Praise the Lord

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.

Engagement

There were two farmers, one an optimist, the other a pessimist. The optimist would exclaim, “Wonderful sunshine!” The pessimist would respond, “I think it’s going to scorch the crops.” The optimist would say, “Fine rain!” The pessimist would come back with, “I’m afraid it may turn into a flood.”

One day the optimist said to the pessimist, “Have you seen my new bird dog? He’s really something!” The pessimist said, “You mean that mutt penned up behind your house? He don’t look like much to me.” The optimist said, “Let’s go hunting.

So they went out and shot some ducks. The ducks landed on the pond. The optimist ordered his dog to get the ducks. The dog obediently responded. But instead of swimming after the ducks, the dog walked on top of the water, retrieved the ducks, and walked back on top of the water!

The optimist was beaming as he said to the pessimist, “Now, what do you think of that?” The pessimist replied, “Can’t swim, can he?”

Tension

Now I think we’d all agree that 2020 has been a year that has caused even the most optimistic among us to be at least somewhat pessimistic and we could all use some help developing some optimism. Although there are a number of ways to try and do that, pretty much everything we could try falls into one of two categories:

On one hand we can attempt to do that through the “power of positive thinking”. You can find plenty of people who would advocate that approach. While I suppose it is possible to see some results in the short run, ultimately those kinds of efforts will fail because they are man-centered.

On the other hand, we can try a more God-centered approach - one that is focused on praising Him for who He is and what He has done, similar to what we did in our worship gathering last week. That doesn’t mean that we deny our problems or look at the world through rose colored glasses. It just means that we attempt to look at things from God’s perspective. And when we do that, we can’t help but praise God. We’re going to see today that:

Praise is the solution to pessimism

Truth

Psalms 146-150 are a fitting conclusion to the book of Psalms. Each of them begin and end with a single Hebrew word:

hallelujah =

halal (praise) + YHWH (LORD) =

Praise the Lord!

A little later this morning, we’re going to be singing “Christ is Risen” and we’ll be singing that word “hallelujah” repeatedly. As we do that I want to encourage you to think about how you are literally singing “praise the Lord”.

Psalm 150 is a fitting conclusion to this collection of five halal Psalms since it summarizes the previous four Psalms.

Including the beginning and ending commands to “praise the Lord” this Psalm contains 13 commands to praise God in only 6 short verses.

Since this chapter is pretty short, we’re going to read it out loud together - but with a twist. Every time we read the word “praise” all the kids need to shake their tambourines. So we’re going to read it slow enough for them to have time to do that.

Psalm 150:1–6 ESV

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

While there are obviously a lot of other passages in the Bible where we can learn more about praising God, I’m pretty sure that if we had only this short chapter we’d have everything we needed to understand about how to praise God in a way that can turn even the most pessimistic among us into optimists. So this morning let’s look at the

4 “W”’s of Praise

Where?

Formal worship

The first command is to praise God in His sanctuary. The Israelites first gathered to worship in the tabernacle and later in the temple. And eventually they gathered in even smaller groups in the local synagogues. The word sanctuary used here could refer to any of those places, but what is important is that they were places the people gathered to worship.

But God is certainly not limited to any building or place. The early church often gathered in the synagogues and in people’s homes. The important thing was not where they gathered, but the fact that they did gather to praise God.

Today when we gather, we praise God in a number of ways. We sing songs that praise Him, we read and study His Word, and we respond to the revelation of God that we find in those activities. Those are all forms of praising God.

Informal worship

The second command in verse 2 exhorts us to praise God in His mighty heavens. That might cause us to think that the Psalmist is writing about praising God in heaven after we finish our life here on earth. But I don’t think we’ll need any encouragement at all to do that. So I think something else is meant here. If you’re reading the ESV you’ll see a footnote that indicates that this Hebrew word can also be translated “expanse”. It is the same word used 9 times in Genesis 1 to describe God’s creation. So literally we are being commanded to praise God wherever we might be in His creation.

