Praise Leading to Prayer

Scripture: Psalm 148

Psalm 148 NIV

1 Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above. 2 Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his heavenly hosts. 3 Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. 4 Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. 5 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created, 6 and he established them for ever and ever— he issued a decree that will never pass away. 7 Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, 8 lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, 9 you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, 10 wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, 11 kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, 12 young men and women, old men and children. 13 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. 14 And he has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants, of Israel, the people close to his heart. Praise the Lord.

12/28/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Opening Prayer:

Praise Leading to Prayer

Introduction

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We had a beautiful Christmas Eve service this past week. Thank you to everyone who helped tell the story of the birth of Jesus again through scripture, through song, through candlelight, and through your presence. Thank you to everyone who helped out, not only up front, but behind the scenes to help make that night as special as it was.

Christmas was three days ago. I know some of you are still tired. Some of you still have family in town. Some of you are already thinking about what 2026 might hold. We are in this space in between, looking back at 2025 and looking forward to the new year. This morning, I want to share with you the bridge between that reflection of the past and the anticipation of what lies ahead of us, between the old year and the new. That bridge is praise.

Psalm 148 is going to show us that bridge. Psalm 148 is often called one of the Hallelujah Psalms, one of the last five psalms in the book. Each one of those psalms begins and ends with "Praise the Lord," or as they say in Hebrew, "Hallelu-Yah." Hallelujah is not just an expression of praise. It is a command. Hallelu means praise. It is an imperative verb that tells us what to do. Yah is short for God's covenant name, Yahweh. So every time you say "Hallelujah," you are saying, or responding to, "Praise the Lord."

Here is something interesting about this word as a command: when you hear someone say "Hallelujah, praise the Lord," what do you do? You say it back. You echo it. So the command then becomes the response. Praising God is almost contagious that way. It ripples. When one voice praises, it invites another one to join in. It is like when you go to a ball game and you see someone starting the wave. You respond by doing the wave yourself. Someone else sees you do it, and they respond by doing it. Praise works the same way. That is part of why God commands us to praise Him. He does not need to hear our praise, but He knows that praise does not stay with the one who speaks it. It spreads. It draws the attention of everyone around us toward a loving relationship with Him.

That word hallelujah shows up in so many of our worship songs. Think of Handel's Messiah and the famous Hallelujah Chorus. It repeats that one word over and over, dozens of times. No one walks away from that song saying, "That was shallow or too repetitive," because that repetition is not lazy. It is the point. Each time you hear that command, it presses deeper into you until you respond and spread that praise to all those around you. The song we sang this morning, "Praise," does something similar. It is not complicated, but every repetition is a fresh act of obedience, a fresh choice to join that chorus praising God.

That is exactly what Psalm 148 invites us into. It is a command to praise, and it shows us that we are not the only ones doing it. All of creation is already singing. So let us look at Psalm 148 and start where the psalmist starts, with the heavens.

The Heavens Praise Him

"Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above." The heavens are already praising. The sun does not decide each morning whether to rise. It does what God commands it. Verse 5 says God issued a decree that will never pass away. All of creation praises God by being what He made it to be and doing what it was made to do.

Today, we continue to celebrate Christmas. We sang "The First Noel" this morning. That song begins with the angels appearing to the shepherds. Those angels were not doing anything unusual. They were doing what they were made to do: announcing the glory of God and praising Him. The thing that was unusual was that the shepherds got to see it that night. The heavens are always praising. That is not a question. The real question is whether we are paying attention.

But the psalm does not stay there in the heavens. It comes down to Earth, and I do not think that is an accident. The psalmist shows us how praise cascades downward until it reaches us.

The Earth Praises Him

The psalmist starts in Heaven, and now he turns his eyes to everything around him here on the Earth. He looks at the sea creatures. He looks to the weather. He looks to the mountains and the hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals and livestock, creatures that crawl, birds that fly. Then he says, "Young men and women, and old men and children." He is looking to all creation from the highest heights and the lowest depths, gradually pulling that vision and that focus closer and closer, encapsulating everyone in that praise, in that command to praise, in that contagious ripple of praise, until it lands right on us.

