Psalm 150 Unlocking Praise

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Good morning.

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Welcome to Recast Church. I am Don Felsick. I'm the lead pastor here and I wanted to welcome you to Recast Church and say, we did it!

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We made it. We spent the last eight weeks proving that I am a lot less necessary than my inflated ego would tend to think and so I am really grateful for that.

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I'm really glad for that. The sabbatical was really good for me and Linda and I can give you more specifics at the family meeting tonight, so come out and if you want to hear more about that time away.

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But a couple of brief takeaways before I introduce the final psalm in our summer and the psalms sermon series.

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So I'm the first one to bring it all together there, but it was good for me to release you all by faith to God and honestly that was a major takeaway for me.

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It's not as though I thought the place was gonna burn to the ground. I didn't anticipate seeing a golden calf appear that you had set up to worship in my absence or anything, but I do have the tendency to over own things.

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Anybody gonna, are you gonna leave me hanging on that or do some of you over own things as well? Like you just kind of have to make things happen and have a tendency to think you're the main actor in the center of your story and you're not.

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But letting go isn't natural to me and so this eight weeks of sabbatical forced that in a really healthy way for me and my wife.

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The second takeaway comes by way of commendation. We were able to keep up through the podcast over the course of the weeks and we had several men take up the mantle of preaching and shepherding while I was gone and my heart rejoices at the way that the church has been blessed with godly men to lead us and guide us.

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Men who will pray for us, men who sacrifice their time for us, men who lead us even as they themselves are seeking to follow and honor

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Christ. And so I'm just really grateful for that. I don't take, he literally says that to me almost every time I see him, like could you loan me a couple of guys because I'm struggling to get some guys who will step up and lead.

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And so we kind of, I even see on your faces a blank stare because you just don't get that. But that's the reality in many churches.

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And so I'm really, really, really, really, really so very glad to be back with you. We visited seven different churches while we were away and there's not a single one of them that I would want to lead and that's not against them, that's for you.

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I love Recast and I realize that I'm not so sure I'm called to be a pastor in general.

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I have the firm conviction that I am called to be the pastor of Recast Church. I don't even really necessarily love the idea of pastoring.

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I'm not in love with the idea of shepherding. I'm certainly not in love with the idea of leading. But I love a people.

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I love a specific people. I love a really quirky people. It's us.

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I love us. I love you all and I'm really privileged to be your pastor and I'm really glad to be back. I'm refreshed.

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I'm energized. I'm ready to get going. So it wasn't hard for me to pick a psalm to preach on this week. As a matter of fact,

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I picked it before I even left. I could see, you know, where we were at in the pattern and I knew that this psalm would be challenging to preach.

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If you read, if you've ever read Psalm 150, which hopefully many of you did because you've been reading through them, you know like, how's he gonna get a sermon out of this?

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I knew it was gonna be challenging but I also wanted to end the summer series where the psalms end and the last five psalms are a hymn of praise.

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The story arc of the book of Psalms begins with heavy lament and results in the end with heavy praise, heavy thanks, heavy gratitude, heavy worship to God.

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As a matter of fact, the Hebrew word for praise appears 13 times in just six verses.

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You'll see it. More than twice each verse. And while the structure and simplicity and repetition in this psalm are all gonna drive us directly to the very clear application,

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I hope you see the clear application, by the end of this the application will be abundantly clear. Praise the

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Lord. Praise God to make much of Him. But I think our familiarity with the word praise interferes to a large degree with our understanding of this capstone psalm, this capstone hymn of Psalm 150.

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So I want you to think in your mind for a moment. I want you to do a mental exercise with me. What is a person doing when they are praising?

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Well picture them. Picture somebody in your mind that is praising and what are they doing? Now most of us have in our mind at least some image of somebody who is singing, right?

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How many would raise your hand and say, singing was a part of that image in my mind? Any of you?

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Okay, probably many of us and then some of you are still asleep and you're like not quite with it, but most of us were.

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And so then I want to further ask you, are their eyes closed? Are their hands raised?

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Maybe, maybe not. What's the music like in that context? Is it serious? Is it theologically deep and rich?

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Our minds, I want to clarify, our minds when we think about the word praise, our minds tend to systematize everything around us.

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We seek out patterns and then make them rules and laws and so we have a tendency to think that the way that God has met us in our praise is the way

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He ought to meet or likely does meet everyone. Now what do I mean? Has God met you in the quiet moments?

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Then we begin to draw patterns and conclusions that God only meets people in the quiet.

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Has He met you through strong driving beats? Then He must like to meet us in the frenzy of some rock, right?

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And everyone's personal experience begins to drive their opinions of what worship and praise truly is supposed to be.

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But before we read Psalm 150 together and the band comes up to lead us in praise, can we all just agree for a moment that God is awesome enough, high enough, exalted enough, and so manifold, that means multifaceted in His glories, that nothing but manifold, multifaceted worship will do.

