERSAL PRAISE Based on
Psa. 117
5. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF PRAISE
Based on Psa. 47:1‑9
6. THE PLEASURE OF PRAISE Based on Psa. 84
7. A PRAYER OF PRAISE Based on
Dan. 2:19‑23
8. THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE
Based on Heb. 13:15‑21
9. PERSISTENCE IN PRAISE Based
on Heb. 13:15‑21
10. THE PRAISE OF LAUGHTER
Based on Psa. 126:1‑6
11. HEAVEN'S HALLELUJAH CHORUS
based on Rev. 19:1‑10
1. GOD IS WORTHY OF PRAISE Based on Psa. 145
Gilbert a
Becket was a crusader who was captured and made a slave. The tyrant who enslaved him had a daughter
who took pity on him, and that pity ripened into love. At the risk of her own life she helped him
escape. He solemnly vowed to send for
her when he got safely back to England.
But when he got home he became so absorbed in other plans that he forgot
the love of the one who had set him free.
He owed his life to her, but she was far away, and what was near
dominated his life.
She
was still driven by her love for him, however, and so she sold all of her jewelry
and came to England on her own. When
Gilbert saw her and embraced her he repented of his neglect. In her presence he could no longer go the
way of rejecting her love. He reversed
his plans to marry a wealthy English woman, and he took her to be his wife
instead. It never would have happened
in her absence. Only her presence
rekindled his love and restored their relationship.
"Absence makes the heart grow founder for somebody else," is a
true saying, and it is true not only in the romantic realm, but in the
religious realm as well. The sense of
God's absence is the cause for all of the falls, failures, and follies of
man. but the sense of God's presence is
the cause for all of man's virtues, values, and victories. When man is aware of God's presence there is
adoration, and all rivals are abhorred, but when man loses that awareness God
is ignored and other values are explored.
When
Israel lost its awareness of the presence of God, the presence of God was
actually removed, and the temple was destroyed where they could meet with
God. When God entered history in the
presence of His Son, the leaders of Israel were not aware that this was the day
of their visitation. God was present in
their midst, but they rejected Him and crucified Him. Jesus prayed for their forgiveness, for He knew they were so
unaware of the presence of God that they did not know it was God they were
rejecting. Nothing is more lethal than
unawareness. When man loses a sense of
God's presence there is no evil they are incapable of committing. Every sin that a child of God has ever
committed could have been prevented by the awareness of God's presence.
The
Jews have recognized the importance of God's presence all through history, and so
they have developed rituals that stress it.
In The Bar mitzvah Treasury I read of how David Hirsch believed the
Rabbi who taught him that when the congregation bowed in prayer the Shechinah
itself‑the very spirit and presence of God‑appeared on the altar. If anyone looked up with one eye that eye
would be blinded, and if one looked up with both eyes God would strike him
dead. No one could look on the form of
God and live. Even Moses had to look at
God's back. You can imagine the
enormous tension in a young person as they prayed. He longed so to look up and see God, but he did not want to be
blind, or to die. There was a terrific
battle in his mind, but one day he lost control and lifted one eye to look, and
to his shock there was no glory to blind him.
The rest of the story is about his loss of faith and rebellion because
of the loss of even the illusion of God's presence.
The
Jews know they need the presence of God and they are willing to deceive in
order to get it, but such a presence is a fiction. The Christian, however, who has the promise of Christ's presence
can be so unaware of it that they also develop a pretend presence with form and
rituals that becomes empty and equally powerless. The great need of any child of God is an authentic experience of
the presence of Christ. An unknown poet
wrote‑
Of all the prizes
That earth can give,
This is the best:
To find thee, Lord,
A living Presence near
An in thee rest!
Friends, fortune, fame,
Or what might come to me‑
I count all loss
If I find not
Companionship
With thee!
Jesus
said He would send the Comforter to abide with us forever. The name means the one called beside, and so
the idea of companionship is very appropriate.
The relationship of God and man is to be a companionship. We cannot be content with the saying,
"God's in His heaven‑all is right with the world." It is not all right. It is a world of fearful things, and we need
to be able to say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will
fear no evil, for thou art with me. We
need to hear the divine companion promise‑
"Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid.
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to
stand,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand."
God
the Father has promised His presence in our lives. God the Son has vowed to be ever with us, and the Holy Spirit
makes our heart His temple, and so is ever near. Why then are we so often unaware of God's presence? Could it be that Harry Kemp is right in his
poem called Blind?
The spring blew trumpets of color.
Her green sang in my brain.
I heard a blind man groping,
Tap‑tap with his cane.
I pitied him his blindness,
But can I say I see?
Perhaps their walks close by a
Spirit that pities me.
A spirit that sees me taping the
Five‑sensed cane of time
Amid such unguessed glories
The I am worse than blind.
Jesus
loved to make the blind to see, and our prayer needs to be, "Open my eyes
Lord, I want to see Jesus." The
key to this prayer being answered is for us to develop a spirit of praise. David was a leader in developing the worship
of Israel, and one of the primary characteristics of the worship he developed
was praise. He made it the heart of
worship, for praise opens the eyes to God's presence. Praise involves the intellect as we think of God's majesty, and
the marvels of what He has made. Praise
involves the emotions as we feel the grace and mercy of God in our lives, and
as we are filled with joy. Praise
involves the will as we choose to fulfill our purpose for being, which is to
glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Praise gets our whole being involved in God's whole being.
The
subject of praise is so vast that when you study it you feel like you are
mining a mountain of gold with a spoon.
There is no way to get the job done.
But as marvelous as it is there are problems with it, and maybe some of
you have the same hindrance to praise as C. S. Lewis did. In his Reflections On The Psalms Lewis
wrote, "When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some
time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so
clamorously made by all religious people that we should praise God: Still more in the suggestion that God
Himself demanded it. We all despise the
man who demands continued assurance of his own virtues, intelligence or
delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator,
every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratifies that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and
horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my
mind."
As Lewis
gave deeper thought to the matter he discovered that men by nature praise all
that they value and enjoy. They praise
their leaders, their team, their nation, their friends, their favorite TV
programs and their favorite anything or anyone. Life is full of praise, for that is how men communicate their
values and their loves. Where there is
no praise there is no love. Where is
love there will be praise. Songs of
praise revolve around man's love for the opposite sex, and for God, for these
are his two strongest loves. St.
Augustine said many centuries ago, "Singing comes from joy, but if we
observe more carefully, it comes from love, you want to sing about what you
love."
Praise
is a happy love song. It is a rejoicing
because God is present and our relationship is one of love and enjoyment. Praise is itself a part of the enjoyment of
God, and it is often the pathway by which we enter God's presence. Praise and presence are linked together as
one. Lack of praise means loss of
presence. Fellowship is the mutual
enjoyment of one another's presence, which leads to praise. If we enjoy God's presence, we will praise
Him, and if we praise Him, we are enjoying His presence. When C. S. Lewis came to see that our praise
of God opens us up to His presence, he changed his mind. He saw that God does not crave our praise
just for Himself. He wants to love and
guide us, and He cannot do it if we are closed to His presence. By means of praise we open the door of our
minds and hearts to God's presence.
When
you praise someone on a human level you are focusing on them and their values
at that moment and not just yourself.
So when you praise God you are looking at Him, His glory, and His
will. In prayer you are, more often
than not, focusing on yourself and your needs, but in praise you are other
centered, and this is the key to relationship.
Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. You do not get this done by the give me
routine of the typical prayer. You do
this by means of the giving of praise.
Praise
is the one thing you can give God that He can appreciate. Usually we think there is nothing we can
give to God, and so we approach God always as the Giver and seldom think of Him
as a Receiver. What can we possibly
give Him? We can give God the sacrifice
of praise. In Heb. 13:15 we are told,
"Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of
praise." We do not offer lambs,
bulls, or doves in sacrifice, for Jesus eliminated that need forever by His
once for all sacrifice on the cross.
But Jesus did not eliminate the sacrifice of praise. It was a vital part of worship in the Old
Testament, and it is no less vital to the New Testament saint. Praise is something that the saints of all
ages have in common. We need to ask,
what can I put into the worship service that will please God? Worship is to be mutually beneficial to God
and His people, and this will only happen through praise and adoration.
Praise
is the fun and enjoyable side of our relationship to God. Praise is very simply our enjoying of
God. We do not always enjoy God in
prayer. Prayer can often be a
burden. It can be a time of crying out
to God and a pleading for needs to be met.
Praise is an enjoyment of who God is and of what He has already
done. I feel good when I walk into the
home of my grandson Jason. He shouts at
me, "Hi Grandpa Glenn." He
comes running to give me a hug, and he says, "I love you."
His praise of me, and delight in my presence creates
in me a delight to be in his presence, and to be a blessing to him. What is true on the human level is true in
our relationship to God.
We are
weak in our experience of enjoying God because we are weak in our experience of
praise. In Psa. 119:164 we read,
"Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws." In marriage enrichment it is considered a
great aid in your relationship to praise each other once a day. How enjoyable would seven times a day
be? How enriched was the Psalmists enjoyment
of God by seven periods of praise daily.
Such a schedule of praise would guarantee a growing awareness of the
presence of God. We ought not to expect
to leap to this level of perfection and praise God seven times a day, but we
need to learn to praise Him more.
Praise His name, He's the same blessed Jesus!
Praise His name, He's the one I adore.
Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him,
Praise Him more and more and more.
How do
we develop the spirit of praise? We
focus on that which makes God worthy of praise. In verse 3 we read, "Great is the Lord and most worthy of
praise, His greatness no one can fathom."
Then he goes on to speak of the splendor of his majesty, and of the
awesomeness of his wonderful works. In
our expanding universe we need to expand our conception of God. David in Psa. 8 said, "When I consider
your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have
set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you
care for him?" What David did not
know is that the wonders he beheld were a mere fraction of God's work.
On a
good night David could see between one and two thousand stars. Today with binoculars we can see up to one
million stars. But even that is a small
fraction of the 100 billion stars just in our own galaxy. Man has now developed ways to see 60 billion
light years away and find multiplied millions of other galaxies, and all of
this is the work of God's fingers. The
universe is incomprehensible, and as far as man's imagination goes it is
infinite. Unfortunately, as man's
awareness of God's creation grows their awareness of God's nature remains
primitive. Their small conception of
God could not stand the strain, and so they lost their God in vastness of His
creation. The creation became more
wonderful and awesome than their God, and so they began to worship the creation
rather than the Creator. It is
important that we keep expanding in our understanding of God's nature so that
He is always primary in our praise.
As wider skies broke out his view,
God greatened in his growing mind;
Each year he dreamed his God anew,
And left his older God behind.
He saw the boundless scheme dilate
In star and blossom, sky and clod,
And as the universe grew great,
He dreamed for it a greater God. Author unknown.
The
marvels of what we know of space is beyond belief, and there is so much we
don't know. Size comparisons boggle the
mind. If earth was one grain of wheat,
the sun would be 4 bushels of wheat in comparison. And yet the sun is no great object in comparison to Betelgeuse,
the bright red star in the shoulder of Orion.
Our sun is 866,000 miles across, but Betelgeuse is 420 times greater in
diameter. It would take an airplane
flying at a rate of 600 miles per hour 70 years just to fly across it. This is just one of the billions of stars
that God has made, and there is no end in sight of new stars. The universe speaks loud and clear that the
God who made this masterpiece is in infinite.
If
you are part of God's universe, you are a space traveler, for the whole thing
is in rapid motion. The earth spins on
its axis over a thousand miles per hour, so that every day we travel 25
thousand miles, and every year 9 million miles. You wonder why anyone every wants to get on a merry‑go‑round
since we live on one all our lives. But
it is so smooth we do not even perceive it.
But we are slow pokes. The sun
revolves at 4,000 miles per hour, and even it is far from a speed record, for
Jupiter rotates at the dizzying rate of 28,000 miles per hour. We are all space travelers, for our entire
galaxy is also revolving at a rate of about 5 billion miles per year. Dr. Clarence Benson sums up our yearly
journey in God's playground of the universe:
"Each year we travel 9 million miles at one
thousand miles an hour
in the earth's diurnal motion; six hundred million
miles at 18
miles a second in the planet's circuit of the Sun;
four hundred million
miles at 12 miles a second in the journey of the
solar system through
space; and finally, five billion miles at one
hundred seventy five miles
a second in the rotation of the galaxy. The teaming population of the
earth are confined to minute portion of a vast
universe that transcends our imagination but that prison cell is in reality a
passenger coach that travels a little more than six billion miles each
year."
Don't
try to claim this on your tax form, but do claim it as evidence that God is a God
of order and wonder worthy of praise.
The Psalmist knew a mere fraction of what we know of God's wondrous
works, but even what he knew was more than man can fathom. The greatest wonder
of all is that this God of such infinite power and majesty loves us and desires
us to enter his presence with praise.
There
is no question of God's worthiness to receive praise. The question is, are we worthy to offer it? The Bible says that we are. That is one of the purposes of God in having
a chosen people. They are chosen for
praise. It was true of Israel in the
Old Testament, and of the church in the New Testament. I Peter 2:9 says, "But you are a chosen
people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you
may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His
wonderful light." Praise fulfills
our purpose for being as a people, and our personal purpose in glorifying God
and enjoying Him forever. Praise is the
key to God's presence for us, and the key to God's pleasure in us.
Psa.
69:30‑31 says, "I will praise God's name in song and glorify Him
with thanksgiving. This will please the
Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs." God's greatest pleasure is in the sacrifice
of praise. Psa. 149 says that when
God's people praise and take delight in Him, God takes delight in His
people. God is not like the Sun. The Sun throws its rays on the earth and
gives this blessing to us. There is
nothing we can do to benefit the Sun in return. The Sun would be indifferent to us if we ever thought of
something we might do. God, on the
other hand, is enriched by how we respond to His gifts, His grace, and to His
being.
God is
ever worthy of our praise, and when we grant Him this gift that we can freely
give, we gain the pleasure of His presence, and He gains the pleasure of love
fulfilled. God is love and love has no
greater pleasure than its expression being met with a loving response. The joy of eternity will be a mutual joy of
God and man. We tend to think of what
it will be for us, but forget how wonderful heaven will be for God with its
endless praise from those whom He has saved by His love. In Rev. 4:11 this is the song that is sung
before the throne: "You are
worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created
all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."
In Rev.
5:12 this is the song to Jesus:
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth and
wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise." Tens of thousand of poets have already begun
in time to try and utter the songs of eternity, and that is what praise is all
about. Someone wrote,
"From the highest throne of glory
To the cross of deepest woe,
Thou didst come to ransom sinners,
Flow, my praise, forever flow."
If God
and our Savior are worthy of being praise for all eternity, is it not logical
that they are worthy of being praised in time?
Will you join me in practicing the presence of God by practicing praise,
and by joining in the conscious effort to know God better so that we see even
more clearly that He is indeed worthy of praise.
2. THE POWER OF PRAISE Based
on Psalm 149:1‑9
Sometimes
we take the wisest man in history too seriously. Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun, and those who
take this as the last word can become pessimistic. What is the point of being an explorer if there are no new
continents to be discovered. The poles
have both been reached, and all the highest mountains have been climbed. There is nothing new to do, and so we are
born to late. Such is the thinking of
one who takes Solomon too seriously.
The fact
is, the Bible is filled with new things, and one of the most common references
is to the new songs we can sing to praise God.
Not only does our text say, "Sing unto the Lord a new song,"
but this theme is repeated over and over so that it becomes a major duty of
believers to be ever involved with the new.
Psa. 33:3‑Sing unto Him a new song.
40:3‑He
hath put a new song in my mouth.
96:1‑O
sing unto the Lord a new song.
98:1‑O
sing unto the Lord a new song.
144:9‑I
will sing a new song unto Thee O God.
Isa. 42:10‑ Sing unto the Lord a new song.
Solomon
did not realize that the best was yet to be under the new covenant where we
would praise our Redeemer forever with new songs. In Rev. 5:9 and 14:3, we hear new songs being sung in heaven in
praise of Jesus. The fact is, there
have been more songs sung in praise of Jesus than any other person in history,
and for all eternity song writers will be busy coming up with new ones,
for our praise of Him will never cease.
