The Sword of Worship

You all may have a seat. And children you are free to go to class. Miss Amanda is waiting in the back for you. We pray that the Lord is with you as He is with us this morning.

Good Morning Exodus Church. My name is Sammie Hargrave. I am married to Hannah and we have a 1 year old daughter Betty, who I’m pretty sure is currently trying to figure out why her father is standing up on stage instead of sitting next to her.

Hannah and I have been at Exodus for almost exactly 4 years and have been so blessed to see the Lord working through this church both in our lives and the lives of many people. I love this church, it really is a family for us as we get to experience the body of Christ in a tangible and meaningful way. It is my joy to be bringing the word to you this morning.

This morning we are going to be in Psalm 149 and as we examine this Psalm we are quickly going to see how important of a role music plays in the Psalm. Music is vitally important, music shapes us in a way that brings us closer to God and has a deep impact on our lives as well the entirety of the world.

About two years ago we found out that Hannah was pregnant with Betty and this was joyous news but it made me begin take stock of my life and what was important to me. When I began to think through what it means to be a father and what life would look like, I began to realize that my free time was about to go away. So in an attempt to become more efficient with my time, I decided I was going to completely stop listening to music. I would only do audiobooks or podcasts, there was no room for something that wasn’t giving me knowledge. And I did this for about 6 months or so, and you know what happened? My life got so incredibly boring.

What I had missed in my quest for knowledge was the fact that God has inherently designed human beings to live in a musical world. We see this with children, we teach them their abc’s, how to count, or even where their head shoulders, knees and toes are all with songs. This happens in relationships when men will write songs, or play boomboxes outside windows, or if you're part of my generation make a mixtape all in an attempt to woo their future bride. When going to war, what great battle doesn’t a horn being sounded and the drums being played as the army marches on. God has crafted music into the very fiber of our being.

In fact the book of Job tells us that from the very beginning of creation the world heard the song of the morning stars and angels as God created the world. Creation itself was crafted to music. We see examples of this by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien who both showed their literary worlds being created by song and music.

Music has a deep impact on our lives. It shapes who we are and what we do. The Bible tells us that music orients our lives towards God and crafts us more and more into his image. And music is how we begin to see the world changed and shaped more and more into the new creation. Just as God created the world with song, so we see the new creation taking effect through the worship of God’s people. Worship is a powerful weapon against the enemies of God and a way in which we as Christian wage war against the kingdom of Satan. Worship is in and of itself an act of war, it is a weapon.

This is the world we live in, a beautiful world touched by the song of our creator. And we are going to get a glimpse of this song and how we as Christians get to join into this song. So if you have your Bibles please join me as I read Psalm 149, and pay attention to the musical aspect of this Psalm. Now hear the reading of God’s word:

Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song,     his praise in the assembly of the godly! 2 Let Israel be glad in his Maker;     let the children of Zion rejoice in their King! 3 Let them praise his name with dancing,     making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! 4 For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;     he adorns the humble with salvation. 5 Let the godly exult in glory;     let them sing for joy on their beds. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats     and two-edged swords in their hands, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations     and punishments on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with chains     and their nobles with fetters of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment written!     This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord!

This is the word of Lord:

Now as we look at Psalm 149 I want us to focus on three aspects: praise and its method, response, and results. Again praise and its methods, praise and its response, and praise and its results.

Our first point, praise and its methods, will be from verses 1-3. And as we examine these verses the first thing we can notice is that the psalmist is not describing praising God as a quiet, calm affair. Instead the psalmist described a party, a group of people who are making a beautiful sounding racket unto the Lord. The psalmist tells the people to praise the Lord with a new song among the assembly. This song is to be one that is filled with rejoicing in their King, filled with instruments and dancing. This is a party y’all. The psalmist is telling the people to put their energy and hearts into singing unto the King of the Universe.

Now we may hear this and think something along the lines of “while praising God anything goes.” That the whole point of worship is an emotional appeal. That we don’t need to be all that concerned with lyrics or how the instruments sound as long as our hearts are in the right place. But that's just not true: Psalms 33 addresses this point when it says in verse 3:

Sing to him a new song;

play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

Note this word, skillfully. The psalmist in Psalm 33 is concerned that the praise of God be done with skill. So when we look at the commands of Psalm 149 to sing a new song, to sing in the assembly, to sing with instruments and dancing, it is not enough to do these things but we must do them well.

