Praising With All I've Got

The Psalms on Worship Praising with All I’ve Got Psalm 150 Pastor Pat Damiani September 8, 2019 NOTE: This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript. There was this truly Pentecostal Pastor, who wanted to make sure that he used the terms “Praise the Lord” and “Amen” as much as possible. So he taught his horse to start running when he said “Praise the Lord” and to stop when he said “Amen”. After many trials, he finally succeeded, and he decided to go on a long ride in the forest. So he got on to the horse and proudly said Praise the Lord. The horse started walking and when the pastor said “Praise the Lord” every time, the horse increased his speed. The pastor was so excited that he kept saying “Praise the Lord” and before he knew, the horse was running at a very high speed. The pastor started to get worried and in the confusion forgot how to make the horse stop. He tried different words, but nothing worked. He knew that the horse was running towards a deep cliff and if he did not manage to stop the horse soon, both the horse and the pastor would go down the cliff to eternal life. But he just could not remember the word the make the horse stop. So as a good pastor, he prayed, and God gave him a revelation with the answer. He shouted “Amen” and the horse came to a screeching halt. The pastor looked over and saw that the horse stopped just inches before the cliff, one more step and they would have met with certain death. He heaved a huge sigh of relief and shouted joyfully “Praise the Lord”. I guess at least one of the things we can learn from that story is that we should be careful about how we use the phrase “Praise the Lord”. It seems that there are a couple of extremes that we need to avoid. On one hand, when we use that phrase merely as a cliché or rote response or if we use it to try and impress other people with how spiritual we are, or certainly if we use it to try and control a horse, then it might actually be quite dangerous. But there is also the danger that comes when we fail to use that phrase at all - when we fail to honor God for who He is and what He does. If we’re honest, all of us have probably been guilty of both of those extremes at times. But fortunately for us, the Psalm that we’ll study together this morning will give us some very practical guidance on how we can genuinely praise the Lord in a way that gives Him the glory that He is due. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve altered the order of our worship today for the purpose of providing an opportunity for all of us to apply what we’ve been learning over the last six weeks in this current sermon series – The Psalms on Worship. Today we’ll wrap up that series with the final Psalm – Psalm 150. Before we read that text, however, I want to put it into context. As we talked about at the beginning of this series, the Psalms are kind of like a modern-day hymnal. An editor or group of editors collected these Psalms, which were written by various authors over about a one-thousand-year period of Israel’s history. And most scholars believe, and I agree with them for what that’s worth, that when they collected the Psalms, these editors added Psalm 1 and Palm 150 as the introduction and conclusion to the book. If you have your Bibles handy go ahead and open them up to Psalm 1 and I’ll show you what I mean. Psalm 1 begins with the words “Blessed is the man…”. The Psalm then goes on to describe the man who delights in God and how he is like a deeply rooted tree next to a stream. Then, in the first part of the Psalms, we find that those Psalms are filled with cries to God from people who are in trouble or who are hurting. But as the book progresses, we see less focus on man’s circumstances and more focus on who God is and what He does. By the time we arrived at Psalm 145 last week, we talked about the fact that David’s circumstances aren’t mentioned at all. His entire focus is on God. And that focus on God continues with the last five Psalms. Go ahead and turn to Psalm 146. What is the beginning and ending phrase of that Psalm? Praise the Lord Now turn to Psalm 147. What is the opening and closing phrase for that Psalm? Praise the Lord How about Psalm 148? Psalm 149? And even if you didn’t look, I’ll bet that you would guess that is also how Psalm 150 begins and ends. And you would be right. In Hebrew, the phrase “praise the Lord” is just one word: In Hebrew, it is a compound word: hallelujah = halal (“to boast to the point of looking foolish”) + Yah (the shortened name of God) = “praise the Lord” So, in most English translations that word is translated “Praise the Lord” in all 23 places it is found in the Old Testament. But we commonly transliterate that word into English as hallelujah which is a word that is often included in the worship songs we sing. Since we’ve also just been introduced to the last Hebrew word for worship that we’ll be studying in this series, let’s go ahead and define it be before we read this Psalm , where it is used eleven times in just six verses. As we just saw when we defined the word “hallelujah”: “halal” = “to boast to the point of looking foolish” It comes from a word that means to give off light. So the idea here is that halal praise shines a light on God. This is the most used word for praise in the Old Testament. We are finally ready to read Psalm 150. Would you read it out loud with me? [Read Psalm 150] Unlike Psalm 145 that we looked at last week, this Psalm is actually pretty easy to follow and outline