The
message of the Bible is clear: Do not
let your praise grow stale by singing the same songs over and over until they
lose their freshness, and no longer move you to true adoration. I have sung hymns with my mind elsewhere
because they were so familiar that I did not have to think. They were mere memorized rituals that I
could go through with no real praise to God because my mind was not on
God. A new song forces you to pay
attention to what you are singing, and this engages your mind. You can't be day dreaming when singing a new
song, and, therefore, you are more likely to truly praise.
The
implication of the persistent call to sing new songs is that by nature we get
into ruts, and even as God's people we grow stale in our worship. We need constant renewal, or we sink into
dead orthodoxy where we have all the truth, but it makes no difference in our
lives because it has lost its power to motivate us. If we let this happen, it is our own fault, because we are urged
to never cease singing new songs to the Lord, and thus, keeping our love for
Him fresh and alive.
What we
do not realize is that praise is one of the key weapons for spiritual
warfare. You will notice that this
Psalm links praise and the sword. This
sounds strange and shocking to us.
Worship and warfare seem worlds apart in our minds, and it makes a
discord in our minds to put them together as does verse 6: "May the praise of God be in their
mouths and a double‑edged sword in their hands." The reason it does not fit our sense of
harmony is because the subject has been neglected. Warren Wiersbe, one of the contemporary leaders in the study of
worship, wrote in Moody Monthly, "I have read books and sermons on the
subject of worship, and I have yet to find a major work that says anything
about worship as spiritual warfare."
We sing
Onward Christian Soldiers, and Fight The Good Fight, but we do not take the
issue of spiritual warfare very seriously.
The result is we let our weapons be neglected, and they get rusty and
ineffective for the battle. Israel did
the same thing on the physical level.
When she ceased to praise God she fell before the armies of her
enemies. When she praised God she was
victorious. One of the great examples
is in II Chron. 20. A vast army of
Moabites and Ammonites came against Israel.
When king Jehoshaphat was told of it he went to prayer, and in verse 12
we read, "O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking
us. We do not know what to do, but our
eyes are on you."
God
promised to be with them and so in verse 19 we read that the Levites,
"Stood up and praised the Lord, the God of Israel, with very loud
voice." As they marched to war,
verse 21 says that Jehoshaphat, "Appointed men to sing to the Lord and to
praise Him for the splendor of His holiness as they went out at the head of the
army, saying: Give thanks to the Lord,
for His love endures forever." As
they marched into battle singing, the Lord gave them the victory over this far
superior enemy. It was such a total
victory they called the place the Valley Of Beracah, which means the valley of
praise. They went there to praise God,
then went back to the temple in Jerusalem to praise Him more with harp and
lutes and trumpets. From then on
Jehoshaphat had peace on all sides.
What was
the secret weapon that gave them victory over a superior foe? It was praise. This made them superior, for praise is a weapon far more powerful
than the weapons of warfare made by men.
Praise puts God on your side, because you are on God's side. I suspect that you could study the wars of
history and discover that the side which most often won was the side with the
greater number of praisers of God. When
Israel lost a battle it was because they had ceased to praise God.
Since
physical warfare is not a regular part of our lives as it was with God's Old
Testament people, we need to apply this to the warfare of the spirit. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but
against spiritual powers and forces of darkness. In the whole armor of God, that Paul urges us to put on, only one
is for an aggressive attack on evil, and that is the sword of the spirit which
is the Word of God. It is by the Word
that we take the offensive, and a large part of that sword is praise. By praise we can fight our way out of
battles with evil, and by praise we can push back the forces of evil, and
overcome the territory they hold.
Why
should we bother to teach children Christian songs at a early age? It is because the Bible tells us it is a
child's first weapon against evil. Psa.
8:2 says, "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise
because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger." A little child singing puts a muzzle on the
skeptic and the critic, and forces them into silence.
Satan trembles when he hears
The songs of children strike
his ears.
The power of music kept the demons out of king Saul,
who was otherwise under their control.
Psa. 52
is all about the two kinds of praises:
Those who praise themselves and boast of their evil. They end in everlasting ruin. The others are the praises of God. They will go on flourishing in the house of
God praising Him forever. Praise is the
weapon that overcomes all the forces that pull us away from God; especially
pride. The praises of God conquer pride
and avoid the fall it leads too. Praise is our weapon of victory. Let it get rusty and you are bound to be
wounded by one of the many foes of the Christian life.
By
praise we bind the enemy. In verse 8 of
our text it speaks of binding their kings and nobles. By our praise we bind the powers of Satan. We are no match for the unseen forces of
Satan. He has so many advantages over
us, but we have a weapon that negates all his advantages, and that is the
weapon of praise. Wiersbe says we have
neglected our greatest weapon for overthrowing empires and changing the world,
and the sad part is, we are content to do so.
Praise is like any other weapon.
You have got to train, practice, and learn how to use it. But since we have not been trained, we don't
want to bother. If someone came around
offering to teach anyone how to use a bazooka, most of us would past, for we
don't see any relevance to knowing how to shoot it. So it is with praise. It
is a powerful weapon of spiritual warfare, but we do not see its relevance, and
so we don't bother with the discipline of training. The result is we go marching into life's battle without our
sword, and it is no wonder that we seldom take over territory under the control
of evil forces.
Neh.
8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." This means the lack of joy is your
weakness. When you are not in a spirit
of joyful praise, you are vulnerable to enemy attack. Why do Christians get down and depressed, and even have total
breakdowns? I do not want to be
simplistic as if there are not dozens of different factors, but the bottom line
is, they are unarmed. They are fighting
enemy forces without the weapon of worshipful praise. Study any period of great revival in the history of the church
and you will find a revival of praise, and an outburst of new songs. William Taylor wrote, "He who has a new
song in his mouth is ever stronger, both to suffer and to labor, than the man
who has a dumb spirit and a hymnless heart."
Whatever
you do, praising God will make you do it better. Praise God at work, and you will enjoy your work better, or
tolerate it better. Praise God in your
home, and you will have a better home life.
Praise God as you drive, and it will not be the torture it is for those
who only gripe and complain about all the idiots on the road. Praise is your weapon to counteract all the
ways Satan tries to defeat you in the Christian life. Without praise you are like fish in a barrel to the enemy of your
soul. This Psalm says song and sword go
hand in hand. Worship and warfare are
not world's apart. They are side by
side, and you need the one to deal with the other. You need the song to do well with the sword.
Praising
God is the most practical activity there is, for it is the source of your
strength. The praise Psalms are our
weapons, for Heb. 4:12 says, "The Word of God is living an active, sharper
than any double‑edge sword."
I have had New Testaments with the Psalms in them, but never realized I
was carrying my sword when I had it, for I had no idea of the power of
praise.
I was fascinated
by Judson Conwell's book Let Us Praise.
As a pastor he got all excited about a ministry of demon exorcism, and
he began to focus on casting out demons.
He had services on Sunday for this purpose, and he noticed he was
becoming so demon‑centered that Christ was put on the back burner. He came under the conviction of the Holy
Spirit that he was to praise Jesus, and not get his focus on demons. It was hard to break the pattern, but he
finally did, and when he began to focus on praising Jesus he found he and his
church stopped having so many problems with demons.
Satan is
very subtle. He can get us so involved
in battles of all kinds that we are actually more under his control than that
of Christ. The thing we need to ask about
all we do is this: Is this helping me
to keep my eyes on Jesus, and, is it motivating me to sharpen my focus on
praising and exalting His name? Satan
would love to see us fighting so many skirmishes with various demons of evil
that we have no time or energy for praise.
He is winning, no matter how many minor victories we may win, if he can
keep us from our big gun and most powerful weapon‑the weapon of
praise.
Praise
keeps us power oriented, but lack of praise leads us to be problem oriented. When we do nothing but focus on problems we
tend to be led downward to pessimism and discouragement. Many Christians even get depressed in prayer
because their prayer is almost totally negative, and dealing with
problems. We need to balance out prayer
with praise so we do not become problem centered. The praise‑centered Christian is the most victorious
Christian.
In
Dostoevski's The Brother's Karamazov, Ivan imagines he sees the devil, and a
conversation takes place in which the devil says, "If I could praise God,
I would cease to be the devil." I
don't how theologically correct that is, but it is true for men. If they praise God, they will cease to be
devil‑centered and self‑centered, and become God‑centered. The key to change of character and attitude
is the power of praise. Probably the
greatest power of praise is the power of it to please God. Look at verse 4 which says, "For the
Lord takes delight in His people. He
crowns the humble with salvation."
Praise pleases God, and He in turn blesses those who praise, and this
leads those who praise to have all the more praise. The next verse says, "Let the saints rejoice in this honor
and sing for joy on their beds."
Not all of life is a battle.
Sometimes we just relax on our beds and rejoice in the good life of
being a child of God, and an object of His delight.
As
Americans we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but
this means to most people the pursuit of pleasure, which does not lead to happiness,
except during the moments of
pleasure. Real happiness is found in
one's awareness that he is honored by God.
God delights in him, and loves him as His child. This is an honor that never gets on the
great TV award shows. It never gets a
large gold or silver trophy, but it is life's greatest honor, and it goes to
those who praise God and rejoice in Him,
and ever sing new songs of joy.
This is the life‑style that pleases God, and the reward is His delight and salvation. Happiness is not something you pursue as
much as something you get as a by‑product of pleasing God by being a
praiser.
If God
is happy with you, because you are happy with Him, you are on the highest level
of happiness. Spurgeon said, "The thought
of the Lord's taking pleasure in us is a mine of joy never to be
exhausted." In Psa. 147:11 we read
it again: "The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in
His unfailing love." Just as we
delight when our child or grandchild will leap to us from a table in full
confidence that we will catch them, and not let them fall, so God delights in
us when we trust and appreciate Him.
The happiest children in this world are those whose parents delight in
them, for delighted parents are loving, caring, forgiving, and generous in
their giving. So the happiest
Christians in this world are those in whom God is delighted. This Hebrew word for delight is used frequently
to refer to God's pleasure.
If you
get a great deal of pleasure out of one, two, or three children, or
grandchildren, think of the pleasure God gets out of hundreds of millions of
children who praise Him. And why do
they praise Him? Because as verse 4
says, "He crowns the humble with salvation." The KJV has it, "He beautifies the meek
with salvation." The idea of
beauty is more accurate for the Hebrew word here is paar, which means, to make
beautiful. It is used in Isa. 60:13 to
refer to the beauty of the temple.
"The glory of Lebanon will come to you, the pine, the fir, and the
cypress together, to adorn the place of my sanctuary..." Adorn is the Hebrew word paar. God is pleased by trees, plants, and flowers
that beautify the environment where He is worshipped. Beauty, worship, and salvation are all linked in the Bible, and
we add to the beauty with voices of praise.
The flower praises God by being beautiful, and we praise Him by
beautiful sounds.
Beauty
is to characterize all that is involved in worship. God is beautiful in His splendor and holiness, and the sanctuary
is to be beautiful; the music is to be beautiful, and the people are to be
beautiful. There will be nothing ugly
in heaven, and the closer we can get to total beauty in time, the closer we get
to heaven. The same word paar is used
two others times in Isa. 60. One refers
to the temple and the other to the people.
In verse 7 God says, "I will adorn my glorious temple." In verse 9 it says, "He has endowed you
with splendor." Splendor is the same word as, to beautify, to adorn, and
to crown. We could do further studies
of this word, but the point is clear: beauty is important to God, and one of
the most beautiful things in life is victory over evil. The beauty of praise leads to the beauty of
victory over evil.
There
are some who take praise as their spiritual weapon very seriously. Most of us would be inclined to see prayer
as our weapon. This is certainly
valid. Al Trefetheran gave me a
missionary letter that told of a medical missionary in Africa who had to travel
by bicycle for two days to get medical supplies. This meant he had to camp in the jungle overnight. To make a long story short, there was a
group of young men who knew he had money and medicine. They were going to rob him and kill
him. But as one of them told the story
later, they backed off when they saw him surrounded by 26 armed guards. The medical missionary was all alone and
could not understand this providential protection until he came home to
Michigan. There he learned that on that
very night he was camping his church called for a special prayer time for him,
and the number of men who came together for that time of intercession was
26. Amazing, yet more in line with our
experience and familiarity with the power of prayer.
Similar
miraculous intervention is happening because of praise. Michael Colem and Ed Lindquist founded
Hosanna Music a few years back and discovered the Christian world is thirsting
for praise songs. They now mail praise cassettes to hundreds of thousands all
over the world on a regular basis, and they learn of the power of praise as a
weapon in spiritual warfare. For example, Don Moen, director of Integrity
Music, was the leader of a young musicians group travelling on a bus across
Poland to the Soviet Union. The were carrying 24 master cassettes of the New
Testament, and 3 high speed duplicators to copy tapes and distribute them to
underground Christians all over the Soviet Union.
The
penalty for trying to smuggle this into Russia was an automatic 10 years in
prison. But they felt compelled to take the risk to get the word of God to
people. They had wrapped all in packages and spray painted them black. When the
bus neared the border Don went to the front of the bus and led them in praise
with every song they could remember. They exalted Jesus as Lord of all and
sought by praise the power of his protection.
When they came to the border they were ordered out of the bus and two
guards began to search everything. The older guard was in charge, and a younger
guard, who seemed to want to find something to please his superior. When he
came to the transformer where they had hidden the tapes, he was going to take
it apart. Their hearts sank, but the older guard yelled at him that he was
taking too much time. The older guard actually apologized for the younger one.
The young one stopped, and the group was convinced that their worship and
praise was the weapon that defeated the plan of Satan at that point.
Praise
is a form of prayer for it is not just horizontal music which talks about God.
It is vertical music which talks to God. When we sing to exhort or encourage,
or to evangelize, that is horizontal music directed at people. But in praise it
is God who is the audience, and we are singing to Him. When we praise God we
are no longer mere spectators in the battle of life. We are soldiers who are
making a difference in the power level of the kingdom of God. Without praise we
are unarmed, but with praise we are ready both to stand and defend the faith,
and to attack and take territory held by the enemy. Praise is both a defensive
and offensive weapon.
Words
are weapons for good or evil. Jesus said in Matt. 12:34, "For out of the
overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." If the heart is full of awful
crud, the mouth will bring forth evil, complaining, gossip, and foul words. If
the heart is full of gratitude, awe, and joy in the Lord, the mouth will
overflow with praise. Praise is an external symbol of the inner life. You
reveal the state of your heart by your words. If you are always gripping and
complaining, people will know what your heart is like, and God knows you are
fighting life's battles with a dull sword. You are as ineffective as one trying
to slice cheese with a golf club. But if praise flows from your mouth you reveal a heart filled with love, joy, and
peace in the Lord. Your sword is like a
laser beam able to cut through solid steel, and you are a weapon that God can
use to defeat the schemes of principalities and powers. There is power in praise that we cannot
measure, for we can never fully know how God uses praise for the conquering of
the forces of darkness.
Praise
brings us into the presence of God, and in His presence there is power. Don Moen wrote this song:
I just want to be where you
are,
Dwelling daily in your
Presence.
I don't want to worship from
afar,
Draw me near to where you
are.
I want to be where you are,
Dwelling in your Presence;
Feasting at your table,
Surrounded by your glory,
In your Presence,
That is where I always want
to be.
Heaven
is the final fulfillment of this desire, but praise is the present experience
of this desire. Praise takes us into
God's presence, and in that presence there is power. May God help us to keep this weapon clean, oiled, and very
active, that we might experience in the daily battles of life, the power of
praise.
3. THE PINNACLE OF PRAISE Based on Psa. 150
A
little girl was saying her prayers, and her mother suggested she ask God to get
uncle John a job. The little girl
considered this a good idea, and so she included this in her requests. The next evening when it was time to say her
prayers again the mother reminded her to pray for uncle John to get a job. The little girl looked up at her mother in
surprise and asked, "What was wrong with the job I got uncle John last
night?"