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All different kinds of ways to praise our Lord because He is worth all of it. He is not merely worshiped by your narrow definition of praise.

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All of the Psalms intentionally drive us toward a much broader view of worship and praise.

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So I want you to open your Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Psalm 150. We turn to this last

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Psalm and we're gonna read it, recast God's holy and precious Word. This is what

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He desires for us to take on. My prayer for us this week, I've been praying for you all my sabbatical, but my prayer for us this week is that as this

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Word lodges in our hearts, it results in an echo of praise and glory, like just multiplied through us, that becomes contagious to the world around us.

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So let's read Psalm 150 together. Praise the

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Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens.

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Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Praise Him with trumpet sound.

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Praise Him with lute and harp. Praise Him with tambourine and dance. Praise Him with strings and pipe.

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Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Praise Him with loud clanging cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the

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Lord. Praise the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we do praise you.

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We lift you up for both who you are and what you have done. You are faithful.

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You are kind. You are merciful. You are just. You are creator in all that we have.

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You are provider. You are Savior. Father, I pray that your glory and honor would be our every breath's intention.

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We who breathe the breath of life that you first breathed into us, I ask that you would help us to turn those breaths back to you in praise and glory and honor, even now as we have a chance to do so by singing a command that is given to us all throughout

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Scripture in multiple places, to sing praises to you, to lift you up, to exalt you.

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I pray that you would loosen us up a bit to be able to praise you. You are worthy.

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You are high. You are exalted. And if nothing except the gospel, if nothing except Christ dying for our sins, buried and raised again to new life on the third day.

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Father, if there is nothing else that we can think of that you have done for us, if that is the only thing we can cling to, it is enough to light a fire in us for eternity of praise and glory and honor to you.

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So Father, I pray that you would loosen our tongues and receive this as praise. Mingle our voices together for your honor and glory in Jesus' name.

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Amen. All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated and get comfortable and re -find your place in your device or in your

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Bible to Psalm 150. It's good for you to have that open in front of you so you can see that the things that I'm saying over the next period of time here is coming from God's Word and if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that back there.

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Restrooms are out the barn doors, down the hallway on the left -hand side. And I honestly, as I prepared for this and I was reading it and studying it,

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I don't imagine that anyone reads this passage and needs much clarification. Like I just don't think you read it and you're like, man,

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I'm looking forward to Don explaining that to me because I don't really get it. I truly believe that everyone gets the gist at first reading of Psalm 150.

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We're commanded to praise God and use lots of musical instruments to do it, right? And do we just close up our

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Bibles and walk away and go, there it is. And some of you would go like, wow, he gave us a lot of extra time today. But this short psalm communicates in a variety of ways five keys to unlocking praise that are worth us breaking down a little bit more.

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So you might not see him at first, but our outline is this. The first is who is to be praised. We find that in verse 1.

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We also find our second point in verse 1. Where is he to be praised? The third thing we see as a key to unlocking praise is the answer to the question why he is to be praised, verse 2.

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Fourth key is how he is to be praised, verses 3 through 5, a little bit larger chunk there. And then the fifth thing is who is to praise him, verse 6.

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So we're going to start at the beginning with our first key to unlocking praise, and that is answering the question, who is it that is to be praised?

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And this, again, doesn't require any time for us to answer. Who is it that we are called to praise?

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The Lord. God. The Lord God is to be praised. The first word and the last word of this psalm is hallelujah, hallelujah.

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That's how the last five psalms of the entire book of Psalms start, is with the word hallelujah in Hebrew.

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You all came in here already knowing a little bit of the Hebrew language, and maybe you didn't even know it, but you know a little slice of it.

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Hallelu is the command form in Hebrew of the word to praise. It's a command to praise.

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Hallelu. Hallel is just the verb to praise. A couple to the opening of the personal, it's a compound word, it's that command to praise, coupled to the personal name of God, Yahweh, shortened to the suffix

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Yah. So the command that we're looking at here in the text is praise Yah, command.

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And yet, I cannot at all, you know, up here in front of you, mind the depths of trying to point you to the one that we are commanded to praise.

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So as simple as the answer is, who are you to praise, and the answer is God or the Lord or Yahweh, Yahweh God, I can't exhaust, exhaustively define the one to whom we are to offer our praise.

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Because the moment that we're commanded to praise Yahweh God, our minds ought to ask a secondary question quickly, and who is that?

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And who is that? We're commanded to praise Yahweh God, who is He? And all of creation, all of creation history, from the first words, let there be light, to the eternal reign of Jesus Christ, His Son, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, all of it exists to show us the answer to the question, who is this one?

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Who is He? All of history focused on the point of showing us the

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God who we are called to praise. We can only obey the command to praise Yahweh God by knowing who

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He is and what He has done, and this, by the way, church, makes the Bible a vital tool of praise and worship.

