13. Reorienting Praise

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 13,

Reorienting Praise. In Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 23 through 24, the prophet says this,

Thus says the Lord, Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might.

Let not a rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts Boast of this, that he understands and knows me,

That I am the Lord who exercises loving -kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things, declares the

Lord. Which teaches us so much about what it means to actually praise. And that is the question that I want us to focus on this morning, is what is praise?

Because you and I, we were made by God to praise. We were designed to praise. We were crafted and sculpted to be captivated by God, and to be delighted in our relationship with Him.

The Bible assumes that as we get to know our Creator, and we make space in our heart for the knowledge of God, that we will be enamored by Him.

And as that happens, as our praise naturally swells up inside of our body, it pours out back onto Him.

That is the way that praise works. It's kind of like an explosion that breaks out in a nitroglycerin plant, where great propulsion of matter and energy burst out of the plant into the sky, and it's this unbelievable sort of spectacle to look at.

Well, in the same way, our hearts are meant to be filled to the point of bursting out of our chest for the great and glorious God.

That's what praise is. It is the natural explosion of our affections back onto God, when we know

Him rightly. And as we know Him rightly, our praise magnifies.

When we have a true and good understanding of who God is, then praise will not be able to contain itself inside of our hearts.

It will swell up in us, and it will break out of us. That is what praise is.

But that immediately leads to the problem, because that's not the way that you and I live. As we look around, it doesn't seem like we live in a very praise -filled world either.

In fact, it doesn't seem like that anyone is praising God. It seems like everyone is out of alignment with our original design.

If we were made to praise God, then this world has gone horribly wrong.

Instead of a world erupting with the explosion of energetic praises, we live on a depressed little rock floating mindlessly in a cold and blind universe.

What happened? How did we get this way? The Bible tells us that the original design of man was to praise

God, but the Bible also tells us sort of how that fall transpired, in that the original man and woman, instead of worshiping and loving

God, instead of their hearts being captivated by Him, they turned away from Him. This move of rebellion introduced this substance called sin into the framework of God's creation, which became the kryptonite of our praise.

After sin wreaked havoc on God's good world, humans stopped being filled with the same kind of energy, awe, and excitement for their

God. Instead of praise, we have all turned inward onto ourself, and in many ways, humanity has imploded.

Instead of being awed in the celebratory wonder for God, humans have crumbled and collapsed under the damaging and dehumanizing weight of self -love and self -pride.

The Bible labels this disordered affection, this self -loving adulation.

The Bible does not call that worship. The Bible calls that boasting, which is a sort of worship if you think about it.

True praise is supposed to be an exploding energy that is released from you in the direction of God.

Boasting, on the other hand, is an imploding energy that is wreaking havoc from inside of yourself, pointed to yourself.

Boasting is when you're worshiping you. Instead of praise, boasting is now the new normal for creatures that are infected by sin.

There's actually, in the Hebrew, there's a connection between boasting and praise that I would like for us to explore just for a moment.

It should be noted that the Old Testament uses the exact same Hebrew word, harel, which is from where we get the word hallelujah, to describe both praise and boasting.

That's right. In the verse that I just read to you, the same word that is describing healthy affection for God is now being translated in that verse as sin.

The only difference between these two translations is found in their grammatical structure. For instance, when harel is active, it means it's focused outward onto God.

That's called praise. But when harel is passive, it's focused on ourselves.

It's turned inward, which that's called boasting. If you think about it from a grammatical standpoint, when you are doing something actively, the action is always directed outward.

I hit the ball, so therefore my energy is exploding onto something else that is external to myself, and the direction of the energy is heading outward.

But when I speak in the passive, I'm saying I was hit by the ball.

Now the energy is all focused inward. I was hit. Now I am in pain.

Now I, I, do you get my point? When harel, the Hebrew verb, is active, it means praise.

When it's passive, it means boasting. It means to worship yourself. Now let me unpack that in this way.

Boasting is the sinful habit all human beings have that propel us to give ourself the praise instead of God.

This is the equivalent of cosmic larceny. It's taking the very praise that is due to God alone, and it's greedily clamoring for it and pouring it out onto ourselves.