There
are adults who are convinced this is to be our attitude in prayer. Just ask and
believe and it is yours. Just name it
and claim it. Others are equally
convinced that we need to be persistent in prayer, and pray without ceasing, to
make it clear to God it is not just a whim, but a sincere heart‑felt
desire. There is debate on prayer, but
there is no debate on praise, for the Bible evidence is so overwhelming that it
convinces all that praise is to be perpetual, persistent, and never
ending. There may be a limit to how
many times you pray to God for something, but there is no limit as to how many
times you praise God for something. The
Psalms are filled with never ending praise.
Going
through the Psalms is like climbing a mountain. You don't just go straight up, for there are valleys to go down
into on the way up. There are cliffs to
go around, and so the journey to the top takes you up and down, and around, and
covers a lot of ground. The Psalms take
us into the valleys of lament, discouragement, and depression, and there are
times when the Psalmist is singing the blues.
But in the end he gets to the top, and the book of Psalms ends with a
series of praise songs unmatched anywhere in the world. This is the pinnacle of praise, and Psa. 150
is the grand finale.
James
Stewart, the great Scottish preacher, wrote, "All the way through the book
of Psalms you feel that you are walking on a smoldering volcano of praise,
liable to burst out at any moment into a great flame of gratitude to
God." In the last 6 Psalms we are
in the heart of that erupting volcano of praise, and in this last Psalm all
heaven breaks loose as the angels of heaven join man in the earthly sanctuary
in a universal praise of God.
If you
are superstitious about the number 13, you will be glad to know the Bible is
not. 13 times the word praise is used
in this brief Psalm. There are no
unlucky numbers for God. Praise Him 13
times and you will be blest. W. Graham
Scroggie said, "Was there ever so much said in 37 words as is said
here?" That is all there is in the
Hebrew. There are just 37 words and 13
of them, over one third, are the word praise.
What does this Psalm tell us?
1. Who is to
be praised?‑the Lord.
2. Where is
He to be praised?‑in the sanctuary, and in the mighty heavens.
3. Why is He
to be praised?‑for His acts of power, and His surpassing greatness.
4. What are
the ways He is to be praised?‑by instruments and by voice.
5. Who is to
praise Him?‑everything that has breath.
This is
also the Hallelujah Chores of the Hebrew hymnal, and it calls for total
inclusiveness. Every voice and every
instrument are to join in the reverberation of jubilation that fills the
universe with praise to God. Praise the
Lord is one word in Hebrew. It is
hallelujah, and this Psalm begins and ends with hallelujah. You might feel inadequate to join such a
choir and orchestra, but if you have breath, you are invited. It does not say, if you have pitch, and
tone, and can read music, and can sing harmoniously. It says, if you have breath, join in this universal praise. There are many groups we would not qualify
for, and we would not be so presumptuous to even audition, but for praising God
we all qualify.
Do you
sing in the choir? Most of us would say
no, and, thereby, be guilty of speaking falsely again, for as children of God
we are all in the universal choir that offers unto God the sacrifice of
praise. If you are breathing you are in
this choir. Why are the Psalms forever
urging us to praise? They urge the
whole world to do so. They urge the
nations of the world to praise God.
They urge the world of nature to praise God. They urge the angels of heaven to praise God. They urge God's people to be in perpetual
praise. Why this obsession‑ this
magnificent obsession with praise?
Because
the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and the primary
way we do this is by praise. Every
being and every created thing fulfills it purpose for existence in the praise
of their Creator. Spurgeon in his
Treasury of David writes of this Psalm, "We have now reached the last
summit of the mountain chain of Psalms.
It rises high into the clear azure, and its brow is bathed in the
sunlight of the eternal world of worship.
It is a rapture. The poet‑prophet
is full of inspiration and enthusiasm.
He stays not to argue, to teach,
to explain, but cries with burning words, Praise Him, Praise Him, Praise Ye the
Lord."
In other
words, this Psalm is pure praise. It is
a call for all‑inclusive praises to God.
It is inclusive of the earthly sanctuary and the heavenly sanctuary, and
thus, inclusive of men and angels. It
is inclusive of both God's acts of power and God's being. It is inclusive of all the kinds of musical
instruments, and it is inclusive of both instrumental and focal music. It basically has no other purpose than that
of getting you to join the universe in response to the Creator of all that is,
with praise.
Westminister Abbey in London is one of the greatest shrines of the
English speaking world. It memorializes
the men and women who have made immense contributions to our way of life. Just inside the main entrance on the floor
in the center aisle is a large brass plate in memory of W. H. Auden, a leading
poet of this century. These words are
engraved on it:
In the prison of his days
Teach the free men how to
praise.
They came from a poem Auden wrote in which he says
that the duty of any poet in this difficult fallen world is to give man a
reason to sing. He wrote:
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night
With your unconstraining
voice
Still persuade us to
rejoice.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain
start
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to
praise.
The Psalms
are the Bible poets labor to do just that, and this final lesson in Psa. 150
makes a powerful point that true praise must be God‑centered. 13 times the word praise is used, and all 13
of them have just One they refer too.
Every praise is praise the Lord; praise God, or praise Him. We are looking at a spiritual pyramid
here. The base is broad and all
inclusive of all that has breath, and all instruments, but the pinnacle narrows
to a point that focuses on One and no other.
It is not wrong to praise others, for the same word for praising God is
used for the praise of the king, ones wife, and other people. We can praise our heroes, our country, our
flag, and anyone or anything for which
we feel strong admiration.
The
point of the Psalm, and all the rest of the Bible, is that when it comes to
worship there is only one target of praise, and that is God. Miss this target and you have not
worshipped. You can praise the pastor,
praise the choir, adore the sanctuary, and admire the stain glass, and be in
awe at the organ, or the high arches of the Cathedral; you can go through a
host of positive feelings, and feel wonderful about the whole experience, and
not have worshipped one second if you offered no sacrifice of praise to God. On the other hand, you may be disappointed
in all of the above, and have no positive emotions stimulated by the
environment, or actions of worship leaders, yet have a great experience of
worship if you have, by your voice, or in the silence of your mind, praised
your Lord.
True
worship is not in how you feel, but in who you praise and adore. You have to take the positive feelings that
may be stimulated in a positive worship setting and direct them toward God, for
if you do not praise Him, your experience, no matter how pleasant, is not
worship. A.W. Tozer, one of the great
writers on worship, wrote, "I want to warn you against the religion that
is no more than love, music, and poetry.
I happen to be somewhat of a fan of good music. I think Beethoven's nine symphonies
constitute the greatest body of music ever composed by mortal man. Yet I realize I'm listening to music; I'm
not worshipping God necessarily.
There's a difference between beautiful sounds beautifully put together
and worship. Worship is another
matter."
Worship
has to be God‑centered to be authentic.
It is not that you can't truly worship by listening to Beethoven. Many hymns are sung all over the world to
the music of Beethoven. One of my
favorites is Ode To Joy, or Hymn To Joy from his ninth symphony. The problem is, it is so easy to stop short
of worshipping God, and be content with the positive feelings of experiencing
the music.
This was
the very issue of the women at the well who got into a discussion with Jesus
about worship. She tried to make the
place of worship an issue. The leaders
of Israel tried to make the rituals an issue.
Jesus said all of these things are irrelevant. The only real issue in worship is your attitude toward God. Do you worship Him in spirit and in truth,
for that is what God is seeking. If
your heart and mind are led to focus on God, then, and only then, have you
truly worshipped. We have become such
an entertainment oriented society that we judge everything by how it stimulates
our interest. If we come to church with
this spirit, and the music and the message are not entertaining, we feel it is
a boring experience. This makes worship
a completely self‑centered experience.
I have
been bored many times in what was suppose to be a worship experience. And the reason I was is because I had this
same self‑centered perspective. I
was judging the service based on what it was doing for me without realizing the
goal was to praise God, and that the value for me was to be a by‑product
of my being God‑centered in my focus.
We need to reprogram our minds and listen to the focus of Psalm
150. It says, praise the Lord, praise
God, and praise Him, praise Him, praise Him.
Get your mind on Him. Bruce
Leafblad, a leading authority on worship wrote:
"So much of our recent history has been slanted
toward
developing a receiving mentality as Christians:
God
exists to meet our needs, to give us blessings, to
fill
us up. So when we come to church, it is
with our hands
cupped
open so they can be filled again. We
have become
professional beggars in the courts of the Lord, and we
have
to turn that around so we see ourselves as "offerers,"
not
"receivers."
We come to give to God the sacrifice of praise, and
what we go away with is a by‑product of that experience of true
worship. It will be far more than we
will go away with if all we come for is to get and not to give. We come to church to celebrate who God is
and what He has done. Anything short of
this is not true worship. God hated all
of the elaborate rituals and sacrifices of His people in the temple when their
hearts were far from Him. It was all
meaningless religion, even though from man's point of view very beautiful and
emotionally moving. God despised it
because it was a man‑centered worship.
They had no desire to glorify God and be channels of His will in the
world. They only desired His approval
of their will. The Old Testament is
full of elaborate worship that is wicked worship, because it is man‑centered
and not God‑centered.
If you
read books on worship today, you will find the main criticism of worship is
that it is man‑centered. People
go to church, not to worship God, but to be entertained. The bigger the show the better the
crowd. I think entertainment is an
important part of life, but it is not worship.
It is not impossible for it to lead to worship if your pleasure leads
you to praise God, but if you just experience your own pleasure, and do not
praise God and give Him pleasure, your very positive feelings could be harming
your experience of true worship. It
takes a conscious effort on our part to let all we experience lead us to praise
God. It is not automatic, nor is it
easy. What is easy is to just
experience our own feelings as an end in themselves rather than as a means to
the end of praising God.
If you
feel guilty for your failure to be all God has willed for you, then praise God
that He loves your enough to forgive you and give you a second, third, fourth,
and many chances to be faithful. Praise
God for His forgiving grace, and for being faithful when you are not. If you feel good and enjoy the music and the
message, and get more light for the Christian walk, then praise God and thank
Him for His love and His resources to guide you to be more Christlike. True worship is such a paradox for it is
something we are to take very seriously, and yet it is to be enjoyable. It is fun to praise God and enjoy Him. You would conclude this if you studied the 50 Hebrews words and the 26
Greek words in the Bible for praise.
These 76 words cover such experiences as‑
Laud and celebrate.
Shout and sing.
Shout with joy.
Clap and make music.
Dance and skip about.
Play and leap.
To jump with joy.
I don't
know about you, but this gives me an impression of a good time. Sad people do not do these sorts of
things. God expects us to enjoy Him,
and all of these words are ways we enjoy others as well. It is party language and wedding
terminology. You don't call the band in
for a funeral, but Psa. 150 calls for the trumpets, the tambourine, and the
cymbals. Every sound an instrument can
make is to call our attention to God that we might praise Him and enjoy Him.
The
Bible is so insistent on praise because it is in praise that all being relates
to God, and praise makes it a relationship of beauty. A female student at a university once said to the visiting
speaker, "I can't see that life has any meaning whatever!" The speaker looked at her unusually pretty
dress and said, "That is a very beautiful dress you are wearing! Why did you choose it? You could have chosen an ugly dress. Is there something that makes you feel
beauty is better than ugliness? And if
so, may that not be the clue to the meaning of life? Must there not be something beautiful at the heart of the world
that won't let you rest content with ugliness?"
The
Psalms call us to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Worship is to be beautiful, and we are to
add to the beauty of it, a beautiful spirit of praise. Beauty is the goal of God for the universe,
and that goal will be achieved. Right
now it is a fallen world full of the ugliness of sin, and it is our job to rise
above the ugly and offer the beautiful sacrifice of praise. It is our task to live a life that adds
order to chaos and beauty to ugliness.
All that is ugly in our acts and attitudes comes short of the glory of
God, and is part of the problem. All
that is beautiful in our acts and attitudes is for the glory of God, and is
part of the solution. Praise is part of
the answer to all of life's problems, because it is a creating of beauty.
The Dean
of Women at a Western University found that telling girls what was right or
wrong failed to have an impact on them.
But if she said, "That would be beautiful," or, "that would be ugly," she got
the desired results. Morality can be
better taught sometimes by the terms beauty and ugly, rather than by the terms
right and wrong. Even in an age of
confused morality people are touched by these categories. Everyone prefers their life to be beautiful
rather than ugly.
The
Christian is one who makes life beautiful by means of praise. The goal of praise is to glorify God, but it
also helps us to be agents of His glory in a fallen world. Praise gives us balance, and helps us go
into an ugly world with hope, faith, and meaning. The goal is not escape, even though that can be helpful for a
time. The goal is to go back into an
ugly world with light to call attention to the beauty that is ever real no
matter how real the ugly is. The
praiser can go into a fallen world with optimism, because he or she knows that
ugly as reality is, there is the beauty of God's love, and the beauty of the
Gospel of Christ, and the beauty of God's promise, and the beauty of
eternity. All of life's meaning is
found in beauty, and we are to be agents of that beauty in a world of
ugliness. The ugly is to motivate us to
see why we are to be agents of beauty.
Most of
the things that Christians reject as fitting for their lifestyle are things
that fail to make their life more beautiful.
It may not be an absolute evil to smoke or to drink, but the question
is, does it beautify the life, or make it more ugly. Slavery was conquered because it was shown to be ugly. So it is with child abuse, drug use,
promiscuous sex, and many other such practices. If you can show that something takes away beauty and adds
ugliness to life, you can show that it is not a practice fitting for a
Christian life. Louis Untermeyer wrote:
Open my eyes to visions girt
With beauty, and with wonder lit‑
But let me always see the
dirt,
And all that spawn and die in it.
Open my ears to music; let
Me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums‑
But never let me dare forget
The bitter ballads of the slums.
From compromise and things
half‑done,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride;
And when, at last, the fight
is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.
We must stay ever unsatisfied with what is, so we
will never cease to work at what can be, by the grace of God. We must be ever
worshiping in the beauty of holiness that we might be channels of that holy
beauty in a world that so desperately needs it. So it is for God's sake; our
sake, and for our needy world's sake that we must be ever climbing up toward
the pinnacle of praise.
4. UNIVERSAL PRAISE Based on
Psa. 117
If you
think Psalm 117 is a short chapter, you are right, for it is the shortest in
all the Bible. But it is twice as long
in English as it is in the original Hebrew.
It is 33 words in English, but only 17 in the Hebrew. And it is another of the many paradoxes of
the Bible, for small as it is, it deals with the largest subject in the
Bible. All the people's of the world,
more even than the United Nations, for it is absolutely universal. It also deals with the universal love of God
and His everlasting faithfulness. So as
small as it is, it is a door that leads us into a Cathedral of praise that is
infinite.
I must
confess that I have never given it a lot of thought, for it is so short that it
seems irrelevant, but we need to see that it is like a modern day chorus. It is very short compared to a hymn, yet, it
can be a powerful tool for praise.
Length does not mean strength.
William Graham Scroggie wrote, "Here, indeed, is a gem, likely to
be overlooked because of its minuteness."
It is clearly overlooked, for there are many commentaries and books of
sermons on the Psalms that just skip Psa. 117, for it seems to small to bother
with. The assumption is that it cannot
be very important if there are only two verses. The Psalm before it has 19 verses, and the Psalm after it has 29
verses. So the theory seems to be that
more is better, and so a measly 17 words cannot be very significant.
How God
must laugh at us, like we do the little child, who goes for the big nickel and
leaves the little dime unclaimed. Most
Christians will go through life and never once claim this little gem as a
precious part of God's Word. The
Interpreter's Bible says, this little Psalm exhibits ideas that are among the
loftiest of the Old Testament."
The basis for world missions is found in this little chorus.
Do you
think it is mere coincidence that Psa. 117, 118, and 119 are all located
together? Psa. 117 is very small, Psa.
118 is medium size, and 119 is the longest in the Bible. The shortest and the longest chapters of the
Bible are separated by an average size chapter: Small, medium, and large, in that order. The very structure of the Bible has a
message. God uses all sizes for His
glory. The size of a song, or anything
else, is not an issue. The issue is,
does it help us worship God in spirit and in truth? The child, the teen, and the adult are all tools that can be used
for God's glory. The small church, the
medium size church, and the large church are all part of God's plan. Size does not matter to God, for His Word is
composed of songs of all sizes, and we want to see how even the smallest of
them can convey a big and vital message.
I. THE
UNIVERSAL INVITATION TO PRAISE v. 1.