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It makes it vital. How do I know Him? How do I meet Him? How do

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I meet with Him? How have we come to relate to Him in our daily walk, day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath, through word, through Christ, through Spirit, revealing this, putting it down for us, empowering it in our lives to transform us from the inside out.

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The Word of Scripture is vital. It's a vital tool to our worship because it shows us who is the one that we are to be worshiping.

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Who are you called to praise, church? I've spent the last 15 years of my life, week after week, preaching sermons to try to answer that question, who is

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He? And I will spend eternity refining that answer. Amen? All of us will worship

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Yahweh God, and I don't have time to get into all of the pretenders who will demand your praise and worship, but Scripture is clear that only

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God in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in His Word, only

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God is worthy of praise and worship. All else are claiming something that does not belong to them.

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Who do we worship, church? Yahweh, the Lord God. And the more we get to know

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Him in His glory, the more we get to know Him in all of His perfections, the more that we get to know Him as He's revealed

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Himself in His Word, the more that praise will naturally flow from us. Do you know what I'm talking about?

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Have any of you ever just had a revelation of God, an experience where you see Him in the page of the

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Scripture, and all of a sudden some truth or some facet of God comes alive in you, and you you bubble over with praise?

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You're just thankful and grateful for what you see there? The more that you know Him, the more you will adore

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Him. Verse 1 gives us also our second key to unlocking praise. Where is

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He to be praised? This question is vital for us to understand and to mine a little bit deeper into because the

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Old Covenant and the New Covenant will answer this subtly different. Not that there's any disagreement between the

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Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament is a fulfillment of the Old Testament. So back in ancient times before Christ came, and they're singing this, and the answer to the question, where should you praise

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God, would be a little different in that Old Covenant. The author of this psalm calls us to praise

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God in His sanctuary and praise Him in His mighty heavens, says verse 1. The sanctuary in this

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Old Testament time was either the tabernacle or the temple. His sanctuary is the meeting place of His people, and I don't believe it's a stretch.

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It's not a stretch to apply this to the church, the gathering of God's people, not necessarily the building, but that doesn't mean that we make those things parallel.

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This is not the temple of the Lord. This building is not the sanctuary of God.

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The place of sacrifice in the Old Testament is not synonymous with a New Testament church building like we are in today.

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I like this building. It's served us well, but it's not holy in any way, shape, or form in terms of the fact that there's basketball hoops that lower, and pickleball gets played here, and there's volleyball on Fridays in the winter, and do you know what

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I'm saying by that? It doesn't mean that those things are parallel. The place of sacrifice in the

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Old Testament isn't synonymous with this building, but offering Him praise where His people gather is clearly intended by this

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Old Testament concept. We sing songs when we gather together at church because the command to sing together is all over Scripture.

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It occurs in many places, and so we sing when we gather. But I don't want to confuse us, so let's ask the question again.

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Let's ask the question again. Where is He to be praised? The answer, in His gathering and in the heavens, and I would say that that encompasses just about everywhere in the

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New Testament. We are, by the way, this is what changes. This is what's fulfilled. This is what's extra in the

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New Covenant. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are. A case can be made for the answer to this question to be in every...where

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is God to be worshipped? In every believer's heart, since in the New Covenant our hearts have been made the temple of the

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Holy Spirit. We are a sanctuary of God. So praise who? Praise Yahweh God.

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Praise where? Everywhere. Certainly as we gather, but from here to the highest heavens, may

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His name be praised in our hearts and wherever we go. Let Him be thanked.

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Let Him be worshipped. Let Him be obeyed. Let Him be honored. The third key to unlocking worship is to answer the question, why?

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Why is He to be praised? And we find that in verse 2. Verse 2 tells us why, and I want to point out that this single verse is very helpful when it comes to understanding the call for us each as individuals to praise and corporately to praise.

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As a matter of fact, I would encourage everyone here maybe to commit verse 2 to memory as part of your routine reminder to praise

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God throughout your days, having that verse readily available and accessible to define for yourself why

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I ought to praise God, because I'm gonna do you know that there are times when you don't feel like it. There are times that you need something from outside of yourself to remind you to praise

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Him. But the two reasons to praise God are given in this verse. First, because He has done awesome, powerful, and mighty things.

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We need to rehearse that, don't we? We need to remind ourselves of that routinely and regularly.

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Now, if I had everything that I knew and everything that I've known of God accessible to me at all times, I would live a different life.

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I would live a better life. The problem is I'm leaky. You guys leaky? Like the truth comes in on Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon, half of it spilled out.

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You know what I'm talking about? That's just the reality. So we need the perpetual cadence of reminders.

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That's part of the reason that God gives us a gathering on Sunday morning and tells us to gather together and not forsake that. Why? Because we need it.