and to determine the main idea: That idea is developed by answering… FIVE QUESTIONS ABOUT PRAISING GOD: 1. Who do I praise? • The Lord We are not to praise the church, or the pastor, or the worship team. We are not to praise the blessings and the gifts we receive from God. We are not to praise the creation. We are to praise the Lord. And just as we discussed last week, it’s not really possible to praise the Lord until he is “your Lord”. It’s not enough for Him just to be “a Lord”. He needs to be your personal Lord. Since we just covered that idea in some detail last week, I won’t belabor the point other than to remind all of us that the only way to make the Lord our personal Lord is by putting our faith in Jesus alone. Until you do that, you just aren’t going to be capable of applying the rest of what we’ll talk about this morning. 2. Where? (v. 1) • In community In verse 1, we are commanded to praise God in His sanctuary. For the people of Israel that was first the tabernacle, during the time they were in the wilderness and when they first entered the Promised Land, and later the temple, once it was built. It was the place where people gathered together to worship God. Today, that place is the church, but the word church never applies to a building, but rather to God’s people who are gathered together. Many things occur on Sundays and during the other times of the week that we gather together with other disciples of Jesus. We get to be with our friends, Sometimes those who are not yet part of the kingdom of God make a decision to commit their lives to Jesus. Sometimes our needs are met. And there is nothing wrong with any of those things. They are actually good things. But the primary purpose of our gathering is to meet God and praise Him together as a body. • On my own We are also called to “praise God in his mighty heavens”. The Hebrew word translated “heavens” in verse 1 literally means “expanse”. It is the same word used in Genesis 1 to describe how God created the atmosphere. There is a sense in which this could refer to the angels and other heavenly creatures, but given the context, it seems to just be making that point that every person on this planet is to be praising God. As we’ve talked about before, there is a synergy between our own personal worship during the week and the corporate worship that occurs when we gather on Sunday. When we spend the week praising God individually it fuels our corporate worship and in in turn when we praise God together as a body it fuels our individual worship. 3. Why? (v. 2) By now, the two reasons that we are to praise God shouldn’t be a surprise since we’ve talked about both of them consistently throughout this series. Neither takes much explanation. • Because of what God does We are to praise God for His “mighty deeds” – what He does. The idea here is that we don’t just praise God for the blessings in our own personal lives, but that we look back on the history of God and His people and praise God for the mighty deeds by which He has preserved His people and carried out His promises. We do that primarily by spending time in God’s Word. • Because of who God is We are also to praise God for His “excellent greatness” – who He is. We are to praise Him for His attributes – like the ones we saw last week in Psalm 145 – His grace and mercy, His justice, His righteousness, and His steadfast love. And once again I’m going to suggest that one of the best ways to praise God for who He is, is to read The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. That book does a great job of summarizing many of the attributes of God that we can praise Him for. 4. How? (vv. 3-5) The kind of worship that is described in verses 3-5 is loud and exuberant. In thinking about how I could summarize all this in one phrase, the one that came to mind was… • With all I’ve got The sense of these verses is “pull out all the stops and give it everything I’ve got”. We see that in a couple different senses here. First, we see the variety of instruments that were to be used in praising God. The Israelites used three types of musical instruments in their worship and they are all included here – wind instruments, stringed instruments and percussion. Every one of the instruments included in this Psalm is mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament in connection with Israel’s worship, but as far as I can find, this is the only place where they are brought together into a magnificent symphony of praise. The other thing we see here is that the whole body is included in this kind of worship. The lips and mouth are used to blow the wind instruments. The fingers are used to pluck the stringed instruments. The tambourine is often hit against various parts of the body. And certainly dancing involves moving the whole body. This is not really surprising given that what we’ve learned about worship in this series. We’ve already learned that worship involves our hands and bowing down and shouting and singing. 