This Psalm
seems to be going the wrong way on a one way street. All around it the Psalms are focused on Israel. Psa. 116 ends with a focus on God's chosen
people, and the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. Psa. 118 is also a narrow focus on Israel with the nations as
enemies. In verse 10 we read, "All
the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I cut them
off." The theme is about Israel as
the object of God's salvation.
Now we
come to Psa. 117, and it makes me think of an amusing incident that happened in
New York City during a transportation strike.
Certain heavily traveled streets were made one‑way. Madison Ave. was one of these, and a man who
was not in full possession of his faculties was stopped by an officer when he
was caught going the wrong way.
"Where are you going," the officer asked? The befuddled man responded, "I don't
know, but I must be late, everybody else is coming back."
This is
the feeling you get in reading Psa. 117, and trying to fit it into the context
of the Jewish hymnal. It is going
against the grain, and swimming up stream.
There is no hint of Jewish exclusiveness here at all. It is so totally inclusive that universal is
the only appropriate word. From the
temple in Jerusalem, the very heart of Judaism, this universal invitation goes
out to all the world to praise Jehovah, because the God of the Jews is equally
the God of all people, and He loves them just as He does the Jews. This is radical theology that many Jews
never really grasped. They could sing
this little song, and then go out and live with prejudice against these very
people they just invited to be one with them in their praise to God. This is true of Christians too, and we can
sing theology that is far above the level where we actually live.
"Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee," is a
good example. Listen to the third
verse: "Take my lips and let them
be filled with messages for Thee: Take
my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold‑not a mite would I
withhold." After we sing this we
go and use our mouth and our money for that which does not glorify God at
all. There is no ground for finger
pointing at the Jews. They fell short
of the glory of God. They sang
beautiful things that they did not let influence their lives and thinking.
Nevertheless, it was a God inspired song, and was true, even if God's
people did not take it to heart. The
invitation still stands, and all people of the world are invited to praise God,
for they are included in His plan. God
so loved the world‑that is all the nations and all the people of the
world. That is the New Testament
expanded version of Psa. 117. There has
never been a time when God's plan was not universal. The idea that there are some people that God does not love is
heretical. A study of the most hated
peoples of the Bible reveals that they are included in God's plan of
salvation.
This
very Psalm could have been the last song Jesus sang before He went to the cross
to die for the sins of the whole world.
Let me explain: Psa. 113‑118
are called the Hellel Psalms, or the Hymns of Praise. The Jews had a tradition of singing Psa. 113 and 114 before the
Passover, and then after the Passover meal they sang Psa. 115‑118. We read in Matt. 26:30 that following
the Passover meal of Jesus and His
disciples they kept this tradition and it says, "When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mt. of
Olives." This Psalm was likely a
part of that hymn. Jesus sang this
universal invitation just before He made it possible for all people's of the
world to be saved because of His sacrifice for all sin.
Most of
the Psalms never get mentioned in the New Testament. But this, the shortest of them all, is used by the Apostle Paul
to prove an important point in his letter the Romans. In Rom. 15:11 Paul quotes this first verse‑"Praise the
Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to Him, all you peoples." He uses this text to show that it has always
been God's plan that the Gentiles would be one with the Jews as His people, and
as one they would praise Him. This is
what the New Testament church is to confirm and demonstrate as Jews and
Gentiles unite in Christ to glorify God the Father.
The
littlest Psalm plays a big role in conveying the universal plan of God. The nations did not really respond to this
invitation until Jesus sent His church into all the world with the Gospel. But we do have some examples even in the Old
Testament of pagan peoples who praised the God of Israel. Darius the Mede, Queen of Sheba, Naaman, are
just a few. We can't look at them all,
but let me share a couple of examples.
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, so famous he is studied by most
children in schools as the builder of one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world‑the hanging gardens of Babylon.
Few know that he became a convert to Jehovah, and we have every reason
to believe he will be in heaven. We have his personal testimony in Dan.
4:35. "At the end of that time, I,
Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and
glorified Him who lives forever."
Can a
pagan glorify the God of the Bible? If
he becomes a believer, he certainly can.
This invitation of Psa. 117 is authentic when it says whosoever will may
come, and praise the God who is the God of all peoples. Jonah wanted to keep Jehovah as the God of Israelites only, but when he
preached that the great city of Nineveh was going to be destroyed in 40 days we
read in Jonah 3:5, "The Ninevites believed God." They repented of their evil ways, and God
had compassion on them. Hundreds of
thousands of pagans were spared. It
made Jonah mad, and he wanted to die because God would not be exclusively the
God of Israel. But the Ninevites could
rejoice, for they discovered the message of Psa. 117‑that the God of
Israel is the God of all nations, and loves all people.
In Psa.
138:4‑5 we read of another universal call for royalty to praise God. We see a hint of what the Jews were chosen
to do, but which they did not do, and that was to take the Word of God to all
the world. It says, "May all the
kings of the earth praise you, O Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth. May they sing of the ways of the Lord, for
the glory of the Lord is great."
Judaism was to be a missionary faith carrying the good news of Jehovah's
love to all the world. They didn't do
it, but they did sing about it as an ideal.
Psa. 67 is another song about a universal outreach. Listen to verses 2‑4: "May your ways be known on earth, your
salvation among all nations. May the
peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth.
The
reason Jesus gave the church the great commission to go into all the world is
because this has always been God's plan.
The Old Testament saints failed, but it was always God's plan, and Jesus
built His church out of both Jews and Gentiles to fulfill this plan which will
succeed, for heaven will be filled with the praises of people from every nation
and language. The universal invitation
to praise God of Psa. 117 will be answered by all peoples.
The book
of Revelation assures us that there will be people of every tribe and nation
and language singing the praises of Jesus.
This means an investment in missions is a sure thing. It will pay eternal dividends to get the
Gospel to all the world. Darlene Bee
wrote:
Two thousand tribes without
God's Word
In their own native tongue,
Two thousand tribes who've
never heard
The praise of Jesus sung.
Oh, come ye saints; lift up
your hands,
The Word you've long possessed‑
But there are those in many
lands
Who have not thus been blessed.
Take up thy pen! Translate the Word!
Complete the task begun!
'Till o'er the earth the Word is
heard
In every mortal tongue.
These hungry souls with
living bread,
Ye saints of God, now feed‑
That they may know our
Glorious Head,
And all His precepts heed.
Into the darkness shine the
light,
Reveal God's saving grace‑
That in dawn of glory
bright,
They too may see His face.
Around the Throne a mighty
band
Join as God's praise is sung,
From every kindred, tribe
and land,
Each in his native tongue.
The universal invitation to praise God will be
received and responded to by all the peoples of the world. The second thing we want to look at is‑
II. THE
UNIVERSAL INSPIRATION FOR PRAISE. v.2
The Jews
were often prejudiced against the Gentile nations of the world. They had a hard‑nosed attitude of
superiority as the chosen people of God.
But this song they sang rose above their narrow mindedness. This song reveals that at the heart of
Judaism there is a universal inspiration for praise. All the nations of the world came from the three sons of
Noah. At that time everybody in the
world worshipped Jehovah. All peoples
on the planet descended from this family, and the goal of God has always been
to bring all people back to their roots where they will again be one in
praising Him. He selected Abraham to be
the father of the people He would use to accomplish this goal. The Jews were chosen, not so they could be
the only people to experience the love
of God, but that God might have an instrument to convey His love to all
peoples.
This
Psalm makes it clear that God's love is universal. This Psalm is actually the John 3:16 of the Old Testament. Christ is not yet in this picture, but He
is implied, for if God loves all people, and He is ever faithful in that love,
then He will find a way to provide a salvation that makes it possible for all
peoples to be a part of His eternal family.
The full Gospel is here in seed form, but from the Old Testament point
of view it says all that can be said to inspire universal praise. God is not miserly in His mercy, granting it
to just a few. He is magnanimous,
extending it to all peoples.
This
shortest song has a message so long that it reaches out to all the earth. It is like our doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings
flow, praise Him all creatures here below." God's love is universal, therefore, it is a universal inspiration
for praise. Spurgeon said, "This Psalm, which is very little in its
letter, is exceedingly large in its spirit, for, bursting beyond all bounds of
race or nationality, it calls upon all mankind to praise the name of the
Lord."
There is
no person on earth who cannot be inspired to praise God if they can be made to
grasp that He loves them. Here is the
Old Testament on a par with the New Testament in this essential truth: The God of the Bible loves all people. Usually when something is abundant it loses
its value. Leaves and snowflakes have
no economic value to most of us because nobody will pay for what they can have
free. But this law does not hold true
in the realm of spirit values. God's
love is abundant beyond calculation, for it is universal. Yet, it is of greater value than diamonds or
gold. There are some things that do not
lose their value by being abundant.
Praise is another reality that does not diminish with abundance. God does not say when 50% of the people of
the world praise Him, He will put a halt to the Gospel of His love. His aim is for all people to praise Him, for
its value is not diminished by abundance.
Man
cannot get too much of God's love, and God cannot get too much of man's
praise. That is why we have a Bible
song that sets no limits on either. The
universal love of God inspires the universal praise of man. Spiritual things are just the opposite of economic things. If God only loved a few, then His love would
be of no value to most of mankind. It
would, in fact, be worthless to all but the few. But being that God's love is for all, this makes it of infinite
worth to all, for all can have the highest value this universe offers‑God's
love.
Because
of the truth of this Psalm, all racism, all prejudice, all pride of class, and
all perspectives which limit the universal love of God to any specific people,
are not only sub‑Christian, they are sub‑Judaism. In other words, they are pagan
perspectives. They are offensive to
God, for His goal is to communicate His universal love that there might be
universal praise. God desires praise,
and He deserves praise from all people.
That is why we send and support missionaries.
David in
Psa. 68:31‑32 wrote, "Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God in
adoration. Sing to the Lord, O kingdoms
of the earth‑sing praises to the Lord." Ethiopia and Ethiopian are
referred to 40 times in the Bible. It
is a major Bible land. Phillip was the
first missionary to the Ethiopians as he led the Ethiopian to Christ in Acts
8. There is a tradition of Christianity
in Ethiopia from this one convert, but it was not until 1866 that Swedish
missionaries planted the first permanent Protestant work in Ethiopia. Later the Sudan Interior Mission became
strong in Ethiopia and founded 500 churches there.
The
modern history of Ethiopia started with Menelik who claimed to be descended
from Solomon. His favorite General had
a son Halie Salassie who became the most famous Emperor in the history of
Ethiopia. His full title was, "His
Imperial Majesty, Halie Salassie, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect
of God, and King of Kings of Ethiopia."
Christianity thrived under his reign.
This land, and these people, are just one of many examples around the
world of how God is seeing this Psalm fulfilled by universal praise.
5. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF
PRAISE Based on Psa. 47:1‑9
It was before
my time, but I remember my parents talking about going to see silent
movies. The movies made no sound, but
according to Sam Levinson in his book Everything But Money, the audience made
plenty of sound. As the hero and the
villain shot it out, each firing two thousand shots without loading, the
audience would be providing the sound effects.
When the
hero appeared everybody cheered, and when the villain came on everybody
booed. When the hero kissed the girl
400 kids would kiss their elbows and fill the theatre with kissing sounds. He made it clear that silent movies were far
from noiseless. He goes on, "We
screamed warnings, we screamed approval, we screamed at each other. Fights broke out, We stamped, we whistled, we wept when the faithful dog whined
over his master's wounded body."
The point is, it was by making noise and movement that the people
entered into and participated in the drama unfolding on the screen.
This is
the same idea that we see in the worship experience of the Old Testament. It was not a passive experience, but one
where the people participated and became very active by adding sound and
movement of the body. There was also a
place for silence and a quiet worship experience where the people would be
still and sense the presence of God.
Most of the songs of the Old Testament, however, were songs calling for
sounds of all kinds. Psa. 47 for
example begins, not with quiet meditation and prayer, but clapping of the hands
and a shouting to God with cries of joy.
The
noise level was likely something like that of the old theatre where people got
their body involved in the experience.
Body involvement in worship is a subject we do not often think about,
but the Bible is full of it. It is of
interest that most of the hand clapping in the Bible is evil. That is, it is of the wicked clapping and
rejoicing at the suffering of the people of God. Clapping was an expression of delight and approval, and evil
people clap at evil for they approve of it and get pleasure in it, just as
people today clap for comedians who use the foulest of language and ridicule
God. But in contrast to man who claps
more for evil, the world of nature is always pictured as clapping its hands for
the glory of God.
In Psa.
98:8 we read, "Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing
together for joy." In Isa. 55:12
we read, "You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills will burst into
song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their
hands." Nature makes a lot of
noise in praising God. The bottom line
is, where there is a lot of noise, there is action and involvement, and so worship
was noise oriented because man was to make sounds to express his praise of God,
and joy in the Lord. Nature joins him,
for nature by its very being and beauty praises its maker, just as any work of
art is the glory of its creator. The
Bible answers the age old question:
"If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one there to hear
it, does it make a noise?" The
answer is yes, because there is always someone there to hear it‑God. He hears every clap of every tree in the
forest.
This
Psalm was part of the New Years Day celebration in the synagogue where they
sing it 7 times and then blow the trumpets.
The same Hebrew word for clap here is used over 40 times for blowing the
trumpet. The idea is to make a joyful
noise. In order to do that you have to
go beyond the heart, mind, and soul, and love God with all your strength. That means with the instrument by which you
produce energy, which is your body. You
can pray silently but in a public expression of worship praises are to be
fairly loud, for they are symbolic of enthusiastic thanksgiving. What if you went to a Fourth of July
celebration and they said that this year we are going to have a quiet
celebration and just light candles? The
protest would be wild because noise is necessary to convey the joy and gratitude
for our freedoms in this land. How much
more should there be noise of joy when we celebrate the grace of God?
The
volume that comes out of the mouth seems to be a Biblical issue. Listen to these verses:
Psa. 98:4, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,
all the earth; make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise."
Psa. 32:11, "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice,
ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart."
The New
Testament does not tone it down at all, but keeps the volume of praise on high:
Rev. 7:10, "And cried with a loud voice,
salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the
Lamb."
Rev. 19:1, "I heard a great voice of much
people in heaven, shouting hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.."
Praise
in the distant past and in the infinite future is loud because it is to be an
emotional release of joy. It is to be
like the feelings we have when our team wins a great game, and we are thrilled
and shout for joy. This, of course,
explains why we do not do a lot of clapping and shouting. We just do not generate the internal energy
needed to move the body to these levels of intensity. Different cultures and different people in each culture develop
the levels of emotion they feel is appropriate. In England for example, Dr. Baxter says, for a certain type of
Englishman to say that something was not without interest would be equivalent
to saying there was "A Frenchman dancing in the streets with garlands in
his hair." Most Americans are not that stuffy, but
neither are we so free as those in the Bible lands. They kiss and hug in ways we do not feel comfortable about.
When
Boaz let Ruth glean in his field, and let her eat with his workers, she was so
grateful she fell on her face and asked, "Why have I found favor in your
sight?" You can do a lot of nice
and generous things for people, but I can guarantee they will not be falling on
the ground at your feet to thank you.
It is too radical and too emotionally expressive, and too much bodily involvement
for our culture. A handshake and a
thank you is quite sufficient in our culture.
There
are many examples of Biblical customs where the body is used to express
emotions that we do not follow. In
other words, we are products of a culture different from the Biblical
culture. We do not fall at the feet of
anyone as was a common custom of people in the Bible. If their king visited, they would bow and kneel, but in our
culture we do not bow to leaders but merely stand and clap to honor them. We honor people by standing in their
presence rather than bowing. That is an
obsolete bodily movement in our culture.
It does not mean we honor people less.
We just have a different way of showing it.
We
cannot escape the fact that the Bible does command and urge us to use the body
to make noise and movements to communicate our honor and praise to God. In Psa. 134:2 we read, "Lift up your
hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord." In Psa. 141:2 we read, "May the lifting up of my hands be
like the evening sacrifice." What
does this mean? How can lifting your
hands be like a sacrifice? The first
part of the verse helps us get an idea.