God is very concerned that his people worship him in a way that is right and proper. If you remember when Israel came to Mount Sinai, the Israelites consistently show that they do not understand this point. The Isralites were coming to Mt. Sinai to receive the Law of God. Up to this point God had taken out of Egypt and they had seen Moses part the red see for them to cross on dry land. They had then seen God wipe out the Egyptian armies with the water. They had been fed with manna and seen bitter water turned sweet, with this whole story culminating in God calling them to his mountain to receive his instructions. But the Israelites had failed to understand what was actually important to God.

They wanted to worship God in ways that they thought were important instead of how He had commanded them to. With the golden calf we see that the Israelites believe that the proper way to worship YHWH is by creating a calf out of Gold and declaring this is who YHWH is. And after God punishes the Israelites they continue to worship poorly when the Sons of Korah brought strange incense before God that was not commanded. And these were not some small mistakes the people made, no these are crimes against God that He declares deserves death. The Israelites didn’t get it. How God’s people worship YHWH is incredibly important.

When God’s people assemble and we sing together we must be sure that this worship is done skillfully. We must be sure that we are skilful in our song selection, our song writing, our musical tunes, our instruments, these are all things that God cares deeply about. When our band comes together and spends hours practicing these songs so that in the assembly they are a pleasing sound unto the Lord, this is the command of the Psalmist but more importantly of God himself. To play a beautiful melody on the piano, or sing harmonizing vocals, or to lift up your voice with the rest of the congregation is a right and proper method of worshiping God. This is what the psalmist means when he commands us to make a melody to him with tambourine and lyre. Church when it comes to worshiping YHWH, our best is the only thing he deserves. Exodus church when it comes to singing praises to your King, your best is the only thing he deserves.

What does this mean? It means rightly preparing our heart, mind, and body for the gathering of Christ's body on Sunday morning. Think of our worship band, they spend hours practicing the songs every Thursday night and Sunday morning so that they are prepared to worship God. We should be a people that follow this example of spending time throughout the week preparing ourselves to come together and worship the King. The entire body of Christ needs to prioritize worship, because it is so important. Worship is what shapes us, it forms us more and more into God’s image. Worship is something that declares war on sin and satan, you don’t go to war without some kind of preparation, and you don’t sing praises to God without preparing your body and soul.

To be best prepared for worship means ordering our lives so that we place Sunday morning worship of the utmost importance. We are not a people who just roll out of bed but instead we take time and effort to make sure that our entire being is prepared to come into the presence of the God of the universe. We are a people that must say, no matter how hard this past week has been, from frustrations, to anxieties, to everyday stresses, that our priority in life is centered around coming to worship YHWH, even when it is hard.

This means preparing breakfast and laying all the kids' clothes out the night before so everyone is in the car ready to go on time. This means singing with your family the night before and praying for our worship team and pastors to have your heart properly attuned to worship. This means turning off the screens and radio on Sunday morning and reading the psalms together in the car on the way to church. Preparing ourselves to worship is so important because this is how we can skillfully praise God. And preparing ourselves on Saturday evening is of vital importance.

We must prepare ourselves for Sunday morning while also realizing that Sunday morning is preparing us for the week ahead. It runs in a cycle. A couple weeks ago Hannah got really sick and we ended up missing church. And we were disappointed that we couldn’t go, but actually the hardest part was throughout the week. Going a week without worship had a profound effect on our lives. Everything just felt a little bit out of place, things were more stressful, nerves more on edge, we could tell that we were missing something. Missing worship had this effect on us because worship actually shapes us.

Vs 2 tells us that we are to be glad in our maker and to properly do this involves worshiping in the assembly with God’s people. To be glad in our maker is to come together and sing praises, to prepare our hearts so that in turn we can be shaped by God during our worship. To rejoice in our King is to have our hearts shaped by God during our worship. Worship is the way that we fight against the sins that creep up on us during the week. When a father gets home stressed from work and is overwhelmed, worship is what shapes his heart to come into his home with joy to play with his children and love his wife. When a stay at home mom begins to hear grumblings in her heart against the mundane nature of raising up children, and doing the same dishes and laundry day after day, worship is what shapes her heart to do these things joyfully unto the Lord.