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We need regular and routine reminders that we are not alone, that we're together, that we need to hear from God's Word, we need to sing praises together.

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Because God has done awesome, powerful, and mighty things, and we need to be reminded of that.

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But second, because He Himself is pretty awesome. It's not just that He's done great things, but He Himself is awesome.

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Now, I might be barking up the wrong tree, but it's something that struck me when I was young and something

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I've had to unlearn, but some of you even sitting here might have adopted a false dichotomy that this verse can dispel quickly.

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There's a lot of false dichotomies out there in the Christian life, but I heard it said when I was young and kind of adopted this, and I've had to shed it over the years, but I heard it said that it's better to worship

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God for who He is, and it is bordering on self -centered selfishness to worship

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Him for what He's done for me. Any of you ever kind of gather that idea, that concept, better to worship

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God for who He is, but not, you know, when you start talking about, thank you for my house, thank you for my wife, thank you for my kids, thank you for...

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now you're kind of getting selfish a little bit. You're only treating God as though He is there as a machine that gives you stuff.

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He's the vending machine that gives you blessings or something like that, and I've heard it explained that way. So just stick to thanking

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God for His faithfulness. Thank Him for that He is Savior, that He is, you know, faithful, all of these kinds of things.

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But I want to point out that that misunderstands something fundamental about God. He is not at all like us.

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He's not like us. He's not like a man but with superpowers. He is always perfect, and what

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He does always perfectly flows from His consistent character.

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So when I thank Him for a beautiful sunset, or the laughter of little children, or a perfectly done steak with blue cheese crumbles, or the seafood that we had down in Southern Alabama, it is not a lesser form of praise.

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He delights to be recognized for His acts of kindness, His acts of mercy, and He likes to be recognized for His acts of mercy because He is merciful.

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We praise Him for His acts of kindness because He is good Father. We praise

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Him for provisions because He is the perfect provider for everything that God does in action.

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We find an underlying excellent greatness to our God. So verse 2 is a key to unlocking our praise because it demonstrates to us both sides of this equation, not one or the other.

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Praise Him for what He has done and praise Him for who He is. He's glad to receive your praise.

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This should open up a wider channel of praise for all of us. You mean I can praise Him for giving me a late cottage, or a nice car, or the love of my family, or good food and a fridge to keep it in?

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Yes, yes, and yes. And praise Him for what He has done and praise Him for His excellent greatness.

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And this is where I would encourage you toward more personal reflection because the text doesn't fill out the great things that He's done for you.

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The things that He's done for you in kindness are different than the things that He's done for me. And He has done for us a lot that overlaps, by the way.

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A lot that's worthy of mention and I just can't even barely scratch the surface in this message about the things that He's done.

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And so that's where it's going to require you to do some homework. It's going to require you to do some reflection. But I'll point out a couple of things that there's wide overlaps of the things that He's done for me and the things that He's done for you.

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And we take that as corporate. He created things and guess what, church?

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It wasn't just for me. He created it for us, all of us, right? So when you praise

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Him as Creator and you praise Him for the things that He's created, like a beautiful sunset, how many of you know somebody else is watching that sunset too?

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It's for us. It's a glorious thing. He created everything. He has given us His Word, a

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Word that speaks to me and a Word that speaks to you. He has sent His Son to die on the cross for me and for you.

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He has redeemed us great and mighty acts. He has given us His Spirit. He has given us the promise of the return of our

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King that gives us hope, things that we share in common. But He has also done specific things for you that He doesn't give to me or hasn't done for me and vice versa.

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He gave me Linda. Sorry everybody else. Praise Him for His deeds and kindness toward you.

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And be specific. Be specific in your gratitude and thanks for the things that God, the acts of kindness and mercy that He has done for you.

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All of those mercies, all of those blessings and kindnesses flow from a good Father who delights to see

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His children smile. So praise Him for the big things and the small things and praise

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Him for who He is. The fourth key to unlocking praise for us is found in verses 3 through 5.

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It's the how He is to be praised. And this passage is hopelessly musical. I say that in kind of a tongue -in -cheek thing because I'm hopelessly not musical.

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Anybody relate with me on just having, like is there anybody else in the room who can't play a musical instrument that doesn't know like the ins and outs of like a chord charts and keys and I can say some words that I don't even know what they mean, right?

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You know, I don't know, falsetto, just different things. I just thought I could throw out some words and I don't know what they are.

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So but my family is intensely musical and I'm the one who just enjoys it.

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And by the way, I love music. I love music. I just don't know how it works. I can't make it, you know, but I can really, really enjoy it.

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And sometimes I think I can maybe enjoy it better than my son who analyzes it and he's working on his music degree and he can analyze it, but I don't know that he enjoys it that much.

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So I really just am like, man, he's like nuancing it and I'm like, yeah that might be cool, but I'm just over here like grooving.