Many of you know the rhythms of the land. You know that even now, in late December, while the fields look empty, they are not dead. The soil is resting. It is holding what was planted in the fall. Creation is doing exactly what God designed it to do in each season. That is praise. It is not loud or showy praise. It is faithful obedience to the Creator's design. Cattle in the barn and birds finding seed do not choose to praise the way that we do, but they declare God's goodness in the way they exist and the way they live according to His design.

Then the psalmist gets to us: young and old, men and women, all included in this great chorus throughout the universe. But unlike the rest of creation, we choose whether to participate. The sun does not decide whether or not to shine, but you and I wake up every day and decide whether we are going to join in this chorus of praise or sit it out.

Think about this past year for a moment. Where did you see God at work? Maybe it was an answered prayer, a prayer for healing, provision, or guidance. We have prayed together here in this room, and we have seen God answer. Not always the way we expected, but faithfully. Maybe it was growth. Not just here at our church, though we have seen that too. Families inviting neighbors. Our Blessing Box meeting the needs of our community. Small growth, but steady. Faithful. Each of those moments is an opportunity for praise, and praise is what puts us in a position for what comes next.

The psalm does not end with just a command to praise. It ends by telling us why.

The Reason We Praise

Look at verse 13. It says, "His name alone is exalted. His splendor is above the earth and the heavens." We praise because of who God is. His name, His character, His very nature is above everything. It is greater than our circumstances. It is more powerful than our fears about next year. It is stronger than our weariness this morning. His name is exalted.

Then verse 14 tells us something curious. It says God has raised up a horn for His people. What does that mean, a horn? In the Old Testament, a horn was a symbol of strength. Think of a ram's horn or a bull's horn. There is power in those horns. So when the psalmist says God has raised up a horn, he is saying God has given His people strength, salvation, and power to stand and praise Him.

In Luke chapter 1, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, prophesies about what God is about to do, using the same language we see and hear in this psalm. Zechariah says, "He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David." He is talking about Jesus. Jesus is that horn. He is the strength of God's people. He is our salvation, not just on the day He was born, and not just on the day He rose from the grave, but every day. Today. Right now. Forever. He is our strength and our salvation, and we need Him every day, especially when we recognize that we can only live one day at a time and cannot do anything without His strength.

When I think about that word "horn," another image comes to mind. If you have ever played a brass instrument, a horn, or you have watched someone play one, you know that the sound does not come from the horn itself. It comes from the player, who presses their lips to the mouthpiece and buzzes. They buzz their lips. It is not a pretty sound on its own. It is just vibrating air. But when that buzz travels through the horn, something happens. The horn shapes it, amplifies it, turns it into music that fills a room, moves people, and can bring someone to tears or to their feet, cheering. It is the sound that we hear when a touchdown is scored at a football game, and the sound that we hear at the graveside. It moves us.

That is what Jesus does with our praise. We bring Him our buzzing lips, our imperfect attempts, our weary hallelujahs, our "Thank You, Lord" whispered in the car on our way to church. Through Christ, that horn God has raised up for us, God takes our praise and makes it resound. He turns it into something that reaches others, something that draws hearts toward Him. Your praise matters more than you know. Not because it is eloquent, but because Christ amplifies it. When other people hear that, they want to start singing too.

But notice how verse 14 ends. It calls God's people "the people close to his heart." This is what Jesus makes possible. Anyone can thank God, and God hears. But when we are in a loving relationship with Jesus, we are not shouting from the outside, hoping He hears us. We are the people close to His heart. We are in the presence of God Himself. We get to praise Him, knowing He is right here with us.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, shows us what this looks like. When she found out she would carry the Son of God, she broke into a song of praise. We call it the Magnificat because that is how it begins in Latin. But in the original Greek, Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord." To magnify means to make great, to enlarge. It does not make God bigger. He is already infinite. But it makes Him more visible. It does to our eyes what a horn does to sound.

