Christ Centered Praise (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth, and I think I need my headphones turned up a little bit so I feel powerful, the horn of salvation.

Thanks for listening. I'm glad you tuned in. What do people say on podcasts? Now on pods, make sure you give us some ratings, do the five -star ratings, five thumbs up.

There's a place in town here where I like to have mango chicken curry. It has one to four hot peppers, and I say

I'll take three, a level of three hot. I usually pay for it the rest of the day, but while I'm eating it,

I'm happy to have it nice and hot. I only eat half the rice though, so for those of you that are concerned about my food consumption.

I'm drinking right now something that I ought not to, but it visualizes body and mind.

That's the only thing I can tell you. Not too bad. I got it free, so what are you going to do?

You have to drink free stuff. I go to a gas station here in town, and you, like other places, get points, and when you get points, you get certain gifts, and it was my birthday a while ago, and so I got some free chocolate bar.

I just picked it up and got it. It's a piece of junk, but last night it was like six o 'clock, and I thought my wife's out of town.

I'm trying to eat up all the frozen stuff and all the things in the refrigerator just to clean house a little bit, and I needed to have a bite of that dark chocolate coffee flavor, whatever it is.

Today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, just a quick update. I did submit

Discovering Colossians to Samuel Johnson, S. Lewis Johnson's son, and he then will look at it, give me the okay.

I think it goes to Believer's Chapel as well in Texas, and once I get the sign -off on that, we're going to publish that via Amazon Kindle Publishing, and we should have that ready soon.

Something he originally wrote back in the 1960s, early 60s. I didn't really update it and didn't really need to.

I added some discussion questions, took some of his handwritten notes, hand -typed notes. The written part were

Hebrew and Greek. The typed part, he typed in English, and I added those in, and a little intro, conclusion, and so hopefully that'll be going on.

Additionally, I'm working on an updated sexual fidelity book, so maybe a little more law gospel -centered, more

Christ -centered, although the first one is not void of Christ -centered forgiveness, etc.

So if you want to order some of the old ones, you can, and if you buy one, you get one free and things that go bump in the church for free.

So order one on No Compromise Radio, and off we go. So working on websites, all that other stuff.

It is what it is. Today in real time is June 10th, 1999.

I think that's when I started the show. Now, I think

I've been going for 14 or 15 years. You know how we always exaggerate and round up, and so I want to say 15, but it's probably 14, maybe 14 completed going into the 15th year.

It doesn't really matter. Thanks for listening. Today, I'd like to talk about praise.

I remember songs of praise when I first got saved, and I was at Calvary Chapel.

I grew up singing hymns in the Lutheran church, but it really wasn't from a heart of thanksgiving.

Maybe once in a while I was thankful. Who knows? But I wasn't regenerate, so you can figure that out.

But I've always thought to myself, we are born as people to praise. It's in our fabric.

It's in our DNA. And of course, if we don't praise the triune

God, we'll find alternative praises to be given.

For instance, people praise music stars. Do they not? People praise movie stars.

Do they not? People praise sports stars. And even that word star,

I mean, they're a star. You're a star. You're a shining star. And the stars, right?

God made everything and the stars. Wrong stars here, but people love to worship because they're born to praise.

Humans should praise. You will praise something or some one. Today on the show, we just have to figure out how to praise, to whom do we praise, and the right ways to praise.

Of course, I think of Acts chapter 19, and remember there was that man named

Demetrius who was a silversmith, and he used to make shrines of silver for Artemis, Diana, and made a lot of money for people.

And of course, Paul was there at Ephesus, and he was telling people that what's made with hands aren't really gods, and now they're losing money.

And the one guy said, here's what

Paul's saying, that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be disposed of her magnificence, rather she whom all

Asia and the world worship. And when they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out, praising, great is

Artemis of Ephesus. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

And of course, there was a man named Alexander, and he motioned with his hand, and he wanted to talk to the crowd.