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So, but I tried to teach myself guitar when I was in college and it was a train wreck.

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And I can still play a G. I can play a D. I can even, I can play E minor. I can play a

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C. I can play those, but I am not joking. My right hand cannot do different than my left hand.

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So I could not, I'm not joking. People who are musical are like, come on, really? I can't strum.

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Like I just couldn't get this part down. Like that was, that's the thing.

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Like I can make the chord, but then you got to make the strings do something. And no, it's that bad. It's that bad.

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So I'm being a little self -deprecating, but I'm not even exaggerating. So when my lack of musicality is combined with my firm conviction, and I believe this to be true, that worship is not merely music,

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I'm tempted to flatten the music clean out of a passage like this. That's my temptation. This week

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I wanted to, I wanted to say, yeah, but praise isn't just playing music. Music, worship and praise isn't just singing songs, but it's everything that we do in a day.

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And there's truth to that. Like you worship God in all different kinds of facets, all different kinds of ways. So I'm tempted to flatten the music out, but we worship

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God in a vast array of things. We can garden for God. And you know how I know that? Because of his instructions to Adam and Eve, and to place them in a garden, he gave them a garden, not an orchestra pit.

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Okay, did you notice that in the Scriptures? He didn't hand them musical instruments, like he handed them gardening tools.

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Like I mean, or told them to make gardening tools. So it's pretty clear that you can worship

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God in a vast way, you know, broad spectrum of things. And I think that's important, and we'll get back there. But I've been reminded this week to be careful to not miss the music in the text.

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Music is not the only way we praise, but it is a commanded way to worship.

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Amen? It's commanded. Music is a part and parcel of our worship.

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It's not only musical, but our worship must incorporate music. And I think there's a reason behind this.

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I think God has intention. Singing in music engages the whole of us. Mind and body and emotion in sync.

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And I just want to, I don't want to chastise too much, because I recognize that there's room for this to turn into judgment, and we don't want to be staring around at each other while we're worshiping in judgment.

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But I just want to point out what needs to be said in conviction. And this kind of comes about by visiting other churches.

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And I notice that, I notice a trend. And it seems like it's always men, it's always a man.

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I'm saying masculine male. It's often a man that is too tough and manly to sing praises to God.

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And some of us know that person, and some of us are that person. Now there's room, there's all different kinds of reasons a man might stand up and not sing during a worship song, like at a worship service, just simply he doesn't know the songs.

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Or he's a little, you know, self -reflective about his own voice and a little self -conscious or something like that.

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But you show me a man who has, who refuses to praise God in song, show me a man who refuses to praise

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God in song, and I will show you a man who has some disobedient pride in his heart. That song is like a strong statement, but if that offends you personally, and by this offense,

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I would encourage you to meet with me and explain why you refuse to sing on some other grounds. I'm open.

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I'm open to being wrong on this one. But I actually heard it said this week, and it was kind of reflecting on this, my wife kind of giving me some feedback on this.

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Back in the day when I was a counselor at Camp Barakel, there was a guy that was on staff there who ran the high school ministry.

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So this is, the high school ministry in the summer is high school dudes that go up there to split wood so that they can heat their buildings all winter long.

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And I mean, it's like hard work, it's physical labor, but they have times of praise and times of worship. And he said,

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I could tell you how the week was gonna go out in the work yard by listening to them sing on Monday.

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He said, I could tell what was in their heart. The outsides, the insides are shown in part by the way we worship.

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It's the inside of us coming out, and I think that that's true. So my observation over years of pastoral ministry is that our attitude toward praise and music is one of only a few ways that the heart is shown on the outside.

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Music is a component of praise, church, and praise is commanded, and so is singing, and so is singing.

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But the author is not giving us a lesson in musical instruments in verses three through five. It is kind of interesting, the list.

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They didn't have trumpets, by the way, they didn't have brass instruments. So where you see the word trumpets are actually horns, no mouthpiece on those.

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But rather what we're getting is a lesson in the worth of God here in chapter 150 of the

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Psalms, and the call to employ everything we have in His worship. Horns, lutes, harps, tambourines, my very absolute least favorite instrument.

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Sorry if you play it. Dance, strings, pipes, cymbals. Bring a harmonica, but don't bring a tambourine, okay?

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I'd rather have an accordion up here, not gonna lie. A keytar, even. I mean, whatever.

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Or a banjo, right Dave? Dave's number one favorite instrument is the banjo.

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Just kidding, he can't stand the banjo. All means of praising the Lord. All means of praising the Lord. Even the tambourine is listed here for my benefit, to praise the

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Lord. And I want to point out something that is obvious, but might not strike us as significant.

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You could state this statement, and yet might not see its significance in the pages of Scripture here.