"May my prayer be set before you like incense." Just as prayer ascends to God like incense, so
the lifted hands represent the body being lifted up in sacrifice to God's
service. The steeple points up to God
to represent a place of worship, and the hands uplifted represents a person who
longs to ascend also to worship and be pleasing in God's sight, like a
ascending incense. It is a symbol of
the heart and mind. The body pictures
what the mind thinks and the heart feels.
The body is a tool for the heart and mind to express themselves.
You know
that in the male and female relationship it is not enough to just think nice
thoughts about each other. It is not
enough to feel loving toward one another.
The heart and mind can be all they ought to be in feeling and thought,
and yet nobody would be satisfied. Love
has to be expressed to be real and adequate.
This means the body has to be the tool by which the heart and mind
express love. The body through the
mouth speaks forth the love. The body
kisses, caresses, and develops the deepest possible intimacy with the one
loved. The heart and the mind need the body to fulfill their love. The reason both the Old Testament and the
New Testament use the husband and wife relationship to illustrate the God and
man relationship is because the body becomes the key to the full expression of
love in both the romantic and religious experience. Both need the body to be complete.
God is
not content for you to feel love for Him, and to think loving thoughts about
Him. He wants it expressed through your
body, for your body is the visual revelation of your love. The body makes love incarnate where it can
be seen and heard. Incarnation was the
way God revealed His true love for us.
He sent His Son into the world to take on a body, for only God in a body
could communicate just how much He loved us.
By means of the incarnation God made the feelings of His heart and the
thoughts of His mind visible to us. And
so it is that we, by our body, make our heart and mind visible to God. Yes, He looks on the heart, and He knows the
mind of man, but until it is expressed in the body, it is only potential love,
and not love fully realized because it has not been fully expressed.
So
worship and praise needs to have a physical side to it to be authentic and
real. That is why the clapping of the
hands, the lifting of the hands, the dancing, the singing, the kneeling, and
the playing of instruments are a vital part of worship. From the head to the feet the body is used
to praise God. Your dog may be able to
feel love and loyalty to you without wagging its tail, but that joyful wagging
makes you feel good, for it says to you that the dog is happy you are
home. It is a bodily symbol of the
dog's heart feeling. When the baby
smiles at your expression of love, and you know its not just gas, but an expression
of true delight in your presence, it makes you feel good. Body language is a very important part of
communication. The body of all those we
love conveys a message of the soul, and that is what our body is to do in our
worship of God. The body is to say,
"I really love you, and I am delighted to be in your presence."
In our
culture we have so separated the sensual and the spiritual that we do not even
realize how they are linked. The
Biblical saints knew their entire body, with all of its five senses, was
participating in worship. The beauty of
the architecture got their eyes involved.
The beauty of the songs got their ears involved. The beauty of the incense got their nose
involved. The beauty of the sacrifice
got their mouth, or taste, involved.
The beauty of the anointing oil and laying on of hands got their sense
of touch involved. The whole point of
all beauty in art, architecture, music, movement, and whatever else appeals to
the aesthetic nature of man is to get the body to participate in the praises of
God.
The
resurrection of the body is a major Christian doctrine, and the reason is
clear: Man is not fully man without a
body, and God wants us to praise Him forever in the fullness of our being, and
that demands an eternal body which can eternally respond to the infinite beauty
of God's everlasting kingdom. Bodily
worship is not a passing fad. It is
eternal, and it is important to God, and should also be to us. To present our bodies as living sacrifices
unto God involves the use of the body as a tool of worship.
It is
old fashioned now, and not used, but the old Anglican wedding had these words
in it: "With my whole body I thee worship." One lover was to say to
the other, "My body will adore you, and your body alone will I cherish. I
will with my body declare your worth."
The body and its actions are key elements in expressing love. How we relate to our mate with our body
tells them just how great our love is.
God wants the total man involved in worship because man is not complete
as mind and soul without the body. If
we are going to love God with our whole being, then the body has to be a part
of our worship of God.
When we
are baptized we surrender our body to be immersed in water to symbolize our
burial with Christ, and our recognition that in Him alone we are cleansed from
all sin. The body rises out of the
water to symbolize the resurrection and our commitment to walk with our Lord in
newness of life. In communion we take
bread and juice into our body to symbolize our participation in all He purchased for us in His body on the
cross. The point is, the only two
ordinances that Jesus left for the church to observe for all time are bodily
expressions of obedience and acts of love.
Jesus is saying, "Love me with your body. What you do with your body is a major factor in communicating the
reality of your love."
Even
the very act of coming to church is a bodily act of love and worship, for by
getting your body to the house of God you declare the worth of God in your
life. We read in the Old Testament of
the saints going to the temple. In the
New Testament we read of the saints being urged not to forsake the assembling
of themselves together. Why the big
deal on going to a place to worship? It
is because it is necessary to get your body involved in declaring the worth of
God in your life. You can stay home and
worship God with the aid of radio and television, and that can be meaningful,
but you have not made a commitment of
your body nearly as great as you do when you get it ready and take it to the
place where other believers are assembled for worship. You have loved God less then with all of
your strength.
On the parallel
level of romance it would be like calling your lover on the phone and having a
nice talk. You do not go to all the
trouble of getting your body into their presence. It is far more meaningful to have face to face contact. The point is, God reveals to us that it
matters to Him what we do with our bodies as instruments of worship. In His eyes it is a measure of your
love. If you use your body only for
what pleases you, and seldom offer it as a living sacrifice in His service and
worship, God is not fooled by words.
Any lover knows how selfish you
are if your body is only minimally involved in expressing love. Do you think God is less discerning, and can
be snowed by a prayer or two?
What you
do with your body is a major factor in your spiritual life. Worship is to God what romance is to your
mate, and that is why God repeatedly calls idolatry, and the going after other
gods, adultery. It is using your body unfaithfully. Your body and its movements are to convey
your love for Him and no other. The
worship of God is to be an exclusion, just as sex is in marriage. Clap your hands for the gods of this world,
and you are unfaithful. Kneel before
the idols of this age, and you are committing adultery. Sing the praises of the false images of
materialism, humanism, etc., and you become a spiritual harlot.
This is
what the prophets were saying all the time to God's people. You cannot be a spiritual person without the
body being devoted to the Lord. It has
to be surrendered and used for His glory, or it will send you astray, and be
enticed by the sensual god's of this age.
The implications of this are astounding, for what all this means is that
everything is sanctified, made holy, and pleasing to God, when it is devoted to
the exalting of His majesty and worth.
Dancing, which we think of as secular, can become sacred when it is
movement of the body for the purpose of expressing joy in God.
We clap
as a bodily act, and thereby we express the pleasure we feel in the presence of
some beauty that has touched one of our senses. Clapping pleases God when we do it to say, "Thank you Lord
for the beauty of your salvation, and for the beauty of your grace. We praise you with this bodily act of
approval and appreciation." We
don't just say it, for we know actions speak louder than words, and we want to
shout it to the heavens saying, "Praise God from whom all blessings
flow."
God
looks for love expressed in body language.
That is what all the clapping, shouting, and dancing are about in the
Psalms. We do not have to imitate what
they did, but we can work at awareness of our bodies being instruments of
worship, and get them more involved.
When the famous dancer Baryshnikov joined the New York City ballet, he said
he wanted to be under the direction of the world renowned choreographer, George
Balanchine because, "I would love to be the instrument in his wonderful
hands." This is to be our attitude
in worship. We actually do more dancing
than we realize. Dancing is the
movement of the body to music. Lavonne
and I do walkarobics almost every evening, and it is movement of the body to
music. I never thought of it as
dancing, just as I have never thought of our movements in church as dancing,
but any organized movement we do to music is a form of dance.
Since we
do not think of it as music, we often do not display the grace and harmony we
should. When the choir stands you
notice that they all rise in unison, for that is part of the dance. If they popped up one here and one there at
all different times, it would give an impression of discord. There bodies are singing before their voices
when they rise in unison. Often when we
rise to sing as a congregation we dance quit poorly, and are like one stepping
on toes, for we have not taken seriously the beauty of harmonious bodily
movement. We as leaders have not
thought it through, and so we have not
made an effort to coordinate your movements with the music, and work at
uniformity.
The ushers
as they come forward to receive the offering is another area of bodily movement
that can be orderly and uniform, or chaotic.
All we do in worship either adds to or subtracts from the grace of the
dance. We will soon be seeing the
graceful performance of figure skating champions. They move with such grace and beauty that our minds are in awe as
we watch bodily movements as a work of art.
Sports are also bodily movements that are so coordinated that they
successfully accomplish a goal, which is usually getting a ball to some
specific place. The movement of the
stars and planets is God's work of precision art.
Physical
movement is symbolic of the unseen world of mind and spirit. If the movement is that of a drunk who is
uncoordinated and stumbles into things, breaking things, and falling down, you
see a symbol of an impaired and fallen mind.
When the movement is that of a skater who can do triple twists with the
grace of a bird in flight, you see a symbol of an orderly mind that has been disciplined
and committed to the display of beauty.
All of this relates to worship in that when we use our bodies in
harmonious movement we symbolize that we worship the Lord in the beauty of
holiness. The Psalms urge us to do
that, and our bodily movements are the way we do it. The universe moves with such precision and harmony as a dance to
glorify the Creator. We too in worship
are to sing and move in harmony as our dance to the glory of God.
Now let
me stress an escape clause. We are not
machines, and this is not a legalistic issue.
It is a matter of great variety.
As people we have all kinds of limitations and handicaps, and so not all
can do everything in unison. We do not
spend a major portion of our lives practicing as do skaters. The goal is not to develop a
professional group of worshipers, like
a marching band in a military parade.
The goal is to simply be aware that our bodies are a part of our
worship, and they add to or detract from the praise we offer to God. We are to do all we do to the glory of God,
and the movements we make in worship portray either joy or indifference.
If you
had a dance where some were doing the waltz and others the polka, and still
others trying to square dance, you would have utter chaos. Everybody in a group has to be dancing to
the same tune. In church we need to
work at this by getting all to dance in unity.
Why? Because our bodily
movements are part of our worship. We
don't just think praise, but we offer it with our lips. We don't just feel thankful, but we express
it by what we do with our lungs and tongue.
We don't just remember what Christ did for us on the cross, but we take
the bread and cup and by bodily action we commemorate that salvation
event. The dance is a legitimate form
of worship, but it has great limitations in our culture, just as other
legitimate Biblical movements do. The
washing of each others feet, the holy kiss, the tearing of our clothes in
anguish, the beating of our breasts in confession, and the falling on our face
to show respect, are just a few of such movements.
Our goal
is not to try and impose an ancient culture on our modern culture, but to learn
how we can praise God more effectively with our whole being‑the body
being a vital part of our being.
Because we have not thought a lot about the physiology of praise we tend
to practice a sort of disembodied worship of the mind and soul. We are cerebral celebrants, and this is not
bad, for we are to love God with all the mind as well. The problem is, we neglect the role of the
body. The body can add life to our
praise. If our mind is saying,
"praise the Lord", but our body is saying, "Why did you drag me
here, and when will I be able to go home and get a nap," you are sending
mixed signals. The body is not in
harmony with the mind and spirit, and the result is discord.
Ideal
worship involves loving God with body, mind, and spirit, so that posture,
gestures, and movement, all work together to say, "Praise God from whom
all blessings flow." The paradox
of this focus on the physiology of praise is that it will make it worse rather
than better for awhile, for we will be all the more conscious of our disharmony
and uncoordinated movement. We will
have to go through the bull in the china shop stage to get to the swan on the
lake stage, but if we are serious about growing in our worship experience, we
need to endure the pain of learning to do what leads to the enjoyment of
greater pleasure. May God help us to
praise Him with our whole being as we learn to practice the physiology of
praise.
This song was written by me to the tune of Ode to
Joy by Beethoven as an example of body praise.
Clap your, Clap your, Clap your two hands
shout to God with cries of Joy.
Awesome is the Lord beyond man
He indeed is Lord most high.
Clap and shout and with great Joy sing
let your Savior see your
mirth.
Let the whole world know He's your King
King of All Kings on the Earth.
Clap your hand and raise your voices
do not hide your love for
Him.
God has given many choices
to prevent Love's growing
dim.
With the body now we Praise you
with the tongue we praise
your name.
Help us now to leave this Church pew
loving more than when we
came.
6. THE PLEASURE OF PRAISE Based on Psa. 84
In the movie, Chariots Of Fire, the great runner Eric Liddell
was talking to his sister about going back to China as a missionary. Jennie was so pleased with his decision, but
then Eric said, "I've got a lot of
running to do first." When her
look of happiness vanished, he responded, "Jennie, Jennie. You've got to understand. I believe God made me for a purpose-for
China. But he also made me fast, and
when I run I feel His pleasure. To give
it up would be to hold Him in contempt."
Eric felt the pleasure of God when he did his best to use what
God had given him. He was saying, pleasure is a two way street. God gives us pleasure, and we give God pleasure. Is this a Biblical reality? Yes it is.
We can give the Lord of the universe great pleasure just as our children
and grandchildren can give us great pleasure.
The pain can be equally real, but that is so well known it is not a
question. But the pleasure of God is
seldom considered, even though a quick count showed 28 verses in the Bible that
deal with the pleasure of God.
One of the things He is most pleased with is the praise of
His people. If they feel pleasure in
Him, and rejoice in thanksgiving for His goodness to them, He feels great
pleasure. Psa. 69:30-31 says, " I will praise God's name in song and
glorify Him with thanksgiving. This
will please the Lord more than an ox....." God does not get His pleasure in our ritual performance of
sacrifices. His real pleasure is in our
pleasure of Him that produces joy, which is, in turn, expressed by praise. Our spiritual pleasure gives God pleasure.
God is not impressed with power, for He has all power. He gets His pleasure from our attitudes of
dependence, trust, and hope in Him.
In Psa. 147:10-11 we read,
"His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor His delight in the
legs of a man; the Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in
His unfailing love." God reveals
His feminine side in what He most enjoys.
It is not the masculine stuff of power and strength, but the feminine
stuff of feeling and personal relationships.
Paul stress this feminine side of his personally too in I Thess. 2:7.
"As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were
gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children."
Paul is saying, we could have been more masculine, and we
could have been rough on you, but we were more feminine, and, therefore,
gentle. And why? He tells us in verse 4: "We are not
trying to please men but God." God
is pleased when we deal with people with
the feminine touch of gentleness.
Men can choose to do this and give God pleasure. It was Paul's greatest goal in life to
please God, and it should be ours as well.
When we give God pleasure we are living life on the highest possible
level.
There is an old story of a sculptor who made an image of an
angel high on a Cathedral tower. He was
asked why he bothered to make the back of it so perfect since no one would ever
see it. He said, "God will and I
labor to please Him." Some poet
put the story in verse.
A sculptor on Cathedral
tower,
With patient care and toil,
An angel wrought--
A thing of beauty growing
there,
Expression of the workman's
Noblest thought.
His fellow, scoffing, said;
"For naught
Thy pains, for who can note
At this far height?
He, rev'rent, answered;
'Nay,
My friend,
But this shall live
In God's eternal
sight."
When you get pleasure in pleasing God you are living in the
spirit. But when you do not care if you
please God or not, you are living in the flesh. Paul says in Rom. 8:8, "Those controlled by the sinful
nature cannot please God." The purpose of Paul's instruction to the
churches was to help them please God.
He states this clearly in I Thess. 4:1.
"Finally brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please
God, as in fact you are now living. Now
we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more."
Paul says Christian growth is growing in ones ability to
please God. All you learn, and all you
do in serving, and all you do in witnessing, and all you do in living the Christian
life, is for the purpose of pleasure.
It is for God's pleasure and your own, for the more you live to please
God the more pleasure you get out of living.
Heb. 11 tells us of the great saints of faith in the Old Testament. One of the first was Enoch who walked with
God, and God took him to heaven without dying.
Why was he one in a million?
Because verse 5 says, he pleased God.
There is no higher goal to aim for in life. To always please God is a definition of the perfect life. Jesus said in John 8:29, "The one who
sent me is with me, he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases
him."
The goal in all we do as Christians is to please God, and that
is also the goal of worship. Why do we
worship God? The answer is to please
Him, and by so doing enrich our own lives, and fill them with greater
pleasure. Worship is often linked with
boredom due to uninspiring music, and long tedious sermons that are much a do
about nothing relevant to our lives.