We try to really practice this with our daughter. As a one year old she is navigating a world of emotions that she is still trying to learn how to control. When she gets overwhelmed or begins grumbling we will often sit down with her and listen and sing scripture with her. Because as her parents we want the psalms to shape her, to teach her that worship has an affect on every single aspect of her life. From the pain of teething to being frustrated that her parents said no, our daughter is learning to take these frustrations to Lord through the singing of the Psalms and in turn being molded more into God’s image even as a 1 year old.

Church coming into the presence of God is no small thing because it is shaping who we actually are. Worship changes our very being and by doing this declares war against our sinful flesh. This is why the Psalmist is so adamant that we are to skillfully worship our king. We must be prepared to go to war through worship.

The psalmist commands us to worship our king. Now before we move on to the next point there is one final thing we need to look at. These three verses are asking a question and if we are to be good biblical scholars we must be prepared to find the question and then answer it. And the question is this - how is a command made to Israel applicable to us today? How does an ethnic nation that was written about over 4000 years ago affect how we read this passage?

To answer this question we need to have an understanding of who God is and what story is being told in the Bible. Beginning in the garden we see that God has a plan for mankind, a plan that is disrupted when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree. Now this could very well be the end of the story of mankind, but God has something different in mind, instead he makes a promise to mankind, that one day the seed of the woman will come and crush the head of the serpent. You see where Adam failed to rescue his bride and kill the serpent, God promises that a new Adam will come. An Adam who will kill the dragon, save the girl, and rule over the kingdom that God has given to him. Where the old adam failed the new adam would succeed in a much greater way.

And part of this good news is that the new Adam who comes to rescue his bride only comes to rescue one bride. Jesus has only ever had one bride. The good news of the gospel is that Christ has come for Jew and gentiles. The jews, who were delivered the gospel first, have now been joined in with the gentiles. We have been grafted into one single unit. There is no Jew or Greek anymore but instead one people united as the bridegroom of Christ.

Think of a family who brings in a child for adoption. When the father looks at his family he doesn’t see his biological children in one camp and his adopted child in a different camp. Instead he sees one cohesive family unit. This is the people of God. We are all one people of God. There is no distinction between this room full of Gentiles and the ethnic people of Israel. We are all the bride that Christ came to rescue. This is you Exodus Church, you are the beloved bride of Jesus.

So when we come to verse 2 and see phrases like Children of Zion or Israel we can say with confidence that these commands are for us today. We are the ones the psalmist is speaking too when he says to sing a new song, to play the instruments, to dance for joy. Church we are the Children of Zion and we are commanded to sing and worship our king. And as we sing to our king we see that he responds to us, this is not one sided worship but instead a conversation between God and his people. Turn to v 4 and we will look and praise and its response.

Verse 4 says

For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;     he adorns the humble with salvation.

Now this is only one verse but it is packed full of the richness and depth of God's love for us. Look at the first part: For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. Let me read that again: The Lord takes pleasure in his people.

Church can you think of a statement more radically incredible than the idea that the Lord takes pleasure in you. You Exodus church, the Lord takes pleasure in you, he enjoys you, his delight is in you.

You know I think in the conservative, reformed branch of Christianity we can often focus in on the depravity of man, how we have sinned against a Holy God and deserve his wrath. And it is right and good for us to know these things, but what can be missed if we don’t have our theology properly dialed in this very simple but profound truth that the Lord delights in his people.

We came together this morning and confessed our sins but then with the Assurance of Pardon we were instantly reminded that Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us, why? Because we are children of God and are a joy to him. And church if you are a beloved child of God there is nothing you can do to take away this truth. No guilt, no shame, no whispers from the enemy will separate you from the delight of God. The blood of Christ has redeemed all sin and all darkness and brought you into this wonderful truth. God delights in you Exodus Church and nothing will ever take that away.

I want you to listen, if only to this one point. Nothing in your past will ever take away the delight that God has in you. The vilest sins from adultery, to abortion, to addiction to pornography, homosexual relationship, to a word spoken out of anger that ruined a relationship, broken families, broken homes, the vilest sins have been wiped away and God delights in you. God delights in you.