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Instrumental music is not an act of speaking. He isn't saying that the person playing the horn must be thinking praisey words in order to praise

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God by playing the trumpet. Or that dancing is praising so long as they're singing the latest

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Chris Tomlin song while they're dancing. The actually physical act of dance can itself be worship.

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Playing an instrument can be worship. Singing can be worship.

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But also, here it comes, not flattening the music, but I just want you to hear it, and so can having coffee with someone in fellowship, and seeing how they're doing, and praying together.

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That can be worship. And driving your car can be worship. And shutting off the TV to pay closer attention to your spouse can be worship.

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Anything that is done with the glory of God in mind, and in thankfulness for Him, can be worship.

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If it is done because He is Lord, if it is done because He is worthy of your attention, and your affection, and your action, then it is praise.

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And dance, as a means of worship, stands out to me because it's worth mentioning. I grew up in a church where, man, if you had raised your hand in worship, every eye would be on you, the entire worship set.

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Nobody else would worship, but they would be judging you. And so I grew up in that kind of context, kind of a Baptist upbringing.

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And it reminds me here that when He mentions dance in the midst of all of this music that's going on, it reminds me that even our bodies are instruments of praise.

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When we lift our hands, when we bow on our faces, when we dance for joy, when we pump our fists, all of these things can be an act of praise.

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And in verse 5, we get to two different uses for the symbols in Israel. That can be confusing to people, one that maybe the only thing that when you were reading it, you're like, why are there two symbols in this verse?

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There was an application of symbols, two different kinds to draw on, and the first was to draw everyone's attention.

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So there was a kind of a tapping out of symbols, the sound able to get attention, and so tapping out symbols to draw everybody to attention.

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That's the sounding symbol. And then there was the more loud and raucous used to add intensity to the worship, like a crescendo.

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And guess what I just did? I used a musical term, you guys. I did one. I got one. I got one. Did I use it right,

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Dave? Did I get that right? Is it crescendo? I did it. I'm really proud of myself on that one.

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And with this distinction between a more demure playing of the symbols and a more raucous, intense playing, I kind of jokingly jotted note to myself,

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I wonder if God had in mind the worship wars of the 80s and 90s in mind. Maybe 70s, 80s, and 90s in churches.

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Any of you remember those days? Raise your hand if you remember some of the worship wars. Some of you don't even know what

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I'm talking about. That's fine. You didn't have to endure it. But those were, every church was taking aside hymns only or choruses.

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Could you have drums? Could you actually use them? You know, some churches have drums up there, but nobody's allowed to really play them.

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I mean, they play them, but they're not allowed to play them. You know, as if Dave's comment, you know, the elbows never get above the ear when you're playing.

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Sometimes, is that right? Elbow has to get above the ear if you're really playing. You just get after it, right?

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None of that was in my notes. But every church back in the 80s had an opinion about it, and some were singing hymns, some were singing choruses, you know, really cutting -edge choruses.

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And then the churches that were really starting to think future were blending the two.

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Yeah, those were the ones that everybody thought was pagan, right? Verse 5 here is looking the church in the face.

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All of those years back in the 80s, this verse was still here. It was in there. I just don't know if it was getting unlocked.

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But saying, why choose? Why choose?

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Worship can rock. Worship can get loud, like crescendo, like clashing cymbals. Worship is not to be equated with strictly a quiet, reflective mood, nor is it always loud and boisterous.

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It's not one or the other. If there's anything that all 150 Psalms set out to communicate, as in like the largest book in the

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Bible, the center of the whole thing, praise to God, it is this. This is what all 150

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Psalms set out to communicate to us. We cannot exhaust the means by which we are called to worship this great

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God for His excellent greatness. We're not gonna exhaust it. Well, let me just ask you some questions.

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Are tambourines enough? How about drums? Loud cymbals enough?

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Are the sweet old hymns enough? Is an organ enough? Would a new song every

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Sunday be enough? How about 1 .5 hours given by each one of us to Him in worship on Sunday morning every week, is that enough?

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What is God worth? What's He worth, church? Every moment among His indwelled people and every second in the highest heavens, and that doesn't cover it.

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His worth is shown by gardening because music isn't enough. His worth is shown by human relationship with each other because bowing in worship isn't enough.

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His worth is shown by tears as we behold the beauty of His sacrifice because smiles are not enough.

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Heaven will not—hear me carefully, church. I believe this with firm conviction. Heaven will not be one big church service because God didn't put the first humans into a church building to sing.

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That's not where it started. That wasn't His goal. He didn't put them in the garden and say, have yourself a church service up in here for the rest of your lives.

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No, He put them in on earth in a garden to work and cultivate and create and relate to each other.

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That's eternity. We are lowercase C creators made in the image of the one capital

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C Creator, and we worship Him in a whole host of creative ways.

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So the key to unlocking the how of worship is to broaden your scope of worship. Well, Linda and I were going on sabbatical.