This is a reality we have to endure, but it is not true worship. True worship is pleasurable for both God and
man. If there is no pleasure you have
not worshipped. You have simply been
present for a religious service. While
you were bored out of your mind others around you may have worshipped, and felt
great pleasure. We need to learn how to
experience pleasure in worship for that is the whole purpose for coming to
church. We could say, if there is no
pleasure there is no treasure.
The Psalms are the treasure chest of worship, and we want to link
what they teach to our verse by verse study of Psalm 84. The bottom line of the Psalms is the
pleasure of praise. In Psa. 84:4 they
are called blessed or happy who dwell in God's house and are ever praising
Him. Praise is the perfect example of
the double pleasure of worship. When we
praise God we are feeling pleasure, for praise is an expression of
pleasure. It is thanksgiving for God's
being, and for His goodness, grace, and guidance. Praise feels good, and it makes God feel good when you feel good
enough to praise Him.
In Heb. 13:15 we read, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us
continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-the fruit of lips that confess
His name." He says in the very
next verse, "With such sacrifices God is pleased." The pleasure of praise is a pleasure shared
by God and man. Someone wrote, "Praise is the divine catharsis. Nothing so cheers the heart, and clears the
mind and purges the emotions as praise.
There is nothing like praise to generate blessing, to pull heaven down,
to propel our souls toward God and to prepare us for His presence. Praise is the secret of song, the source of
strength, a cure for depression."
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him
forever. How do we do this? Walter Brueggmann in his book, Israel's
Praise, tells us. "Praise is the
duty and delight, the ultimate vocation of the human community; indeed, of all
creation. Yes, all of life is aimed toward God and finally exists for the sake
of God. Praise articulates and embodies
our capacity to yield, submit and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to
the One whose we are. Praise is not
only a human requirement and a human need, it is also a human delight. We have a resilient hunger to move beyond
self, to return our energy and worth to the One from whom it has been
granted. In our return to that One, we
find our deepest joy. That is what it
means to "glorify God and enjoy God forever."
You note, he says praise is both a duty and delight. We tend to think of duty as a pain, but not
so when it is linked to the praise of God.
It is a Christian duty to be happy, and the shortest route to that goal
is praise. The story is told of a wise
man who asked his three sons what they were going for in life. The eldest said pleasure; the second said
riches; the third said duty. Some years
later he asked them how they had done.
The eldest said pleasure is but a phantom that flies as one approaches.
The second said pleasure is not in riches.
But the youngest said as I walked with duty pleasure was ever at my
side. The story teaches a Biblical
truth. When we fulfill our duty to
praise God pleasure will be by our side.
The reason praise is a duty is because it is a basic part of
human nature to praise what is valued.
We praise all that we treasure, and all which gives us pleasure.
We praise people who please
us.
We praise products which
please us.
We praise programs which
please us.
We praise politicians who
please us.
When we enjoy a great meal
we praise the cook. When we see a great
painting, or a work of art in any form, we praise the artist. A song well done will draw forth the
clapping of hands which is an expression of praise. Anything that gives us pleasure produces in us the desire to
praise that which produced the pleasure.
To worship God means to express His worth to us. If we do not praise God, we do not feel His
worth. It means we do not feel any pleasure
in who He is and what He has done for us.
This is practical atheism, and that is why it is a duty to praise God.
It is a duty to praise all who give you pleasure, for praise is one of the key
ways by which we convey love. When we
praise our mates we are saying to them, you please me and give me pleasure, and
I am grateful to you. This keeps love
alive for it makes partners feel they are fulfilling their role in the
relationship. All relationships thrive
on pleasure. If there is no pleasure
the relationship will die. Thus, praise
is a duty in all relationships, and that is why the book of Psalms is so full
of praise. It is at the very heart of
the God-man relationship.
Praise is love in action.
It is the daughter crawling up into daddy's lap and hugging and kissing
him. It is the son saying to mom, you
are the greatest mom ever. Praise is love expressed so the loved one can feel
they are loved. Thereby the pleasure of
love is doubled, for both can then feel it.
God feels this pleasure when He is loved by praise. He made us in His image so we all share this
common need for such pleasure. Praise
is a sign on every level that love is present, and pleasure is being
enjoyed. The pleasure of praise is
universal, and that is why it is a duty and a delight to praise God, for only
when we do praise do we truly worship.
No matter what we do in changing our patterns and forms of
worship is of any value unless it leads to praise. That is the essence of worship, that which makes you feel like
praising God. Ronald Allen writes with
great wisdom in these two paragraphs:
"I am aware that the recent history of the church has
been
Beset with innumerable
fads. One new idea about theology,
Methodology, lifestyle, and
church life follows another.
Each is presented with fanfare
and excitement. Each flashes
and splashes, then sparkles
and sputters, and then is
replaced by another new
idea. We are weary with fads.
But the praise of God is not a passing fancy! It is one of
the most elemental,
fundamental, and necessary factors of
the life of faith in this
and any age. It is the goal and
direction of all
creation. The praise of God is the
occupation of all His holy
angels. The praise of God is the
purpose of man. The praise of God is the end result of
all God's wonders, all His
being, and all His acts. If man
will not praise God, the
very stones will! He has redeemed us
for the praise of His
glory. This is no fad!"
Here in our text in verse 4, they are called blessed who dwell
in the house of God for they are ever praising God. The praise of God and the presence of God are linked, and this is
because the praise of God produces the presence of God. God is everywhere present, but we are not
conscious of His presence everywhere. But when we praise Him we become conscious of His presence, for
praise brings us into His presence. To
pray without ceasing and to praise without ceasing is the goal of the Christian
life, and the state of ideal
happiness.
In Psa. 34:1 David says, "I will extol the Lord at all
times; His praise will always be on my lips." In Psa. 71:6 he says, "I will ever praise you", and in
verse 24 he says, "My tongue will tell of your righteous acts all day
long." The pleasure of praise is
to be the most frequent pleasure we enjoy in life. Psa. 113:3, "From the rising of the sun to the place where
it sets the name of the Lord is to be praised." All day long, all over the world, at all times, and in all
places, the Lord is to be praised. The
old orange juice commercial use to say, "It isn't just for breakfast
anymore." We could say of praise,
it isn't just for church services anymore.
Praise is to be perpetual. It is
a pleasure God wants you to enjoy all day long everyday.
Singing is the means by which love is most often expressed in
the world. Take the theme of love and
romance out of songs, and the air waves would be set back to an age of
silence. Poetry and music combine to
convey the joy of love. Singing is also
the way the bride of Christ conveys her love to her Groom, and to God the
Father, who made it all possible for them to be united. The romantic and the religious have a great
deal in common. The Song of Solomon
makes this clear by being both a great romantic and religious song. The romantic and religious represent the two
most intense emotional relationships of life.
There is no other means available to express these emotions adequately but
by songs. Love needs a song.
The singing we do in church is not just to take up time to get
an hour's service in. It is a basic part of our worship. We have the choir and soloist sing, and we
sing as a congregation. That is three
forms of singing that we do on a regular basis. Why do we devote so much time to songs? The reason is simple. If
praise is the essence of worship, then the most likely way to touch our
emotions and move us to praise God will be through the power of music. We need to listen to music with an ear that
is determined to hear that which will provoke us to praise God. Is the tune enjoyable? Is the message
wonderful? Is the harmony
pleasing? By one aspect or another I
should be moved to praise God. That is
the bottom line for all the music and songs that we hear in church.
The sacrifice of praise is not always easy to offer. It takes work and concentration. It takes a labor of love to get the mind
trained to fulfill this duty. Every worship service is a training session to
help the believer function more effectively in offering the sacrifice of
praise. Our minds should be searching
the words of the hymns, and asking the Lord to reveal how the message is of
value to our lives. Paul says in I Cor.
14:15, "I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my
mind." Yes, it is an expression of
emotion to sing, but the mind is to be active as well as it searches to love
God with all its being by finding exciting truths that lead you to praise.
Singing is not merely a preliminary to hearing the Word of
God. It is preparation, but it has
value in itself. First of all, it
honors God. Psa. 50:23 says, "He
who offers praise honors me." If
you write a song or sing a song to someone, that is quite an honor, for it
represents labor and sacrifice for the object of your praise. Secondly, it gives pleasure to the
praiser. Psa. 147:1 says, "How
good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise
Him." When we praise God we are
giving to Him the only thing we really have to give. Worship involves not just what we get out of it, but what we put
into it. What do you contribute to
worship. Praise is to be your offering
to God. To give praise gives pleasure
to you in return, for it is a pleasure to give pleasure to one who gives you
pleasure.
This is the goal of worship.
Every time we come to an end of a service there should have been in that
experience that which pleased God, and gave the worshipers pleasure. The most likely way that will happen will be
by some truth or some music that will produce in the worshipers the pleasure of
praise.
7. A PRAYER OF PRAISE Based on Dan. 2:19‑23
The point of interest in this passage is not the fact that
Daniel and his friends prayed. This is
neither unusual nor surprising under the circumstances. Their lives were at stake unless they had a
direct revelation from God. One would
be shocked if they did anything else but pray. One does not need to be a unique person of prayer to cry out to
God when the danger is great. Even
unbelievers pray when they face grave danger.
The text, therefore, does not even give us the prayer he offered for
help. It gives us the response he made
in prayer after God granted the help by revealing to him the dream and its
meaning.
When he prayed for
help his prayer was a solemn matter of petition, and his heart would be
heavy. He would be on his knees, or
flat on his face earnestly pleading for God's mercy. But in this response we see a totally different aspect of
prayer. It is a matter of praise, and
his heart would be light, and his body so filled with grateful joy that it is
likely he would be standing or walking with eyes uplifted to heaven. The posture of prayer and the nature of prayer
varies with the circumstances. There is
no best way, for it is such a personal matter of one's own relationship to God
that the best is relative to the individual.
Two Christians going to prayer may be very different, and one may desire
to fall on his knees before God while the other wishes to stand. Daniel goes through both of these in one
night, and it is his shout of praise that is recorded.
Richard Llewellyn in How Green Was My Valley has this
conversation. Mr. Gruffydd, a minister,
tells a boy to keep his spirit clean, and the boy responds, "And how shall
it be kept clean, Mr. Gruffydd?"
He said, "By prayer my son, not mumbling, or shouting, or wallowing
like a hog in religious sentiments.
Prayer is only another name for good, clear direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are
saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have
strength, and that strength shall become a part of you, mind, body and spirit. I think the author has gone to far here in
ruling out sentiment and the role of emotion, but what he does say is
good. It fits the character of the
prayers of the Bible.
Some of our best thinking and theology, and practical
guidance for life comes from the prayers of the Bible. Daniel's prayer of praise is a prayer of
solid things and clear thinking. We
want to examine if from the point of view of what it teaches us about God. The first thing this prayer of praise
teaches us is that‑
I. GOD IS WORTHY OF PRAISE.
Someone has said, "There is something sweeter than
receiving praise, the feeling of having deserved it." God alone is always deserving of praise, and
that is why Jesus begins the Lord's Prayer with the adoration, "Hallowed be
thy name." Daniel also begins with
adoration: "Blessed be the name of
God forever and ever." Adoration
of God is the highest attitude one can have in His presence. Someone has written, "In adoration the
soul comes to God sensible of His love, majesty, holiness, and infinite
greatness; feeling, and seeking more fully to feel the awe, reverence, and holy
affection due to His great name; it transcends admiration and wonder; it is a
blending of love with the fervent desire that all the world should know and
magnify the glory of the Lord."
Our praise and
adoration cannot exalt God objectively for He is already the highest and
ultimate in majesty, but it does exalt Him subjectively by placing God in His
rightful place in our lives and thinking, and that is right at the top if first
place. And attitude of adoration and
praise is essential if we are to have an adequate concept of, and relationship
to God. God alone is worthy of the
very highest of our emotional responses, and if He does not receive them then
we are lacking an allegiance to Him.
Or if someone else or something else receives them we are
idolaters.
The occupation of heaven is praise someone said, and this is
because those who are there are fully aware of the majesty of their Maker. On earth we often slip into an unawareness
of the greatness of the God who loves and saves us. Because of this it is important that praise be a part of our
prayer life, for praise tends to keep us conscious of our smallness and God's
greatness. In petition and intercession we are usually focusing on self and
others and human needs, but when we praise we are caught up to heaven to focus
on God and his all‑sufficiency for every need. In praise we focus on the
Giver and not just the gift.
God does not need the creatures praise for he is self‑sufficient,
but the creature needs to praise the Creator to keep himself conscious that he
is not self‑sufficient but dependent upon the grace and mercy of the
Creator. Praise is a benefit to man for both now and in preparation for
eternity. Andrew Melville said, "Praise is the best auxiliary to prayer.
He who most bears in mind what has been done for him by God will be most
emboldened to ask for fresh gifts from above." To neglect praise does not
injure God, but id injures your own soul and cuts your blessings in half
because you lose the joy that comes with praise. Thomas Chalmers said,
"One of the most essential preparations for eternity is delight in
praising God." Man will be at his highest when his whole being expresses
adoration for God. Faber looked into eternity and sang‑
Father of Jesus, love's
Reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne
to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
The twenty four elders that John saw falling down before the
throne of God were singing and this was their song in Rev. 4:11: "Worthy
art Thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power..." We praise God because he is worthy of our
praise. Daniel in lifting his voice in praise to God makes it clear where his
ultimate loyalty is placed. God is indeed his God, and he longs for his name to
be blessed forever and ever. The second thing this praise prayer teaches us
about God is‑
II. THE ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKE
HIM WORTHY OF PRAISE.
The two that impress Daniel at this point are God's wisdom and
might. These are called His omniscience and omnipotence. He is all knowing and
all powerful. Daniel is praising God for showing these attributes in his own
life. In verse 23 he says he thanks and
praises God forgiving him wisdom and strength.
All the wisdom and power we have comes from God, who is the source of
all wisdom and power.
Daniel is especially conscious of this, for let us remember,
at the time that he is praying he has had a full revelation of the king's
dream. He knows what history is going
to bring forth in the future. He knows
there will be many changes, and kings will rise and fall. This is what he is speaking of in verses 21
and 22. In verse 20 he names the two
attributes, and then in 21 and 22 he spells out how they effect history. The first he explains is God's might. He changes time and seasons, and he removes
kings and sets them up. Changing times
are not mere accidents. They are a part
of God's plan. Behind progress is a
planner with a goal. God works in
history through changes. We need to be
among the optimists who believe that God is working even in the rapid changes
of our time. It is easy to talk about
God as a sovereign and powerful God of history, and then turn around and talk
as if history was in the hands of men or Satan.
William James visited Thomas Carlyle in 1856 and afterward
wrote this to a friend: "Carlyle,
the same old sausage frizzing and sputtering in his own grease, only infinitely
more unreconciled to the blessed Providence which guides human affairs. He names God frequently an alludes to the
highest things as if they were realities, but it almost looks as if he did it
only for a picturesque effect, so completely does he seem to regard them as
habitually circumvented and set at naught by politicians." His belief in a sovereign God was only
theoretical but not practical. He never
carried the doctrine into reality, but kept it strictly in the realm of words.
I fear that Carlyle
is not an isolated example, and that all of us tend to fall into this trap of
keeping belief and action in water tight compartments. The Greek word for believe is so much a
matter of action that there is an actual record of a farmer who believed his
seed to the ground, he committed it and trusted it the ground. He bet his life on the fact that it would
grow. Christian belief has got to be
practical, or it is powerless. To
believe seed will grow and never to act on it by planting the seed is not
faith, but it is folly. So also to
believe in a God of history who is sovereign, and yet to talk of only the
despair and act as if it was only a meaningless mess is to deny in action what
you profess in words.
Like Daniel we must not only say it, but live as if we
really believed in God's power. We need
to understand that being all powerful does not mean that he can do
anything. Thomas Aquinas said,
"Omnipotence is the power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction." This means that there is much in history
that is not God's will, for He cannot let man be a free agent, and then make
sure he does not use his freedom to do anything contrary to God's will. Evil will have consequences that are not
God's will, but evil can only postpone God's plan. It cannot stop it, and so the Christian can always be hopeful,
and they can always praise God because he will accomplish his purpose.