But when they recognized he was a Jew, for about two hours, they all cried with one voice, for two hours, chanting together, no justice, no peace.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Or the other name she's called is

Diana. Diana. Oh, Diana. Steve Cooley would know who sang that.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis of the

Ephesians. It was Rome that took away assurance. Can you imagine just shouting that for two hours?

I mean, it says for about two hours, they all cried out with one voice. Must have been some leader, must have been some chant.

We've got spirit. Yes, we do. We've got spirit. How about you? Shouting, shouting, shouting.

I mean, what must they have been like after? Probably tired. You know, you go to a football game and scream and cheer.

I guess you do that for over two hours, but it's not just constant, right? Unless your team's winning 120 to nothing or something.

What's my point? My point is people were born to praise. Humans will praise.

Humans should praise. And they, you, me, will praise something or someone.

And for us as Christians, we know who to praise and we know how important it is to praise.

And praise is just putting a value on something, putting a price on something. And we realize how important that thing is and how much worth it has and how much merit it has.

And we say with the Puritan Thomas Watson, praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion.

We are to praise. And problems come because we're in a fallen world and it's difficult to praise

God in this world. All too often when we see people around us who, according to 2

Timothy 3, are lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents.

What else does the text say? Ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power, have nothing to do with them.

That's the environment we live in. And so it's hard to praise. It's hard to say with David, blessed are you,

O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth, yours.

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as the head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all.

In your hand are might and power, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. First Chronicles 29. That's a great section, is it not?

That is a super good section. I can't believe I just looked at my phone and I just deleted.

Oh, I don't know what I deleted because I looked down and I was pushing things and had a little minus there.

And I'm like, wait a second, what did I just delete? Anyway, my name is Mike Ebendroth.

This is No Compromise Radio. We're talking about praise. I'll have to figure out my iPhone later. Jude says to the only

God our Savior be glory, right? He's morally full of splendor and radiance, majesty.

He's a great king surpassing power. He's got dominion, the strong rule of God, and he has authority.

He does whatever he wants from now and forever. And there go the motorcycles past Bethlehem Bible Church, and there are a bunch of them.

There they go. That's why I don't record at home because it's too quiet at home.

Can you imagine? All right, we're up to about 40 of them, and there they go. They don't look like they're on cool motorcycles.

When I was younger, I said to myself, you know what? Those choppers were the best.

Now here comes the Jeeps with flags. There they go. Jeep after Jeep after Jeep. We're up to 10

Jeeps. Isn't this scintillating radio? Today, we're going to look at in the because after he is able to speak, he praises

God. It's very, very fascinating. Remember the story, Zechariah is approached by the angel

Gabriel in the temple, and he doesn't believe Zechariah, doesn't believe

Gabriel, excuse me. Therefore, doesn't believe God, and he is judged for nine months with the inability to speak.

Now the baby John the Baptist is born. His name is John, and now he can speak.

There's this great song called the Benedictus of Zechariah. Mary's song is called the

Magnificat, magnify. Here we have the Benedictus. It's called that because that's the

Latin word for praise. This section of Zechariah's praise has two components, really two sentences.

And it is praise for the Messiah and praise for the Messiah's forerunner. So today,

I want to talk to you a little bit about praise and why it's important. Remember Zechariah in chapter one of Luke, and immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke blessing

God. What did he bless God? Saying what?

Well, that's the passage, right? Let's do it this way. What if you couldn't talk for nine months?

Let's just round it up a year, and then you could talk.

What would be the first thing that came out of your mouth? And yeah, you could have a pad and a pencil and you could write things to express yourself, but what would actually come out of your mouth?

What would your initial words be? Now, remember, you're old. Your wife has aged as well, and she can't conceive a child.

She's too old. And now you have a son, and that son is born. What do you say?

I mean, what if you couldn't talk for nine months, and then all of a sudden, you could talk? And I don't know,

I guess you could say that punishment, that chastisement was too much. I should have only had to been mute for four months.

I can't believe that God would chasten me. I thought this was my best life now.

I mean, there's a variety of things you could say for Zachariah. I mean, just imagine you can't talk for nine months.