Now I don’t think the Psalmist is in any way supporting those who claim that they don’t need to come to church because they can worship God on the golf course, or fishing along a stream, or hunting. You can certainly worship God in those places and you should. But this isn’t an either/or proposition where you get to choose whether to worship God corporately or individually. Both are commanded and both are essential. But I do think that if you’re not worshipping informally in your everyday life, it’s going to be harder for you to do that in a corporate setting.

Why?

For what He has done

In verse 3, we see that we are to praise God for His mighty deeds. We went into this in some detail last week when we looked at Psalm 105, so I don’t think I need to belabor the point. But we are to praise God for what He has done in the past in the lives of His people - the things we read about in the Scriptures - as well as the mighty deeds He has carried out in our own personal lives.

For who He is

The second part of verse 2 commands us to praise God for His excellent greatness. He is worthy of our praise just because of who He is. We need to praise God for His attributes - His holiness, His love, His justice, His mercy, His righteousness. If you’re looking for a great tool to help you in that process I’d highly recommend the book “Knowledge of the Holy” by A.W. Tozer. It is a great little book that will help you to better understand what all those terms mean and how God manifests them.

Way (How)?

With all you’ve got!

Verses 3-5 give us a whole list of musical instruments that were to be used to praise God. This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list in the sense that if it’s not on the list we can’t use it to worship God. Rather, it is intended to demonstrate the variety of ways that we can express praise to God. And even if you’re not a particularly gifted musician or singer, I think we can all learn some important things about praising God from these verses:

God loves variety in our praise. There are all kinds of different instruments here - stringed instruments, percussion, horns, woodwinds. So even apart from music, we ought to use a variety of ways to praise God . We might do that formally, by reading Scripture back to Him or praying. Or it might be more spontaneous as we see God at work in our everyday lives. We’ll talk more about that a little later.

Praise involves physical activity. If we were to obey every command in these three verses, we would have to use our hands, our fingers, our lips, our breath, our feet, and even our whole body. That doesn’t mean we always have to do all those things every time we worship, but physical expression of our praise is important. Some of us aren’t very comfortable with that, probably because of our own church backgrounds and upbringing, but I do want to commend all of you because I see many of you incorporating physical expressions of praise more and more in your worship.

Praise is to be fervent and festive. That does not mean that there aren’t appropriate times for our worship to be reverent and quiet. But unfortunately, some of us, again probably due to our upbringing, have been led to believe that is the only way to praise God. But the picture we see here isn’t like that at all. Not only are there clashing symbols, but there are loud clashing symbols.

I am not suggesting here that we “manufacture” that kind of fervency. Hopefully we love God enough that it is just natural. We certainly do that in other areas of our lives. For some of you, it is rooting for your favorite sports team. No one has to teach you to cheer for them - it’s just a natural outflow of how much they mean to you. For others of you, it might be the excitement of bagging a deer or your limit of quail or trout. For others, it might be the birth of a child or grandchild. If those kinds of things stir our emotions, just think of how much more thinking about God ought to do that.

When we put all those aspects of praise together, we see clearly that we are to worship with all we’ve got!

Who?

Me!

How many of you here this morning are breathing? With a few of you it’s a little hard to tell, but I think that all of us can answer “yes” to that question. And if you did, then you’re included in verse 6, when the “who” question is answered with the phrase “everything that has breath”.

I have little doubt that the Psalmist is making a connection to the creation account in Genesis 2, where the same word translated “breath’ here in Psalm 150 is used to describe how God breathed life into Adam:

Genesis 2:7 ESV

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

The idea here is that God has breathed breath into each one of us so that we can turn around and use that breath to praise him. Matt Redman wrote a song several years ago called “Your Grace Finds Me” that expressed that idea with these lyrics:

So I'm breathing in Your grace And breathing out Your praise

As we said earlier...