Daniel is greatly impressed also with the omniscience of
God. He has all wisdom. There is no mystery so deep, or no question
so dark that his light cannot penetrate it and make it clear. Daniel has just had it revealed to him
concerning the great empires that will follow the Babylonian Empire, and he
marvels at God's knowing the end from the beginning. Some poet has written,
Eternity with all its years,
Stands present in Thy view;
To Thee there's nothing old
appears,
Great God, there's nothing
new.
James says that if we lack wisdom we need to ask God, for
He is the source of all wisdom. Daniel
is praising God for the wisdom He is giving to him, and we are all wiser if we
will follow his example and constantly praise God in prayer.
8. THE
SACRIFICE OF PRAISE Based on Heb. 13:15‑21
In the middle 1800's Henry Comstock staked his claim and dug until he
found gold. He was getting some, but
knew there had to be more. He was
convinced there was a mother load there
somewhere, and he kept digging. Weeks
turned to months, and months to years, and finally he gave up in 1859 when he
was offered
$11,000 for his claim. The new owner dug just a few feet deeper and
struck that mother load. The Comstock
mine produced 340 million in gold.
So often in life we stop digging too soon, and miss the mother
load of blessings God has for us. That
is why Paul wrote in Gal. 6:9, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for
at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." After Christmas is over it is easy to give
up the Christmas spirit, and put wonder and praise on the back burner for
another year. When we stop digging for
the wonder that makes us worship, and the presents that makes us praise, we
stop short of the mother load, and fail to get all the gold God wants to give us.
Mary Lacyin her book A Woman Wants God tells of asking her new
neighbor if they were going to her mother's home for Christmas. "Oh, no," she said, "My husband
has to work on Christmas day, so we will stay right here." "But doesn't that nylon plant close
down even for Christmas," she asked.
"No, they can't," her neighbor replied. "Once the flow of liquid nylon begins
to move through the large pipes it would be disastor to stop it. It would cool and harden, clogging and
ruining the machinery. They must keep
the nylon flowing even on Christmas day, for it is a continuous
process."
That is also the description of Christian praise. It is not
something you can shut down, for it is also a continuous process. It, of course, does not stop for Christmas,
but it is to be a continuous process that does not stop for non‑holidays
and week days either. We have a
tendency to stop and give up praising God, and thereby robbing ourselves of the
mother load of blessings God has for those who learn that praise is a
continuous process. The main reason we
stop short is because we never really grasp the Biblical teaching that every
believer is a priest whose job it is to continually offer a sacrifice of praise. This text in Heb. 13:15 that tells us this,
is in direct opposition to the common concepts that only a special class of
people can be priests, and that sacrifice is no longer necessary, and that
praise should be limited to certain days and places. Hidden within this verse is a mother load of golden truth that
can make each of us rich if we are willing to keep digging until we strike
it.
I am convinced that the key to a happy New Year, and the key
to a happy new forever lies in our digging out of this verse all that it
contains. This verse is a shaft to a
mine that runs all through the Bible, and as we dig deeper and deeper I can
assure you that if you hold on to what we dig up you'll be rich in the way God
wants you to be rich in the days ahead.
This verse opens up many veins of treasure concerning praise. We see here:
THE PATHWAY TO PRAISE‑through
Jesus.
THE PRIESTS OF PRAISE‑let
us.
THE PERSON OF PRAISE‑God.
THE PERPETUALNESS OF PRAISE‑continually.
THE PRICE OF PRAISE‑offer
a sacrifice.
THE PURPOSE OF PRAISE‑confess
His name and please God.
These and many other aspects of this subject will be our focus
in the coming weeks. Since it is a
subject that most of us have not studied in any depth, we are going to start
our exploration of this gold mine of Biblical truth by focusing on our duty as
Christians to be perpetually offering to God the sacrifice of praise. Therefore, the first shaft we will descend
will be called‑
I. THE PRIESTHOOD OF PRAISE.
Martin Luther brought it to life; the Baptist picked it up as
one of their foundation principles, and most other denominations acknowledge it
as a basic Biblical truth. It is the
priesthood of all believers. The Old
Testament system of priests and sacrifices has been made obsolete. Sacrifice was done away with by the once for
all sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
The idea of a special class of people who alone could intercede and
offer sacrifice is eliminated, for the curtain in the temple was rent from top
to bottom, when Jesus died on the cross, allowing all to come into the presence
of God. There is neither male or
female, Jew nor Gentile in Christ, for
all are equally free to come into the very holy of holies to offer to God the
sacrifice of praise.
No longer is there a Gentile part of the temple. No longer is there a female area beyond
which women could not go. No longer is
there a division of lay people and clergy where the clergy could go into the
presence of God, but not the lay people.
All of the old system is changed, and now, in Christ, all believers are
equal, and have full access to the presence of God. Freedom of worship is what Jesus made universal by His
sacrifice. Now all Christians have the
right and the privilege of offering to God the sacrifice of praise.
The primary purpose of our existence is to be people of
praise, and to do those things in life that produce praise to God. That is the whole point of God giving man
gifts. Every gift we have has one goal,
and that is to produce praise. The
purpose of all creativity is to produce praise. The beauty of music, art, literature, science, and all of life is
to lead us and others to praise God.
Thank God for all which kindles love and appreciation for the Author of
life.
Why do you think Paul wrote in Phil. 4:8, "Finally,
brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or
praiseworthy‑think about such things." It is because Paul knows the very essence of life is in praising
God, and the more you focus on the things to praise God for the more you will
fullfill your purpose for being. Praise
is no sideline. It is the job of the believer. It is the duty of the priests to offer
praise perpetually, and this can be hard to do if you take your eyes off the
lovely and praiseworthy, and begin to focus on the evil and ugliness of a
fallen world. You cannot escape this
reality, and neither could Paul, but your job as a priest is to always look
beyond it to that which leads to praise.
George Herbert wrote, "Of all thy creatures both in sea
and land only to man thou hast made known thy ways and put the penne alone into
His hand and made Him secretarie to thy praise." As secretary of praise it is our job description to take notes of
all there is to offer praise to God about, and encourage others to do the same,
and live a life of praise without ceasing.
The point we need to grasp is that this duty of praising God perpetually
is the duty of every Christian. It is
not a specialized task like teaching or preaching, or playing an
instrument. All of the gifts of the
Spirit, and all talents are specialized ministries which are limited to those
who have the gifts and talents. The
members of the body who do not have these things cannot perform the tasks of
those who do. The eye cannot hear, and
the ear cannot see. The hand cannot
smell, and the nose cannot lift, and on and on we can see the many things that
are specialized tasks for people who can do them.
Offering the sacrifice of praise is not one of these
specialized tasks. It is the duty of
every believer because every believer is a priest, and every believer has a duty to offer sacrifice, and the only
acceptable sacrifice is the sacrifice of lip and life, which is praise to
God. This is what all parts of the body
have in common. It is the basis for
unity. Gifts give us variety in the
body, and praise gives us unity.
Since many of you may not
have known that you were priests, because you do not recall your ordination
into priesthood, it will be our first task to
help you see that this is your vocation in the body of Christ. The more you see who you are as a priest who
leads worship in the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is your own body and
life, the more you will be a true worshiper in spirit and in truth, which Jesus
says, the Father is ever looking for.
Christian worship is not a matter of professionals doing something
while the rest of the people watch.
Christian worship is a matter of participation by every person in the
congregation. We need to get the true
picture that Kierkegaard gave of the church at worship. God is the audience; the congregation are the
actors or worshipers, and the pastor, song leader, organist, pianist, and
choir, are the promoters whose job it is to motivate you to praise God. The leaders of worship are to be aids to
your worship. You hear a song and you
praise God for its beauty and its truth.
You hear an insight into God's revelation, and you thank God for it and
praise Him for His Word. The essence of
all we do as leaders is to get you, the worshiper, to praise God, for that is
your job as priests. If you do not
praise God, you have failed to worship, for that is the essence of worship.
If we learn this, every service will become more meaningful,
for you will not just be passive spectators, but active participators in
worship. If the promoters are so poor
that nothing they do or say motivates you to praise God, then do it on your
own. Think on those things that move
you to praise God, for just because someone else does not do their job does not
mean you have no obligation to do yours.
Your job is to continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.
Now, lest you think this is an isolated verse, let me share
with you that this is the clear teaching of Peter the leader of the 12
Apostles. If anyone would want to suppress
the idea of the priesthood of all believers, and keep this job in the hands of
the professionals, it would be Peter.
But Peter throws the door open to all in
I Pet. 2:9. "But you
are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,
that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His
wonderful light. Peter belonged to the
most exclusive Christian group ever to exist‑the 12 Apostles. But he knew that the 12 had no corner on the
priesthood. This was the office of all
Chrisitans, and all are called to the ministry of praise. You can lack the gifts you wish you had, and
feel inferior and inadequate in many ways, but you are a part of the royal
priesthood if you are a believer in Christ, and you have the duty of offering
the sacrifice of praise; not once a
year, or once a month, or once a week, but continually. The temple of praise is never closed.
As American Christians we pick up the values and practices of
our culture. Being a mere spectator is
a major part of our culture. Ride the
bus and leave the driving to us, or we do it all for you, as the ad says. We bring this attitude to church, and expect
others to do our job for us, but it doesn't work that way. I can only praise God for myself. I cannot give God your sacrifice of
praise. The choir can only praise God
for themselves. They cannot do it for
you. Every Christian has to offer their
own sacrifice of praise, and this is good, for when they do they become a
part of true worship. This is the goal of God, and so everywhere
we see the idea of the priesthood of all believers, we see the act of
praise. Priesthood and praise are
linked, for that is the primary task of New Testament priesthood.
In Rev. 1:5‑6 we read, "To Him who loves us and has
freed us from our sins by His blood, and has made us to be a kingdom of priests
to serve His God and Father‑to Him be glory and power forever and
ever." Praise God that we are all
called to be priests who praise God. It
is our purpose as the people of God to offer perpetual praise. But since we have not paid close attention
to this, we can go through a service and never think of it. We have much to praise God for, but we are
not conscious that it is our duty. We
have stopped short, and the mother load is left just a few feet away, and we
rob ourselves of the riches that come with doing our duty.
This vein of golden truth was buried for centuries. The clergy
took over the whole process of worship, and the laity was shut out. Only the
priest could offer sacrifice and give holy communion, and only they could
baptize. The church forgot grace and fell back under the law of Moses. It began
to function much like the Old Testament system of temple worship. Jesus
destroyed the temple and raised up his own body as the temple, but the church
raised up the old temple again, and for centuries Christianity was made a
modified form of legalistic and ritualistic Judaism. It was the same system where Jesus himself did not qualify to be
a priest, let alone the high priest.
In 1520 Martin Luther began the reformation, and one of the
key truths that he revived from the New Testament was the truth of the
priesthood of all believers. He wrote, "Christ has made it possible for us,
provided we believe in Him, to be not only his brethern, co‑heirs, and
fellow kings, but also his fellow‑priests. Therefore we may come boldly
into the presence of God in the spirit of faith and cry "abba
Father." Pray for one another, and do all things which we see done and
foreshadowed in the outer and visible works of priests."
The basis for women being deacons and serving communion is the
doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Their is nothing any layperson
cannot do that the priests of the Old Testament did as an exclusive body of
people, for now Jews and Gentiles, bond and free, male and female, are all
priests of God. To deny this you have to rewrite the New Testament. Jesus did
not qualify to be a priest under the Old Testament, but now He is the Hight
Priest over the people of God. None of us qualify to be priests under the Old
Testament, but now under our High Priest, we all qualify just by bing a part of
His Kingdom.
We no longer offer blood sacrifices, for Jesus eliminated that
by His own sacrifice. Now we offer spiritual sacrifices. In I Pet. 2:5 Peter
writes, "You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual
house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God through
Jesus Christ." How often to we come to church and do not recognize that we
come as priests to offer the sacrifice of praise? I have never asked anyone if
they wanted to be a priest, but I have asked many if they want to become a
Christian by faith in Christ. I just never stopped to think of it, but when you
ask the one you are also asking the other, for as soon as you become a child of
God you are a priest of God. It is the priesthood of all believers, and not
just of some, or of more mature believers. All believers are a part of the
priesthood. As soon as you believe in Christ you are on duty, and responsible
for offering the sacrifice of praise. Praise is the universal gift of all God's
people.
A believer who does not praise God is like a doctor who does
not give medicine; a teacher who does not give knowledge; a pilot who does not
fly. A priest must praise for that is the very purpose of his being a priest.
Even the believing children are priests. Psa. 8:2 says, "From the lips of
children and infants you have ordained praise." When children sing Jesus
loves me this I know, or any other song of recognition of Christ, they are
fulfilling their duty as priests of the Lord most high. There are no
exceptions. There are no children of God who are exempt from this duty of praise.
It is absolute and universal‑let all who have breath praise the Lord.
If the choir has sung beautifully and we have not praised God,
we have not worshiped. If the soloist does a marvelous job, but the rest of us
have not praised God, we have not worshiped. If the pastor preaches a wonderful
message, but we have not praised God it
is mere noise, and we have not worshiped. That which makes all that we do be
true worship is the sacrifice of praise. Only when the whole priesthood offers
the sacrifice of praise have we worshiped in a God‑pleasing and Christ‑honoring
way. This means we can not longer come
to church as mere spectators expecting someone else to do the duty of worship
for us. We must come with the expectation that we as priests will offer to God
the sacrifice of praise.
9. PERSISTENCE IN PRAISE Based on Heb. 13:15‑21
Captain Eddy Richenbacker was in an airplane crash in Atlanta
and was rushed to the hospital. He was
going in and out of consciousness. It was
thought that he would not survive. The
most famous radio commentator in the U.S. then was the late Walter
Winchell. He said in his broadcast,
"Friends, pray for Eddy Richenbacker.
He is dying in an Atlanta hospital.
He is not expected to live out the night." Richenbacker was listening to that
broadcast, and when he heard this he took a jug of water and threw it at the
radio knocking it across the room. He
said, "I'm not going to die. I'm
not going to give up." Here was a
man wh survived many trials because he never gave up. When he received the Horatio Alger Award, which was given to
outstanding American men who fought their way from poverty to success, he said,
"My mother, a very poor woman in Columbus, Ohio, taught her kids to pray,
read the Bible, to follow Jesus Christ and never to give up."
In the literature of success the theme you will confront most
often is the theme of persistence. The
athlete who didn't have a chance, but who by perseverance and persistence became
the best. The Bible is loaded with this
theme as well, and one I never saw before is the persistence of Lot. Two
angels came to Sodom, and Lot seeing they were strangers invited them to come
to his house and spend the night. Their
response to his hospitality was very
definite. We read in Gen. 19:2,
"No, they answered, we will spend the night in the square." Lot did not know he was arguing with angels
or he might have weakened, but he did not take no for an answer. Verse 3 says, "But he insisted so
strongly that they did go with him and entered his house." His
persistence in showing hospitality led to his being saved from the
destruction of the city. We could go on
and on with illustrations of how
persistence is the key factor in every form of success.
Never give up, for the
wisest is boldest,
Knowing that Providence
mingles the cup;
And of all maxims, the best,
as the oldest,
Is the stern watchward of
'Never give up!'
Holmes
This morning we want to pursue this theme as it applies to our
duty as priests in offering to God the sacrifice of praise. One of the primary dangers with every new
idea is the danger of faddishness. We
jump on the current bandwagon of what is hot, and ride that until we tire of
it, and then hop on the next fad express that tingles our fancy. It is a part of our culture, and Christians
are as guilty of it as anyone else. The
church is constantly following fads and promoting some theme as the greatest
idea since sliced bread, and then a few months after it is passe and nobody
even remembers what it was, for we have moved on to a whole new world of
posters, flyers, and promotional gimmick for a new idea.