By the way, I think he probably tried to talk, right? Every morning you wake up and you say,

I'm going to try to talk. I would, wouldn't you? And now all of a sudden, you could talk, and really the first thing that comes out of his mouth after he's learned under the chastening hand of Rod is praise.

It's an eruption. It's jubilant. There's a singer in Los Angeles, Grace Church, Jubilant Sykes, and here's this jubilant praise.

And he begins to speak in praise of God. And this is like David after he sinned against God and Bathsheba and Uriah and the nation.

Open my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may declare your praise.

Spurgeon said, the dumb man in a moment not only spake, but sang for very joy. The Lord is a

God of wonders. And while Mary's song, yes, it's a solo, so is

Zacharias. While Mary's song is more from 1

Samuel and from Psalms, and Zacharias is more from the prophets. They both are filled with praise from the

Old Testament, praise unto God. They both speak in the past tense because it's as good as done when

God talks. And they both are inspired by the Holy Spirit to say these very things.

And that's exactly what Luke 1 .67 says, Luke 1 .67, and his father Zachariah was filled with the

Holy Spirit and prophesied saying. So today on No Compromise Radio, I just want to ask you, if you're like me, do you complain?

Do you gossip? Do you backbite?

Do you speak, to use the words of James 4, speak down about people, tearing them down with your words?

I mean, I do, and I don't want to do that, right? That's one of the signs that we're

Christians is we recognize it's sin. Lord, please forgive me. I mean, can you imagine?

With the tongue, James 3, we bless our Lord and father, and with it, we curse people who are made in the image of the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. And of course, we at No Compromise Radio, you listening,

I'm sure you want to do the right thing. So one of the great things you can do if you're a person who likes to complain, boy, it sure is rainy outside.

I wish it'd be more sunny. Just kidding. It's supposed to be sunny here today, and I'm looking out there, there's dark foreboding clouds at West Boylston.

Oh, brother. We need to flip this around and think, you know what?

Let's replace our complaining and our bitterness and everything else with praise.

God is to be praised. God is worthy to be praised. And God is always God. And therefore, you can always praise.

And therefore, you never have to complain and speak about people wrongly. And you can say, well, as Zechariah has recovered from his being mute, from him being, as sometimes they call it, dumb, he's now praising the

Lord, filled with the Spirit. And I don't, it doesn't matter if he sat for nine months and thought about all these

Old Testament prophets and put this together, or it was just spontaneous. Either way, it's Holy Spirit inspired and driven.

And he begins to just praise God. And this is, yes, his words, but it's from the

Holy Spirit. So, it's like a divine commentary, not a divine comedy, but a divine commentary.

And he is prophesying. And of course, to prophesy, you could say, it means to foretell, to say something, right?

To console people with God's word, to condemn people with God's word. That's a foretelling, to tell forth, tell out my soul.

And then there's also prediction. And you'll see both here. Prophecy, we tend to think of predictions.

And of course, there's going to be a sun, the rising sun, S -U -N, will visit us, talking about the

S -O -N. And there's also this foretelling. And you're going to see both here in this hymn of God's rescue mission of number one, the

Messiah, number two, the birth of the forerunner. But those are both important.

And then there's a little P .S. at the end in verse 80. I'm not going to finish it all today on No Compromise Radio, but we'll give it a good shot because today we're talking about praise.

When's the last time you said, God, I praise you? Say, well, probably last Sunday. Well, good for you that you at least did it last

Sunday. We can have daily praises. I got a call from my son today.

And he said to me, I asked Hannah to marry me. And she said, yes. And my response was praise, right?

That he, the Lord would provide for my son, a wife, a dear, godly, young lady.

And that is a good reason to praise God for what he's done. We can also praise

God for who he is, right? Even when there's a frowning providence, even when there are sea billows rolling, whatever my lot, he's taught me to say, it is well with my soul because it's

God himself. And so we can today say, God, I praise you. You could probably just say that right now.

God, I praise you. I praise you for who you are. I praise you for my salvation. I praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ.