It can be so easy to slip into a pagan mindset where God is an upset teacher who is just watching and waiting for you to slip up so He can punish us. This is what Zeus, and Thor, and Baal, and Molech do, they are angry gods waiting to punish their people. But beloved this is not the case with the true God of the universe. He loves his people and his joy is found in them.

The next part of this verse says he adorns the humble with salvation. Those who come into the presence of God with humility are greeted with salvation. Those of you who come in faithfully on Sunday mornings and kneel before God and confess your sins, you are the humble who are given God’s salvation.

This truth is seen so well in the story of the prodigal son. This story that we teach our children is part of the vital truth that is seen in Psalm 149. As the son who has cursed his father, taken his money, blown it on all the worldly offerings he can, as this son begins the long walk up his Father’s driveway. His thoughts of trying to become a servant in his own fathers house, to try and merely be shown some form of grace in just being given enough food to survive and work for his father. Instead what happens, the fathers rushes to him, clothes him in the garments of Kings, and throws a party.

This story is told every single Sunday. We have heard it already, we have come before God in humility with confession of sin and God delights to see his children coming to him .We are clothed with the garments of royals through the intercession of Christ. This is what the Psalmist means when he says that God delights in his people and that he gives the humble salvation. In the midst of a psalm around worship and music the Psalmist takes time to point out that this is pleasing to God. That worship is not just our music, but it is so much more. It is to come before God humbly and to let him mold us.

The kingdom of satan hates this idea, they hate the humility that God requires. Satan’s tempters whisper in our ears that we are special, we deserve to have everything we can desire, anything our twisted minds imagine should be ours. Sin wants us to think that we are the main character of the story. That we can control the story of lives through the sin of pride. Pride is an ugly sin and more than that it is a sin that literally disfigures humankind. Pride leads us to think that we can change our gender because God somehow made a mistake in what physical body he gave me. Pride leads us to think that we can murder children because we have a better idea of when God should give us the gift of children. Pride leads husbands to abdicate their leadership by saying “well my wife is actually the problem in my marriage, none of this is my fault.” Pride leads wives to seek to become leaders of their household by shrugging off the command to submit to their husbands. Pride distorts the very fabric of who we are and what our calling is.

Pride is a sin that distorts how God has created our world. The Proverbs consistently tell us that pride is a sin that God hates, something that he cannot stand. If creation is a beautifully crafted orchestra then pride is the dusty out of tune guitar picked up by someone who has never touched an instrument before in their life. This is why the Lord adorns the humble. Those who come in and join their rightful place amongst the orchestra are honored. This is the story we are seeing in Psalm 149, we began with praise and its method, then praise and its response, and now we will look and praise and its results.

Look at verses 5-9 with me

5 Let the godly exult in glory;     let them sing for joy on their beds. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats     and two-edged swords in their hands, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations     and punishments on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with chains     and their nobles with fetters of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment written!     This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord!

With this third section we are returning to language about God’s people and their praise. We started by looking at praise and the method of how we do this skillfully, we then saw praise and the response of God to this praise and to his people, and now we are going to look at praise and the results of the singing of God’s people..

Verses 5-9 are really the end goal of worship, what we as the church should be hoping to accomplish with our worship of the most high and mighty God. And it starts out pretty normal - it says let the godly exult in their glory, let them sing for joy on their beds.

Those who have been adorned with salvation are then commanded to exult in glory. They celebrate that they have been adorned by God himself with salvation. But this isn’t a celebration that only lasts for the Sunday morning worship service, no it continues, in fact it continues all day even into the night. It continues until the very end of our day when we lay down at night to go to bed.

And this is a powerful statement because when you begin to think about it, going to bed is one of the most vulnerable times of our lives. When we go to bed, we are defenseless against whatever might come against us. It is a time that the enemy uses to strike at our fears, anxieties, stresses, and doubt throughout lives. How many husbands have laid awake at night anxious about how they will make ends meet? How many couples have let anger overtake their heart as they have gone to bed in the middle of a fight? How many young men have had lust whisper in their ear under the reality that no one will see what they do alone at night? Night time is when war for our souls rages.