It is making ourself both the source of the praise and the object of the praise. It's putting ourself in the place of God, and then declaring that we are the ones who are worthy of our worship.

I can think of nothing more dangerous than to worship yourself.

And maybe you say, well, I'm not actually worshiping myself. That's not what I'm doing when I'm boasting. I'm just proud of myself.

Well, my friend, you're on a dangerous and slippery slope. I think it's okay to be humanly proud of yourself, but pride is a very, very slippery slope.

Better to direct your energy and effort toward God. Better to take up your cross.

Better to die to yourself. Better to not even focus on yourself. Better to give your energy and effort to Him, knowing the spiritual danger that exists in pride and boasting, to just completely avoid that altogether by giving

Him the praise, than to put yourself in that sort of dangerous position where the

Harel would be turned against you, where you would be worshiping yourself.

Beyond the obvious danger that exists in infuriating a holy, jealous God with our pitiful self -praise, there's a practical danger that boasting brings with it as well.

When you boast, you cannot know God, plain and simple. And when you do not know

God, you cannot experience His loving kindness toward you, His justice, or His righteousness and joy.

In fact, to live a boast -filled life is to live a godless life.

To boast is to eat the vilest poison imaginable and then to refuse the only antidote.

It is to cut yourself off from knowing God and experiencing the blessing of His life -giving presence.

It is to offend the very surgeon who is cutting out your cancer. And while it may be socially acceptable to talk ourselves up and to sort of pretend like we have everything together and all of that, it is spiritually equivalent to throwing yourself off of a thousand -foot cliff.

In Jeremiah 9, 23 -24, the passage is calling us to an impossible task.

It seems easy to say, well, if you just have a right view of God and you have a healthy view of yourself, then everything will work out.

But the problem is that we don't. If we had a right view of God, then we would only praise

Him. If we had a right view of ourselves, we would never, ever dare boast. Because of sin, because of this disease that has been unleashed upon the soul of man, our view of God is far too low and our view of self remains far too high.

That is true for every human being on earth. If you're listening to this broadcast today, then you view yourself too highly and you view your

God too lowly, because God is infinite and you are finite.

There is no way possible for you. To fully comprehend the depths and the riches of knowledge and the knowledge of God.

And because you and your sin are built upon an egocentric framework, the rest of your

Christian life will be spent trying to kill yourself, die to yourself, murder the flesh, as Romans 8, 13 says.

For if by the Spirit you're putting to death the misdeeds of the flesh, for the rest of your life you will be trying to murder your flesh, and you will be trying to enhance and deepen and magnify your view of God, which tells me that all of us view

God too small and we view ourselves too big. Our private and our secret thoughts demonstrate this, and it also demonstrates that we are not worthy of praise, and yet we still long for it.

Our mental foibles showcase that we have a total lack of wisdom and we are not omniscient, and yet we're still impressed with ourselves, and we want others to be also.

Our strength is going to be crushed by age or injuries, and yet we still feel strong. Our importance is going to fade as the next generation totally forgets us, and yet we still feel important.

That is how pernicious our sin is. Even in the face of obvious evidence, it begs us to cling to the lie that we are important and that we should be remembered.

And without God's help, we cannot rightly praise Him. Not at all. Not even for a moment. We're too far gone.

But with Christ, our true and perfect Savior, our praise can be redeemed.

This is why God sent His Son, Christ, on the cross. God wasn't content to destroy us.

He wasn't content to let His people go down to the grave because of our boasting. Even though our sinful self -love deserved every single flicker of every flame in hell,

God, instead of that, decided to send His one and only Son to rescue us and to restore us from our brokenness, to heal us.

You may ask yourself, even why? Why would God do that? Well, because God's plan was to glorify Himself in our salvation.

God's plan was for the planets to look down and wonder when objects of wrath like you and I were forgiven by a holy

God. God's plan was for the angels to burst out in praise when the Spirit came in and regenerated

God's people. God's plan was to set aside a redeemed people for Himself to give us

His Spirit and restore us back into being creatures of praise who would surround

His throne and endlessly sing of the love that we have for Him. That is the point.

God wanted to take stubborn, rebellious, obstinate, broken, malicious, rebellious creatures like us, and He wanted to save us, and He wanted to inhabit us through His Holy Spirit, and He wanted to motivate us to be creatures who praise.