I praise you for my wife. I praise you for my spouse. I praise you for my children. I praise you for my grandchildren. I praise you that I have health.

I praise you that I have a job. I praise you that I have health insurance. I praise you that I live in a free country for now.

I praise you, not praising for now, but free country for now. And the list can go on and on and on.

Temporal blessings, physical blessings, emotional blessings, spiritual blessings.

And so today we see in Zachariah's praise, a good template for praise.

We praise the Lord for Jesus and for the forerunner, just like Zachariah did. That's exactly what,

I mean, we're going to get to the forerunner, but when the forerunner shows up, you know who's coming after him. There's a forerunner, and then there's a runner.

There's a forerunner and there's an afterrunner. And when Jesus is going to come, something had to happen first for the first coming.

Nothing has to happen for the second coming. We don't need a forerunner for the second coming, but we need a forerunner for the first coming.

And now John the Baptist is born. It's all happening. But instead of God for the older first, instead of praising

God for his own son first, he praises God for the eternal son first, then his son.

Makes sense? I think it does. What else do we have here on No Compromise Radio today that I can just ADD?

Well, I have my Taurine lightly carbonated drink here. Mm -hmm.

8 .4 ounces. Does that give you a hint of what it is? 10 calories per can. It's got to be loaded with all kinds of bad stuff.

Let's see. Caffeine content, 80 milligrams.

Okay, that's not too bad. Other ingredients, water, shards of glass, tacks, nails.

I remember when I first got prostate cancer, I had given up Diet Coke at the time.

I don't drink much of it anymore, but once in a while I'll have one. Who wants diuretics these days when you're my age?

But I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke, Diet Mountain Dew. Sometimes I would sit in this very office, study, and drink two liters of Diet Mountain Dew in eight hours.

What a mountain doofus I was. Anyway, then I got prostate cancer and I thought, I might as well have a

Diet Coke, right? Don't drink Diet Coke because you're going to get cancer, but if you already have it, then you might as well have some.

So what I'm not drinking today is Bud Light. What I'm not drinking today is Diet Coke, Coke Zero.

I'm not drinking any of that. Praising God for the son, praising

God for the forerunner. That was Zechariah's praise. And he has two sentences, one for each.

Two sentences in the English, two sentences in the Greek. As a matter of fact, I'm going to open up the Message Bible right now to see what it sounds like through Eugene Peterson's mind.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. Hey, we're onto something so far, so good. That's the best sentence I've read in the

Message yet. He came and set his people free. Okay. Could have been worse.

He set the power of salvation in the center of our lives and in the very house of David, his servant.

Well, horns are power, but it should say horn here, so you can think of the Old Testament, just as he promised long ago through the preaching of his holy prophets.

Okay. All credit to where credit's due. It's not too bad. Deliverance from our enemies in every hateful hand.

Okay. Mercy to our fathers as he remembers to do what he'd said he'd do. And he swore to our father,

Abraham, a cleanup rescue from the enemy camp. A clean rescue, excuse me.

Which one's worse? So we can worship him without a care in the world, made holy before him as long as we live.

It started off pretty good, and it spiraled down.

I mean, but you have to say, okay, at the beginning, no problem. I mean, I think I should be fair and kind and nice and say, you know what?

It is what it is. When it's good, it's good. Zechariah is going to praise

God for the Messiah, that he came, that's the incarnation, that he redeemed. That's what he did.

That's what his death accomplished, that he fulfilled Old Testament prophecy so that we can serve

God. And so see, here's what happens when you study the Bible. You start saying to yourself, oh,

I was all involved with myself and my problems and my health and my job and my this and my that.

I'm just getting kind of all wound up because I do have to live in this world. That's true. But I need to look past the horizon.

I need to look above and I need to be reminded that God cares for me and that God loves me and that Jesus is true and Jesus is alive.

And that's what I need to be reminded of because left to ourselves, we can't remind ourselves of that without the spirit of God's help.

So my name is Mike Ebenbroth. This is No Compromise Radio. The cure to complaining, the cure to bitterness, the cure to cursing, the cure to all those things is praise.