Think of small children, when do they get most afraid? At night. They understand that they are vulnerable at night, so when thunder crashes, or they have a bad dream, or a tree scratches on their window, the result is the pitter patter of feet as they run to the safety of their parents bedroom. And so must we must run to the safety of God that is found in singing for joy when we lay down in our beds.

At our most vulnerable time we are to sing, we are to take hold of this battle and fight back the way that God has commanded us to, by singing. When we stare down our own sinful temptations we are to respond with song and worship of God. Worship is how we battle the anxieties of the week, worship is how we mend the fight we have with our spouse, worship is how we restore our world into the new creation that Jesus has brought about.

This is not a spiritualization of what we are to do either. I mean this, when tempted with sin respond with song. When facing anxiety, begin to sing Psalm 23 about the peace God brings. Husbands when you are arguing with your wife, stop saying “I love you, I want to fix this and we're going to start by singing Psalm 133 together, a psalm of peace and unity.” When you have a stressful day at work, sit in your car and begin to sing It Is Well. This is what true warfare looks like.

The Psalmist then continues this talk of warfare but he makes a switch that we might not be ready for, this warfare is not just in our own hearts and homes but instead it goes out to the world

V6-9 says:

Let the high praises of God be in their throats     and two-edged swords in their hands, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations     and punishments on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with chains     and their nobles with fetters of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment written!     This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord!

Wait hold on. We were just talking about singing songs and playing instruments and now we see lines about executing vengeance and punishment through song, talks of kings and nations. What is going on here? Maybe the better question is what does the Psalmist know about worship that we don’t? How has our view of what it means to praise God differentiated from the biblical account of what it means to praise God? How have our sappy, sentimental, KLove style music of love and grace differed from the songs that pronounce judgment on kings and nations?

Let's start at the beginning of this passage, it begins with a declaration that the praises of God should be in their throats and also a two edged sword in their hands. And we can recall that their are some passages that have talked about a two edged sword:

Hebrews 4:12 says

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And we see it again in Revelation 1:16

In his right hand he (that is Jesus the son of Man) held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

These passages teach us a couple things about a two edged sword - first that it is the word of God. The text that we have in our Bibles is a sword, a weapon that is used to pierce and cut through the heart. It is sharp and has an effect. And the second thing we learn is that this sword is being wielded by Christ himself coming out of his own mouth. The word of God has always been there, John 1:1 tells us it was in the beginning and it was God.

So when we go back to Psalm 149 and we see a two edged sword we can learn a few things about what these praises are. First they are a weapon that needs to be wielded properly. There are two different kinds of swords, first there is a one edged sword - think of like a katana that the samurais are always shown carrying around. Those have one edge. Now a two edged sword is like what we imagine knights carrying around with them and these swords are much more deadly than the katana but they also carry more risk. They can bounce back. They can cause damage to the wielder. The word of God is like this, it cuts to the heart.

So the people of God must understand how to use these praises and secondly we learn what the praises are themselves. When we see that the word of God is a two edged sword and the people of God are to wield this sword we see that this is our Bible. Now since we are dealing specifically with praise we learn that the praises that God’s people should be basing their worship off is the book of songs in the bible, the Psalms.

The Psalms are to be the praises that are swords in the hands of God people. This is why we at exodus church sing and chant the psalms. We even have entire nights devoted to coming together to sing the Psalms together. Because the psalms are a weapon in the hands of the righteous. And what are we to do with this weapon? Vs 7-9 tells us

to execute vengeance on the nations     and punishments on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with chains     and their nobles with fetters of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment written!

Now this language can seem foreign to our ears as we read it. When we begin to talk of executing vengeance and punishment and kings and nations this can make us uncomfortable. Is this what being a Christian is all about? Didn’t Jesus say his kingdom is not of this world? What does it mean to love Christ and our neighbor and come to passages like this in the bible? Well we need to begin with the general framework of what is the gospel. And it's put most simply like this, the gospel is the good news that Jesus of Nazareth is the king of the entire world. This king, who has always been and always will be God, was sent by the Father to put on flesh from the line of David,. He died to rescue his people from their sins, was buried, resurrected, seen by many witnesses, and has ascended to the right hand of God the Father and has sent the Holy Spirit to his people. And someday this king will come back to judge the living and the dead.