There is a risk that we will treat praise like this and go
through a phase of praise thinking, and then move on to something else and
leave praise behind. It is my prayer
that we will not treat praise as a fad, but recognize that the Scripture
demands that it become a perpetual part of our lives. We are to never give up, but be persistent in praise all of our
days, and then on into eternity. To
promote this kind of persistence we
want to focus our attention on the word in our text‑continually. "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice
of praise." The Greek word is
diapantos, which is used 7 other times in the New Testament. It is used in the very last verse of
Luke: "And they stayed continually
at the temple, praising God."
We know the Apostles did not live 24 hours a day at the temple
praising God. The point is, it was
their regular pattern of life. They did
not just stop in on the day of atonement to praise God. They did it persistently, and so for us
also, praise is not to be a periodic function of the priesthood of all
believers. It is to be the regular and
perpetual duty we are to never forsake.
In Heb. 9:6 the word is used again to describe the duties of the Old
Testament priesthood. "When
everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the
outer room to carry on their ministry."
The word regularly is the same word as continually. Just as the Old Testament priests had a
ministry that did not cease, so the New Testament priesthood has such a
ministry‑the ministry of
persistence praise. We tend to
have regular times of prayer, but neglect to develop regular times of praise.
If someone asked you if you are in the ministry you would not
doubt be honest and say no. But in your
supposed honesty you would, in fact, be lying, for if you are a believer you
are in a ministry that never ceases, and it is this ministry of praise. You can get out of the ministry of
preaching, teaching, counseling, and visitation. You can quit or retire or get too sick or die, and thus, end your
ministry, but there is no way out of the ministry of praise. In Psa. 146:2 we read, "I will praise
the Lord all my life, I will sing praise to my God as long as I
live." That sounds like there is
an end, and at death you can give up this ministry, but not so, for in Psa.
145:1 he has already said, "I will praise your name for ever and
ever." The only way out of this
ministry is by neglect and disobedience.
As long as we walk in obedience we are in the ministry where we are
obligated to offer persistently the sacrifice of praise.
What this means is that praise is the link that connects all
of life into a unity. For the praising
Christians there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. The whole of creation, and the whole of
life, is full of things for which we are to praise to God. Praise is not a Sunday thing, but as Psa.
145:2 says, "Everyday I will praise you." It is a Sunday through Saturday thing. It is a perpetual ministry with no days off. The Psalms tell us we are to look at all of
nature, and all of history, and see the providential hand of God in His
creative wisdom and praise Him ceaselessly.
If you just tell yourself it is your ministry to praise God,
and begin to look for reasons to do so, you will find them by numbers to great
to calculate. I got up one morning and
began to praise God for my life, wife, bed, clothes, the parsonage and all who
helped build it for the warmth of the heat, for the sink and water, mirror,
towels, all the people I love, and I had a good long list of comforts and
pleasures of life to praise God for even before I got to the breakfast
table. I was overwhelmed when I
realized there are hundreds of things we take for granted and neglect to praise
God for.
We think of sacrifice as something we have to give up, and
this can be the case, but if you look up the word sacrifice, you discover it
also can simply mean the offering of something to God. It is your gift to God, and it does not mean
you have to suffer loss to offer this sacrifice. In fact, in offering praise to God you actually gain, for there
is power in praise to heal, restore, and benefit the one who offers it in many ways.
You gain rather than give up when you offer the sacrifice of
praise. It is important that we grasp
this or we will have a problem that will make praise a legalistic work rather
than a response of love.
C. S. Lewis, as a new Christian, was offended by the idea
that God was like a dictator, celebrity, or millionaire who demanded that
people tell them how wonderful they are.
We are all offended at the vain person who is ever fishing for
compliments to reassure them of their self‑worth. Is this the kind of God we worship? Is He one who needs men to be ever praising
Him to feel good about Himself? This is
absurd, for God is self‑sufficient and needs nothing to be content. He demands praise, and is pleased with it
for the same reason we want our children to learn to be polite and
thoughtful. It makes them better and
more pleasant people who will be liked and loved. God wants us to learn to praise Him perpetually, for the praisers
will be the most effective and most loved children.
The Christian who sees the most in life to praise God for is
the Christian who will most fulfill his highest purpose, which is to glorify
God and enjoy Him forever. The more you
praise God, the more you enjoy Him. The
more you praise God for His creation, the more you enjoy His creation. The more you praise God for His Word, the
more you will enjoy the Word.
Your own happiness is in direct proportion to your
persistence in praise. God does not
need your praise for His happiness. You
need to praise Him for your happiness.
When C. S. Lewis discovered this, he wrote in his book Reflection On The
Psalms, "I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most
balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and
malcontents praised least. The good
critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones
continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even is
luxuriously brought up an widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a
very modest meal: The dyspeptic and the
snob found fault with all. Except where
intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner
health made audible."
In a sentence: The
healthiest Christians are the Christians who praise God persistently. God invites us to praise Him, not for His
need, but for ours. When we praise God
and enjoy Him, we find the highest happiness we are capable of
experiencing. This is the paradox of
the sacrifice of praise. We offer it up
to God, but it is we who get the most benefit.
The Old Testament sacrifice illustrates this. When an ox or a lamb was offered to God, the parts that could be
eaten were grilled and then eaten by the priests, and on special occasions by
the people offering the sacrifice. God
did not need the meat, but man did. The
sacrifice to God was enjoyed by the sacrificers. They feasted on what they offered to God, and so it is with the
sacrifice of praise. It is the offerer
of praise who most benefits by this grateful spirit. God is pleased just as you are when your child learns to say
thank you, but your pleasure is not so much that you needed the encouragement,
but because it pleases you to have your child becoming a grateful person. Praise is good news to God, for He knows
thereby that the praiser is becoming a better and happier child of God.
The more persistent we are in our praise of God the more we
are becoming what He wants us to be.
All happiness is some form of preoccupation. When we are preoccupied with something beyond ourselves, and are not thinking about ourselves,
we are happiest. That is why hobbies
and sports are so popular. They enable
us to get beyond ourselves, and this is the best thing for the self. Self‑forgetful devotion to something
beyond the self is the key to happiness.
That is why praise is the key to the highest happiness, for it is
devotion to the highest. Glory to God
in the highest, sang the angels, and we can know they were happy angels, for
they were preoccupied with God and not focused on their own glory.
If the angels would cease to praise, they would cease to be
happy, and that is why heaven is always shown to be a place of perpetual
praise. Luther said that hell is hell
because there is no praise there, and heaven is heaven because the praise of
God is always there. Psa. 84:4 says,
"Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising
you." The nearest we can get to
heaven on earth is perpetual praise.
Spurgeon preached a marvelous sermon on Psa. 145:2 which says,
"Everyday I will praise you."
Listen to a portion of that message:
"Each day has its
mercy, and should render its praise.
When
Monday is over, you will
have something to praise God for on
Tuesday. He that watches for God's hand will never
belong
without seeing it. If you will only spy out God's mercies, with
half an eye you will see
them every day of the year. Fresh are
the dews of each morning,
and equally fresh are its blessings.
"Fresh trouble,"
says one. Praise God for the trouble,
for it
is a richer form of blessing. "Fresh care," says one. Cast all
your care on Him who careth
for you, and that act will in itself
bless you. "Fresh labor," says another. Yes, but fresh
strength, too.
There is never a night but what there comes a day after it:
never an affliction without
its consolation. Every day you
must utter the memory of His
great goodness.
If we cannot praise God on any one day for what we have
had that day, let us praise
Him for it tomorrow. "It is better
on before." Let us learn that quaint verse:‑
And a new song is in my
mouth,
To long‑lived music set:‑
Glory to thee for all the
grace
I have not tasted yet.
Let us forestall our future,
and draw upon the promises. What
if today I am down; tomorrow
I shall be up! What if today I
cast ashes on my head: Tomorrow the Lord shall crown me
with loving‑kindness! What if today my pains trouble me,
they will soon be gone! It will be all the same a hundred years
hence, at any rate; and so
let me praise God for what is within
measurable distance. In a few years I shall be with the angels,
and be with my Lord
Himself. Blessed be His name! Begin to
enjoy your heaven
now."
There is much of heaven we can enjoy now, but that part of it
we can enjoy now is praise. Praise
brings us into the presence of God. The
more we praise, the more we live in His presence, and thus, the more experience
His guidance. This is a strong
conviction of the Jews. Mark Van Doren
and Maurice Samuel, two outstanding Jewish authors of our day, tell us that the
book of Psalms, even though it is the longest book of the Bible, is taken every
day to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and two groups of Jews chat it from
beginning to end. These songs of praise
to God are offered up every day in perpetual praise. How much more should we as Christians praise God every day who
already have God's promise to Israel fulfilled in our Savior?
The Hebrew name of the Psalms is The Book Of Praises. They are the main source of praise in Israel
and the church. If they are taken
seriously we see that praise is no part time job. It is the duty of a believer to offer praise to God daily and
perpetually while there is any breath in him.
In some old monasteries the monks would take turns before the alter
repeating the Psalms every moment of the 24 hours in a day. The problem with this, and the Jewish groups
doing the same thing, is that it is mechanical, legelistic, and sounds more
like a work of merit rather than a response of love to God.
I can not speak for God, but I know from my own point of
view, I love to see the grandchildren spontaneously express their love and
excitement to me in my presence. I can
not imagine being as pleased if they came to the house and read a prepared
text. If God could really be pleased
with a mere mechanical reading of the Psalms, we could all read them into a
recorded, and let the recorded play every day, and thereby fulfill our priestly
duty of daily offering the sacrifice of praise. The Pharisees would have loved it, but I doubt that God would be
impressed.
God delights in the same thing we all delight in. We love to be appreciated. God is no super‑egoist who gets a kick
out of man's mechanical praise. He gets
His kicks the same way we do; out of our children and grandchildren sincerely
expressing appreciation. I am not
opposed when Cindy will say to the grand kids,"Now say thank you to
grandpa." But this does not
compare to the pleasure of their coming on their own to express thanks. We are made in the image of God, and we can
assume that God likes His praise this way as well. He wants it free and meaningful, and not forced and mechanical,
because His children really are thankful and want to express it.
Praise balances out prayer.
Prayer is primarily asking.
Praise is primarily giving. We
tend to spend most of our conversation with God in asking, and very little in
praising God for His blessings.
Children do the same to their parents and grandparents. We expect it, and do not do a lot to help
children balance out their requests with respones of gratitude. The result is that children grow up always
wanting from parents, and not a lot concerned about giving to parents. Christians have the same relationship to God
by and large. I am sure I have spent
the greatest portion of my prayer time asking, and only a fraction of it in
giving God praise. I suspect I am not
unusal. One of my goals is to balance
that out with a higher percentage of praise.
The paradox is that Jesus eliminated sacrifice, and at the
same time elevated sacrifice to a full time job for the believer. The sacrifice of praise is to be offered
continually. This could be seen as a
negative, as if Jesus was demanding too much, almost life slave labor, and to
be ever at it in praising. But we need
to see praise, not as labor but as an expression of love. Praise is the way we enjoy God, and this
makes all of life more enjoyable.
Spurgeon recommended that we do more singing. He says that as priests we have a duty to sing as much as
possible. We should encourage singing
at the table. Jesus and His disciples
sang at the Last Supper. It is good for
digestion, and family joy, and it pleases God.
Look for times when the family can sing together more often. As priests we are never off duty, and so
praising God is not to be limited to our church experience. The job of praising God, if we take it
seriously, and do it perpetually, will eliminate most of the complaining,
gripping, and conflict that damages the family and the church.
Persistent praise means one has to have a positive perspective
on life where they see the good, the true, the beautiful, even when llife is
not conspicuously full of these things, but just the opposite. One of the most optimistic minds I have ever
read about was that of the little boy who got a new bat and ball for his
birthday. "He was so eager to try
it out that he pestered his dad to take him to the park. Finally, the father gave in. When they got there, the kid said,
"Watch this, dad." He tossed
the ball up in the air, swung at it real hard with the bat and missed. He picked the ball up again, and said,
"Watch, dad." He tossed it
up, swung and missed again.
This went on and on many more times, but each time the kid was
just as enthused when he hollered "Watch this one, dad." Finally, the kid picked the bat and ball up,
walked over to his father and said, "What do you think, dad. Have you ever seen such great
pitching?"
The ability to see a good side to all of life is based on
belief that God means what he says, and will work in all things for good with
those who love Him, and that He will keep all His promises to be with us forever.
I stand in the great
forever,
I lave in the ocean of truth,
And I bask in the golden
sunshine
Of endless love and youth.
And God is within and around
me,
All good is forever mine,
To all who seek it is given,
And it comes by a law divine.
Thus I stand in the great
forever
With Thee as eternities roll;
Thy Spirit forsakes me
never,
Thy love is the home of my soul.
The more persistent we are in praise, the more we produce a
heavenly environment in time. The more
we neglect and forget praise, the more we produce the envioronment of
hell. It is not how good life is, nor
how much of the grace of God you have experienced, that is the measure of your
spiritual success, but, rather, the degree to which you have been persistent in
praise.
Remember the ten
lepers? They all experienced a miracle
of healing grace, but only one experienced the giving back to Christ the
sacrifice of praise. It may have cost
him time and inconvenience, but listen to this poem that describes the remorse
of one who did not go back.
I meant to go back, but you
may guess
I will filled with amazement
I cannot express.
To think that after those
horrible years,
That terrible loathing and
passion of fears,
Of sores unendurable‑eaten,
defiled‑
My flesh was then smooth as
the flesh of a child.
I was drunken with joy; I
was crazy with glee‑
I scarely could walk and I
coud scarely see,
For the dazzle of sunshine
where all had been black;
But I meant to go back, Oh, I
meant to go back!
I had thought to return,
then my people came out,
There were tears of
rejoicing and laughter and shout;
My cup was so full I seemed
nothing to lack‑
But I meant to go back; Oh,
I meant to go back.
‑Anonymous
Your praise is the only wealth you have that is acceptable
currency in heaven. By means of it you
can please God, and actually repay Him in a minimal way for His goodness to
you. Psa, 116:12 asks the question,
"How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me?" In verse 17 we see His answer: "I will sacrifice a thank offering to
you." Thanking and praising God is
like paying off the mortgage on your heavenly home. Gold and jewels are no big deal in heaven, but praise is
priceless and will go on forever.
Kenneth Osbeck, a leading authority on church music, and
author of 9 books on church music, tells of how his father always sang as he
did his job. He was a painter, and his
customers called him "The singing painter." At his funeral many of his customers told of the positive impact
his cheerful attitude had on them as he painted. He was offering the sacrifice of praise continually. We cannot all do that, and singing on our
job could be a great annoyance rather than blessing. The point is, the Christian is to never cease to seek for ways to
make his life a life of praise, for this is our calling, to be persistent in
praise for all of our days.
C. S. Lewis wrote, "We‑or at least I‑shall
not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit
of doing so on the lowest. At best, our
faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found
Him so, not have "tasted and seen."
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun
which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are
"patches of Godlight" in the woods of our experience." If
you want a happy New Year, and a year of Christian growth, and a year of
better spiritual health, the way to these goals is to offer the sacrifice of
praise continually, and be persistent in praise.
10. THE PRAISE OF LAUGHTER
Based on Psa. 126:1‑6
Have you ever praised God for the enjoyment of
laughter? Some of the greatest of God's
people have. When Theodore Cuyler, the
American preacher, visited the great London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, they
told each other the crazy things that happened in their respective ministries. They enjoyed their laughter as they walked
in the woods, and they were about exhausted after so many amusing stories. Spurgeon said, "Let's kneel down and
praise God for laughter." So these
two great men of God knelt together and thanked God for this gift.
If we are to love God with our whole being, then it follows
that we are love God even with our laughter.
They were praising God for the gift of laughter. In Psa. 126 we see God's people praising Him
with the gift of laughter. The
Israelites were so filled with the delight that they were no longer captives,
but free citizens back in their home land.
They laughed out loud with joy.
It would be hard to laugh and sing at the same time, but verse 2 puts
them together, and their mouth is filled with laughter, and their tongues with
songs of joy. Maybe they would tell
stories of their joyful return, and then laugh together, and break into songs
of praise for God's providential guidance in their lives. All we know is they were a happy people, and
their laughter was a part of their praise to God. Laughter is another aspect of the physiology of praise, for it is
a bodily function whereby the heart and mind manifest their feelings and
thoughts.