Praise is the solution to pessimism

Application

So if that is true, which I believe it is, what are...

SOME PRACTICAL WAYS TO IMPROVE MY PRAISE

I’m going to address this in the two different aspects of our praise and worship that I mentioned earlier - personal and corporate:

In my personal worship

Spend time in God’s Word

That is the primary place where I get to know who God is. Reading a book like Knowledge of the Holy that I mentioned earlier can be helpful, but it is no substitute for reading the Bible. That is also where we learn about the mighty works that God has done in the past in the lives of His people. The more I read the Bible, the more I will find to praise God about.

Look for God in everyday life

If we will take time to look, we will see that God is at work all around us. He is painting the beautiful sunrise or sunset. He is bringing new life into the world when a baby is conceived. He is keeping our earth rotating at exactly the right speed in the exact orbit around the sun that makes life possible. He has created beautiful deserts and majestic mountains and roaring seas.

But far too often, we just take all these things for granted. We fail to give God the credit and the praise He so richly deserves. So I want to challenge you as a family. One day this week, pick out a time where you’re together and take some time to praise God for what you see around you. It could be out on a walk or around your dinner table or even while you’re driving in the car. If you look, you will see God at work in any of those places.

Give God my problems

Obviously 2020 has been a tough year for a lot of us. Some of us have dealt with serious health issues or the death of loved ones. And we’ve all had to make some significant changes in our lives. I mean a year ago, who would have thought we’d be praising God today because we have toilet paper. And it’s really hard not to become a pessimist in the midst of those circumstances.

But when we praise God and we get the focus off of our own problems and on to Him and allow Him to handle what we can’t, then it is possible to be an optimist in spite of our circumstances.

I’m reminded here of Paul and Silas who thrown into a Philippian jail cell, which I’m pretty sure was a lot more serious than what most of us are going through right now. You may be aware of how they responded:

Acts 16:25 ESV

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,

When they were in a tough situation that they couldn’t do anything about, they turned their problems over to God and praised Him. and not only did God engineer their release, they ended up leading a Philippian jailer and his family to faith in Jesus. God may not always remove our trials that quickly or spectacularly. But what I can promise that He will walk through them with us. And that is certainly a cause for praise.

In corporate worship

Think about the lyrics

We are all probably guilty at times of just singing worship songs without really thinking about the lyrics - especially when a song is really familiar to us. I know I’ve done that many times. So this morning, as we apply this message by singing some songs of praise to God, I want to encourage you to really think about what we’re singing. Focus on the words and sing them as your personal praise to God.

Prepare

One of the best ways to improve your corporate worship experience each week is to take some time to prepare before you arrive on Sunday mornings. I know I’ve shared this quote from Louie Giglio before, but I think it bears repeating again. It is from his book The Air I Breathe, which seems to be an especially appropriate title given the passage we’re looking at this morning:

Most of my life I thought that you went to church to worship. But now I see the better approach is to go worshiping to church. Trust me, church is a lot better when our gatherings are filled with people who have been pursuing God for six days before they get there.

There are a number of ways you can prepare before you arrive on Sunday:

Read the passage that is going to be preached on. We almost always provide you with that passage a week in advance.

Pray for those who will be leading in worship and teaching and pray for you and your family that you would be attentive and respond as God desires.

Go to bed on time on Saturday night.

Come expecting God to change lives.

Make application

One of the best ways to praise God is by doing what He commands us to do. That is why we place such a huge emphasis each week on applying the message in practical ways in our lives. If we are genuinely praising God for who He is and what He is doing in our lives, then that ought to be manifest in the way that we obey Him and apply His Word in our lives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you’re not making an effort to do that in your life, God really isn’t going to care a whole lot what you’re saying or singing with your lips.

Action

Like last week, we’re going to close our time by applying what we’ve learned this morning. We’ll be singing some songs of praise interspersed with some Scripture readings from the rest of the halal Psalms.

Inspiration