Mary had Jesus literally within her. He had not even been born yet, but He was already at work, forming her spiritually, teaching her soul to magnify God. She took what she knew of God, His mercy, His faithfulness, His power to lift up the humble, and her soul magnified it, made it resound. Two thousand years later, we are still hearing it.

Jesus does the same for us. He forms us spiritually, shaping our souls to praise God as He created them to do. That is what praise does. It makes God more visible to those around us. It helps people hear His name in places they might not otherwise hear it.

Transition to Prayer

So where does that leave us this morning in this in-between moment, with Christmas behind us and the new year ahead? Well, in just a few minutes, we are going to do something different today. We are going to break into small groups and pray together. I want to prepare you for that, because this psalm invites us into a way of praying that is important today.

Now, I know that not everyone in this room is in a season of joy. What about when you do not feel like praising God? What about when you are hurting, grieving, or suffering? What do you do then?

Take heart. The Psalms are full of lament as well as praise, and they are often mixed together, just as we experience a mixture of both in our lives. God hears and honors those cries. He still hears you, even when you cannot find the words to praise. You do not have to pretend that everything is fine.

If you are in a darker place today, let me offer this: look for one small light that Jesus has given you, one tiny thing that you are thankful for, and voice it, even if only to yourself and to God. It may not change the struggles you face, but it will help you begin to see Jesus with you, even in your current struggles.

Whether you are in a season of joy or a season of sorrow, here is what I have learned about prayer: when we let what God has done shape what we are asking Him to do, something shifts in us. We stop praying like we are trying to convince a reluctant God to help us, and we start praying like people who have seen Him work and expect to see Him work again. We want to know where to point our eyes and our ears. That is the kind of prayer I want us to practice this morning.

Here is what I am asking you to do. When you gather as a group, start with praise. Not requests, but praising God. What has God done this past year that you can thank Him for? Name it out loud. If you do not know what to praise God for, you can thank Him for providing for you and getting you through another year. Then let that praise become the foundation for your prayers for the year ahead. Pray for yourself, for your family, for our church, for our community, for our world. Pray together in the key of praise. Pray as people who have seen God's faithfulness and are looking for where He will move next.

Some of you have never prayed out loud before. You are already nervous and thinking about heading for the door. I want to tell you that you do not have to pray out loud today. But I encourage you to stay and be present. Listen to the praises of those around you. Because praise is contagious, it might give you the courage to try for the first time. This is a no-judgment zone. This is a place of hope and peace and joy and love for God, for Jesus, and for one another as we gather as His people to celebrate what He has done and to look ahead in joyful anticipation of what He is going to do.

Know that when you speak your gratitude out loud, you are not the only one who is nervous in the room. When you name what God has done, it encourages that person next to you all the more. Your praise gives them permission to praise. Your faith, however big or small, strengthens theirs. So you are not just praying for yourself. You are contributing to a chorus. You are not just talking about prayer. You are about to do it. We are not just going to hear this sermon; we are going to experience it together.

(Identify Prayer Group Leaders: South - Cheryl Jones? - right side, Monette - center rows, Kerri - left side North - Jon Clark - front right side, Jack - back right side, Carolyn Newton - front left side, ? - back left side)

We are not asking you to share praises and requests with each other. Your leader is going to start off in a prayer of praise and praying for the next year and then invite you to pray your prayer of praise for last year and prayer for the coming year as well.

Praise the Lord. That is how this psalm begins, and that is how it ends. It is how we have worshiped this morning, and it is how we are going to step into the new year: together in praise, watching for where God is already at work, and ready to follow Him there faithfully.

Closing Prayer

Will you pray with me?

Lord, we have heard Your Word this morning. You have shown us that all of creation praises You and that You invite us into that chorus of praise. Thank You for the horn You have raised up for us in Jesus. Thank You for the strength and salvation we find in Him. Thank You that through Him we can come into Your presence. Thank You that He takes our small offerings of praise and our buzzing lips and our weary hallelujahs and turns them into beautiful music that resounds for Your glory. Now, as we pray together, help us to begin with praise. Remind us of what You have done, and give us faith to trust You with what is ahead. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.