5. Who is to praise? (v. 6) • Everyone This is so clear that I don’t need to spend much time here. I think I’m pretty safe to assume that if you’re here with us this morning, that you are breathing. And if you are breathing, then you are included in verse 6 where we find this exhortation: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” Or as we put it earlier… The answers to those five questions about praise, lead to these… THREE IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS FOR MY WORSHIP 1. Worship is not a spectator sport I can’t think of a Bible passage that makes this clearer. The responsibility to praise and worship God is not limited to the pastor or the Elders or even the worship team. Unfortunately, in our culture, and especially in many larger churches, there seems to be a movement towards what I would call more of a “performance” type of worship where everyone essentially just watches the worship band play and sing, like they would at a concert. But we never see that kind of worship in the Bible. We are really fortunate to have a worship team here at TFC that understands this principle. I know from firsthand experience that the desire of every one of the people on that team is not for you to watch them, but for you to join them in worshiping a great and mighty God. In fact, I can assure you that the days we enjoy most are the days when everyone is fully engaged in worship and we can hear you singing and watch the joy on your faces. I understand that not all of you particularly enjoy singing and frankly some of you just aren’t very good at it. Some of you aren’t physically able to stand for long or raise your hands or dance. But to the extent that you’re able, God desires for you to be an active participant in worship. 2. Worship that is pleasing to God is festive Although there are certainly times when it is appropriate for worship to be quiet and even somber and we always want to be reverent, the picture of worship we see here is triumphant and festive. We’re not at a funeral – we’re celebrating a risen Savior! And our faces and our bodies and our voices ought to reflect that. Praise is a natural and necessary response to who God is and what He has done. When we focus on that, how can we not be excited and want to share that excitement with others. 3. Worship that is pleasing to God is fervent One of the commentators that I read this week called apathy in worship “a soul-killing sin”. But I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t the way we approach worship sometimes. When I regularly notice people arriving late and others bolting for the doors the very second the service is over, or even before that, it seems like the attitude of some is “I’ll give God His hour, but then I need to get on with the other things I’d rather be doing.” But this Psalm makes it clear that worship is to be a joy and a priority. It is to be full of exuberant praise that is expressed by every means possible. We are to approach worship with expectancy, knowing that Jesus Himself is present with us. We are to praise Him by engaging our hearts, our head and our hands. This morning we are going to give everyone an opportunity to apply the message in a different way than we normally do. Although we still encourage you to consider how to apply the message personally in your life, today we are going to respond as a group by singing songs of praise to God. As we do that, we’ll be able to apply many of the things we have learned over the last six weeks about worship. As we prepare to do that, I want to take a moment to point out how the songs we are going to sing today incorporate praising God for who He is and what He does. Good Good Father: You're a good good father It's who you are, it's who you are, it's who you are You are perfect in all of your ways You are perfect in all of your ways You are perfect in all of your ways to us Those words testify to who God is – He is a good God and He is perfect in all of His ways. Love Knows No End: Now my soul sings Your love it knows no end Your love it knows no end Your love it knows no end Those words testify to who God is – He is a God whose love has no end. I will love for You have loved I will forgive as You forgive These words testify to what Goa has done. He has loved us and forgiven us. This We Know: You are who say You are You'll do what You say You'll do You'll be who You've always been to us We trust You We trust You Your ways are higher than our own Again these words praise God for who He is – He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and He is a God whose ways are higher than ours. This we know We will see the enemy run This we know We will see the victory come We hold on to every promise You ever made Jesus, You are unfailing These words also praise God for His attributes of power and faithfulness, but they also allude to what He has done. Through Jesus, He is victorious over death and the power of sin in our lives. Raise a Hallelujah We’ll close with this song because, as we’ve learned this morning, the very word “hallelujah” means “praise the Lord”. Christianity is unique in the fact that it is a singing and rejoicing faith. Some faiths, like Islam, don’t even believe in singing. The fact that our faith is a singing faith is a testimony not only to the way that God has wired us as humans, but also to the kind of God we have – a God that will one day sing over us: The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17 ESV) No wonder that… Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable 1. How would you respond to someone who says that it’s unrealistic to praise God all the time? How about someone who says it’s hypocritical to praise God when I don’t feel like it? 2. Is it possible to “overdo” our praise for God in a corporate worship setting? What are some guidelines we can employ to avoid that? 3. What are some practical things I can do to enhance my personal worship experience as well as that of others? 4. How do we maintain reverence in our worship while still worshiping festively and fervently?