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We read a book of poetry. Well, that's a stretch for me. I mean, talk about stretching.

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Just about every day we read one or two poems from this, and fortunately there was a scholar by Leland Riken over in Chicago, but he took a lot of the old

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English poems, even there was some Shakespeare in there, John Milton, John Donne, some of these names that you don't maybe know, and he explains them.

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You read the poem, usually on one page, and then there's a description and words need to be defined and all of that stuff, and it was a stretch for me, but it was a very rich and broadening experience in terms of praising

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God in a mode that I don't normally use. Do you know what I'm talking about? It was good to broaden that experience, and I could say the statement with confidence, no matter how good you think you are at praising

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God, it's not enough. There's always plenty more territory to take on.

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No matter how good you feel you are at praising Him, it's not enough, and I don't say this to discourage, but rather to embolden us to a wider breadth of worship.

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His excellent greatnesses are manifold. That's multifaceted. His excellent greatnesses are manifold.

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His blessings to us are manifold. Shouldn't our praises to Him also be manifold, multifaceted?

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They should. How to praise Him? Your whole life, and that leads us to the final verse.

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Who is to praise Him? Verse 6. We look at who is called here to worship Him. Everything that has breath is the emphatic answer.

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Everything that has breath, and it's a very specific breath that's mentioned there. The designation of everything that has breath is an exaggerative, can sound like an exaggerative statement.

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Birds have breath. Dolphins have breath. Black bears have breath. All things that Linda and I saw while we were on sabbatical, dolphins and birds and black bears, but they certainly don't praise in the same way that we do.

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All things reflect on His glory. In some measure, even things that don't have breath. Like we went up to Pictured Rock.

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Some beauty there. Down on the coastal islands of southern Alabama.

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Beauty that we saw there, going out on a sunset cruise together and watching dolphins play in the surf as the sun set over the ocean.

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Like just beauty, right? There's all different kinds of things that bring honor and glory to Him, but the clear command in this passage is to we who are

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His image bearers, we praise Him with intention. We praise Him on purpose.

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We praise Him by reflecting His awesome works and excellent greatness. And we have a tendency to think that everything that has breath must mean all animals, maybe all mammals, maybe all things that need to exchange oxygen with the air.

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But this word for breath in verse 6 in Hebrew evokes, is used very narrowly. This particular word for breath is the breath of life breathed into humanity back in Genesis from the very beginning.

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Breathed into the nostrils of Adam. That kind of breath. And I agree with James Mays who states in his commentary that a

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Hebrew speaker who is familiar with the story arc and the usage of this word in the Old Testament would see this as a call to use all of our

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God -given breath in His praise. Breath by breath, we worship

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Him. However we sow the limited breath we have, it should all be for the praise of Yahweh.

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I don't know how many breaths you've breathed since you've been in here. Have you used them for the glory of God? How many breaths have you breathed since you awoke this morning?

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Are you using them to glorify God? He gave us these breaths and we turn them into praise, whether jogging or biking or singing or dancing, smashing cymbals together, playing guitars, engineering stuff, delivering packages, writing reports, or even sitting attentively and listening to a sermon.

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Every breath is to be sown in His worship. And this final verse has a subtle missional nudge for us that I think is powerful.

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Look at it. Put your eyes on it. Let everything that has breath, that breath being the breath of God given to humanity, the life -giving breath of His Spirit that inhabits every image -bearer of God, let them praise the

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Lord. But I have some bad news for you, church. There's bad news.

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There's bad news in this? What? Everything that has breath, praise the Lord? Let everything that has breath, how can that be bad news,

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Don? Here's the bad news. I know it's gonna come as a shock to you, but not everyone who is currently breathing

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His breath of life in them praises the Lord. Disappointing, right?

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Surprise? Probably not. Not everyone who is currently breathing His life, breathing

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His breath of life praises Him. And some of them don't worship and praise Him strictly because they haven't met

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Him yet, and they know you. There are some who are not praising our

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God. They've been given His breath. They have His breath in their lungs, but they do not honor

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Him with a single breath. Why? Because they don't know Him. And they know you, but they don't know

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Him. How can this be, church? How can this be that anyone would know one of us who have the privileges of this

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Word, who have this community pouring into us week after week after week, and they don't hear about Him from us?

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Let everything, let everything, let everything that breathes in His air hear

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His glory from our lips, praising and bringing honor to our

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Lord. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

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They know you, and they know me, but they don't know Him yet. Do you see the mission in this verse?

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Let everything that has His breath praise the Lord. God desires to use us to help people bridge the gap between merely breathing

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His physical air to being born again to breathe in His Spirit. So why do we praise?

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Let's wrap this up with some application. Why do we praise, or who do we praise, rather, first? Who do we praise? Yahweh God.