When Jesus said, even the rocks cry out, I think that He had some sort of an indication that all of us, the rockheads of this world, the people who hated

God, the people who rebelled against God, the people with our life who turned from God and wanted nothing at all to do with God, He took us, our stony hearts, our rockheaded stubbornness, and He redeemed us and gave us hearts of flesh and gave us minds that now want

Jesus, that want to cry out with His praises. That is what Jesus does in the life of the believer.

Jesus takes us, and He wakes us, and He shakes us into action, and then

He causes us to praise Him. That's sort of the point of what Paul is saying in 1

Corinthians 1, verses 26 through 31.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many who were mighty, not many who were noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of this world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of this world, and the despised

God has chosen the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God, so that no man may turn their pitiful praise back unto themselves in light of who

God is, so that no one will halal themselves, so that no one will worship themselves, but that their halal, that their praise, that their energy, that all of it will be outward focused back to God.

And then he continues, but by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the

Lord. Now I'm not sure if you've caught it here, but Paul is quoting from Jeremiah, the passage that we talked about earlier.

He's unpacking how Christ makes the truth of Jeremiah possible. Paul teaches us that Christ chose the foolish things of this world who could do nothing but boast in themselves.

Talk about fools! God chose the weakest, the most repugnant, the most odious people on earth, and if it may—and to make matters worse, they're not only odious, repugnant, and wretched, but they think that they're awesome.

So they're like, they're the worst of all creatures who think that they're the best of all creatures.

What an awful combination! But God chose those foolish objects so that He could make them, and heal them, and He could transform them into people who now think that they're the lowest, but worship that God is the greatest.

What an amazing exchange! We thought we were great, now we know that we're nothing. We thought we used to think

God was nothing, but now that we think God is great. What a salvation God has done! What a redemption!

What a transformation that has come upon the people of God! The remedy was never, hey, obey

God and do, and do, and do, and do, and then God will accept you, because we couldn't. In our deadness, in our sinfulness, we thought that God was nothing, and we thought that we were awesome, and now we realize that the remedy was

Christ had to die a perfect sacrifice, paint His blood on our heart, wake our sleeping heart, our dead heart, and give us a brand new heart.

All of that had to happen so that we would realize that we actually, in fact, are nothing, and that God is everything.

That's what it took. And I just want to say as we close off today's episode of the podcast, don't revert back,

Christian. Once you know this, once you know that our boasting is in the

Lord, once you know that the Holy Spirit has revealed to you that you are actually nothing, that you are foolish, that you're weak, that you're broken, that you're sinful, that there is nothing inside of you that would warrant you boasting.

Not one iota, not one molecule, not one anything.

You are nothing once you know that. And once you also know that God is everything, that His existence and His being and His character and His love and His salvation and all of that demand our praise.

We are nothing. God is everything. Once you know that, don't revert back into your old self -loving ways.

Don't turn back in on yourself, but turn your praises to God.

By the Spirit, adopt a high view of who God is and a healthy view of who you are so that you will no longer be tempted to grab the credit or to share in the glory or to boast in your own knowledge or to boast in your own ability or to boast in anything.

Let him who boasts boast in the Lord. This, as Jeremiah explains, will lead you to experience the loving kindness of God.

It will lead you to experience His perfect justice, His perfect righteousness, and the joy of simply knowing

Him. This is what Jeremiah says one last time. Let a wise man not boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty boast in his might.

Let not a rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and he knows me, that I am the

Lord, that I exercise loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things.

Dear Christian, don't boast in yourself. Don't boast in your achievements, your accomplishments, your wealth, your might, or anything else.

Boast in knowing God. Spend some time today and get to know your

Creator. Spend some time today and even close your eyes and imagine how glorious He is, how awesome

He is, how thankful you are that He's so loving and kind and patient and long -suffering, because you deserve to be in hell.

And the only reason that you're not in hell today is because God is good. Spend some time dwelling on that, dear

Christian. Let the knowledge of God fill your heart full of praise.

Reject any temptations that you have to boast in yourself and spend a day boasting

God. much for again listening to the broadcast and I hope you have an awesome day.