This is the good news that a king has come. And all who bow the knee to Christ are responsible to see his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. As the body of Christ we are responsible for seeing this good news taken to every corner of the earth and the powers of satan crushed under the feet of Christ. Romans 16:20 makes this abundantly clear when Paul says -

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Our duty as Christians is to see every knee, nation, ruler, king, and person bow the knee to Christ. 1 Corinthians 15 tells us this will happen before Christ returns because the last enemy to be put down is death itself.

So how do we go about completing this task? Is the kingdom of Christ like worldly kingdoms that come about through world domination or military campaigns? By no means. It comes about as Psalm 149 tells us it will. Through the praises of God’s people.

The praises of God's people are the sword that executes judgment and punishment on the kings and presidents and prime ministers of this world. The praises of God’s people brings about the Lord’s prayer that God’s kingdom and will would come to earth. The praises of God’s people is a powerful force.

The bible is full of stories of how the praises of God’s people are a weapon of war. Think of when the Israelites came into the promised land, the first battle that Joshua led them in their conquest of Canaan was the taking of the city of Jericho. How did they take this city? The Israelites marched around the city for 6 days and then on the 7th day they blew their horns and the walls came crumbling down. Or in 2 Chronicles 20 we read about the story of King Jehoshaphat who was going to battle with the Moabites and Ammonites. On the day of the battle he places people to sing in front of the troops. As they sang praises to God their enemies killed themselves off so that not a single enemy of God’s people survived without the Israelites ever drawing their sword.

Finally, the greatest example we have is Christ himself. Before bearing the weight of the cross and going to battle sin, death, and Satan himself, The gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus sang a hymn with his disciples. Before Christ went to battle to assure the victory of the cross he sang. When he knew that all of his disciples would leave him, when he was about to bear the full wrath of God on the cross, when he was going to crush the head of the serpent Jesus of Nazareth sang a hymn.

Church, this is the example we need to follow in our lives. When we look at the world and the sin and corruption that is abounding our response should be to gather as God’s people and to sing. This is our weapon against the world. So often we can become enamored with what feels like action when it comes to transforming the world with the gospel. We can become focused on evangelism, or putting Godly men in political office, or debating finer points of theology - which are all good and proper. These are weapons for us to use in the battle against sin, death and satan. But these are not the first steps. You cannot drive your car until you have put your keys in the ignition. Singing is this key, it is how we begin the process of fighting in God’s world. Our evangelism may not always take root, our political leaders will fail us, we can win an argument in theology without having a right heart or convincing someone else, but the songs of God’s people are always a sword that cuts to the heart.

Singing is where we begin, this is where our fathers in the Faith, and the Lord himself started. And the Psalmist gives us a last exhortation about focusing on praising the Lord. Verse 9 says

This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord!

Church this is the truth of our worship. It is our honor to come before the king and sing to him a new song. To come before him with proper praise with instruments and dancing. To see how he exalts the mighty and to see how the praises of God’s people are a weapon against the stronghold of satan. Church, this is our honor. It is an honor for us to come and use our skills to sing beautiful songs to God. It is our honor to be exalted by God, to humble ourselves so that God himself may exalt us. It is our honor to wield the praises of worship and use them to see the nations discipled, the tyrants punished, and judgment carried out. This is an honor for the people of God.

Exodus church may we aspire and receive the honor promised to us in Psalm 149. I pray that Exodus would be a church that is known for its singing to God, for its skillful praise. May we be a Church that the Lord himself delights in. May the Lord exalt and delight in every single one of us. Exodus Church, Praise the Lord.

Holy Father,

We pray that our songs would be a pleasing sound to your ears. Please remember your people and lift up the humble who are fighting the good fight. Exalt those of us who have kneeled before you and confessed our sins. Lift us into your throne room and seat us in the Holy of Holies to sing praises to the king for all eternity. I pray that the voices and instruments of Exodus Church will skillfully praise you. I pray that our songs would be a weapon that fights against every wicked stronghold left in Wichita, Kansas. May the songs of your people be used to destroy the wicked and perverse of this city. Let us not run to any other means of war except what you have prescribed in your word knowing that the warfare of God’s people is not the same as other kings but instead a kingdom not of this world. May we be transformed more and more into the image of your Son, our Holy Redeemer, and great High Priest. For it is in his name that we pray.

Amen