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So the application, keep getting to know Him. Where do we praise? Everywhere, and especially as we gather together.

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So keep gathering and keep praising Him Monday through Saturday. Why do we praise?

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He has done great things and is Himself great. Reflect this week on the things that He has done for us and for you.

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How do we praise? In music, in the way we live, in the way we obey, in the way we relate to daily life, and so the application here is to stretch your horizon to worship

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Him in a greater variety of ways. Who is to praise Him? Everyone who breathes

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His air. So find someone who is breathing and let them know what their breath is for.

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Find someone who is breathing and let them know what their breath is for. As we come to communion together this morning, let me set a worship context for us from Scripture that kind of highlights some of the elements of Psalm 150 for us.

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The Ark of the Covenant, the box that had the Old Testament law and the branch of Aaron that had budded into almonds and a little jar of manna in it to demonstrate

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God's faithfulness and His provision and His presence with His people. The Ark of the Covenant is being brought into the very first temple.

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This is a glorious event. This is, by the way, found in 2 Chronicles 5, verses 12 -13.

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It's being brought in there, brand new temple built by Solomon. His dad wanted to do it and he was told, no, you collect the materials.

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Solomon, your son, will build it. And so, how many of you think that would have been a glorious thing to behold? To watch the

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Ark of the Covenant first coming into that golden temple on some morning in ancient history.

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That would have been just a glorious thing to behold. And here's the setting. Here's what we're told, thinking in terms of the musical instruments and the song and all that, and here's what's said, starting in verse 12, 2

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Chronicles 5, 12 -13. And all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and yes, there is a guy in Scripture named

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Heman. Those of you who were in the 80s, there you go. There was no

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Skeletor, but there was Heman. And Heman and Jedithon, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters.

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And it was the duty of the trumpeters and the singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the

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Lord. And when the song was raised with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments in praise to the

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Lord. And here's the lyrics. I'd love to wrap up this message with these lyrics because I think that we have a tendency to complicate praise.

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So when they are ready in this glorious event, and there's music going on, and there's trumpets, and there's all of this glory, and they're bringing the very symbol of the presence of God into the temple where they will worship and make sacrifices to this

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God for centuries forward. Here's what they say. Here's what the songwriters were able to come up with.

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For he is good and his steadfast love endures forever. And that's what they sing.

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Some of the criticism back in the worship wars of the 80s were repetition. This is all they sing.

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He's good and his steadfast love endures forever. Don't you think that's a worthwhile message?

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That's worth our praise. That's worth saying to God. Not handles Messiah, not pleading with God to show up like so many of worship songs do today.

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He's already here by the way. That's why we don't sing songs we're just gonna go ahead and praise him because he's already here. We're not gonna ask him to show up.

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He's here. And not even deep theological treatises like many of our hymns, but simply he's good and he's faithful.

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He is good and he keeps his promises forever. That's a good message.

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That is good praise. He is good and he is faithful. So consider this as we have a moment this morning to remember what

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Jesus his Son has done for us to bring us new life. To turn our breath from mere breathing.

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What has he done to turn our breath from mere breathing to genuine praise? In the cracker we remember his body broken in our place.

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Jesus Christ taking our sins on himself and receiving the punishment we deserved. In the cup of juice remembering his blood shed as a sacrifice sacrificial atonement a covering for our sins.

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So we invite anyone here who belongs to Jesus Christ you have accepted him by faith and he is your Lord and Savior and you're at peace with each other here in this room.

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If you're not at peace we ask you to skip it and go make peace and then feel free to take it next week unless you can talk to somebody today and clear that up.

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But come to the tables to remember. Were he to do nothing more for us than what we remember in this event?

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We ought to be moved to praise for all of eternity for this most central act of his great love and kindness and mercy toward us.

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Church is he good? Is he good? Are you sure? Because it didn't sound like it.

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Is he good? Yes he's good. And how do you know how do you know he's good?

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The cross. How do you know he's good? The cross and his steadfast love endures forever and therefore so should our praise.

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Let's pray. Father I thank you so much. I don't even know where to begin but I'd just start at your cross.

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I'll just start at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That central thing that draws us together. The central thing that forges a church that makes us your people is that we are we are people of your forgiveness of your sacrifice people of your cross and so we come to this event every week to remember and to reflect together not just as individuals but together that you loved us enough to send your son to die on the cross for our sins to pay the penalty that we couldn't pay ourselves and to rise again victorious over death.

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Father I pray that praise would be the byproduct of this gathering this morning genuine praise in the way that we live and in the swing in our step and the songs and even the way we use our bodies this week would just be reflective of us being your temple a place of praise our bodies an instrument of praise.

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Father I ask that you would guide and direct us as your church. Thank you for this season and this series and the

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Psalms. Father I pray that it would be enriching to us in terms of our of our recognition of your great work and our call to praise in Jesus name.