Let's Just Praise The Lord

The sermon opens by linking three scenes from Matthew—two blind men pleading for mercy, the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the healing of the blind and lame in the temple—to illustrate a single truth: genuine praise for the Lord arises naturally when His presence is unmistakable. The speaker argues that praising Jesus is not just a tradition but a vital, life‑changing practice, warning against modern misconceptions such as the idea that praise requires specific physical gestures or that believers must thank God for every circumstance, no matter how painful. He emphasizes that true praise is a heartfelt, spontaneous response rooted in gratitude and love, not a mechanical repetition or a forced ritual. Moving from doctrine to practice, the preacher points listeners to Psalms 34, 100, and 150 as models for authentic worship, encouraging them to use Scripture, music, and personal testimony to cultivate a habit of praising God. He explains the distinction between thanking God and praising Him, outlines the benefits promised in Psalm 81—spiritual purity, protection from false gods, deeper fellowship with the Lord, and an ever‑increasing ability to praise—and concludes with a call for the congregation to join together in singing and lifting their hearts toward heaven, embodying the very praise he has described.

What is Houston's First Baptist Church?

Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!

Matthew 20, verse 30. And behold, two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. And the multitude rebuked them because they should hold their peace. But they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. Chapter 21, verse 8. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way. Others cut down branches from the trees and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Verse 14. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were sore displeased. And said unto them, Hearest thou what thee say? And Jesus saith to them, Yea, have ye never read, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. Before we go back and study in subsequent Sundays all of these three sermons and stories from Matthew's gospel, I want us to look at a portion of what happens in them as a unit. For there is one central truth in each of them to which we must give some consideration this morning. In each case, praise to Jesus Christ was central. In recent times, many books have been written on the subject of praise. I myself wrote a book called The Power of Positive Praying that's sold over 400 ,000 copies now. And one of the reasons is that there are two chapters in there on how to praise the Lord. Subsequent books by men such as Carruthers and Cromwell have sold even more. The reason? The Christian church is discovering the blessing that there is in learning just to praise the Lord Jesus Christ. Last Sunday night, the church gathered in what was advertised as a praise gathering for believers. And indeed it was that. Some of the highest and happiest times of the Christian fellowship is when we come together to testify and sing and rejoice and lift our hearts toward heaven and just praise the Lord. Praising the Lord Jesus is at once the most exciting and exhilaratingly refreshing experience of all the Christian experience. And the man that has never learned to praise the Lord is a man whose outward appearance will reflect his inner dismay. The man that has his attitude right and his head screwed on right and his priorities in the right place is the man that's learned to praise the Lord. Some folks get up in the morning and they are born in the pessimistic mood of the negative case. And they look out the window and say, good Lord, morning. Some folks look out, raise up the sashes and say, good morning, Lord. Some folks have learned to praise the Lord. And some of us today need to learn how to do it. Here in the life of Jesus Christ, as the shadow of the cross loomed large across his pathway, we get just a flickering glimpse of the glory that was his when the angels and seraphs rejoiced to praise him before the foundation of the world and that shall be ours in glory when we praise him eternally in heaven. But right here and now, we, like they, need to learn to praise the Lord. In each of these cases, the cases of the two blind men, the case of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem with the accompanying Hosanna to the King of Kings, and the case of the healing in the temple, in every incident, there was a quality about the very vivaciousness and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who touched lives as no man ever touched them, that caused a natural, spontaneous response in the lives and testimonies of those who fell under the shadow of his presence, who could not and would not be restrained. And they just had to exalt with adulation of praise, praise the Lord Jesus Christ. In each case, two things were said. One, they called him the Son of David. Hosanna to the Son of David. In saying Hosanna to the Son of David, they were acknowledging that in the lineage and royalty of the heritage that was his all the way back to Jesus Christ, all the way back to King David, he was the promised one and was incarnate God, the long -promised Messiah. In calling him Hosanna, they were saying, save now. The word Hosanna means salvation now. Because God has come in the flesh. Salvation has come now. Hosanna to the Lord Jesus Christ. And today, 2 ,000 years later, it is still equally true that when a man says and means that Jesus is the Son of God and praise his name, he is my Lord, now salvation comes into the life of a man. Three things I want to say to us this morning as we do a study of the matter of praising the Lord. First of all, I think it should be pointed out that some erroneous ideas have developed through the years about what it means to praise the Lord. For one thing, many people have the idea that when Paul says that I would that men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands, that this means that we are literally, physically supposed to raise our hands when we praise the Lord. Frankly, that's not the case. That is not what it means. The expression lifting up holy hands means lifting up undefiled hands. It means lifting up a life that is clean. It means, praise the Lord, lifting up a life whose hands are free from impurity. Lifting up a holy life. Now, I don't think that there's anything wrong with raising up your hands when you pray. I think that it's natural. Sometimes when you praise the Lord, it seems as we cry out for God that naturally our hands go up. We just want to reach him. We just want to touch him. We just want the spirit, the essence that is in us to go up to God saying, I love you, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Lord, I rejoice that you are my Savior. But technically, we need to remember that that's not what that verse means. I don't suppose the Lord cares too much. I told you the story the other day, I think, about the old boy who got saved and he went around yelling, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. One of his friends came up and said, you don't even know what hallelujah means. He said, I think it means hot dog, I got it. Well, you may not know all that praise the Lord means or hallelujah means. You may be hot dog, I got it. You may raise your hands or not praise your hands, but I think the Lord is pleased that we praise him as best we can. Now, another thing that is not technically, and I think this is grossly more erroneous, what the scripture means is that we are not to praise God for everything that happened. Now, I'm going to blow the theology of some of you right here, but I want you to turn with me over to 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 18. A very popular book on praise erroneously uses this verse of scripture to teach that we are to give thanks for everything that happens. And the very first verse, paragraph of that book says that one time a man's wife was an alcoholic, or a woman's husband was an alcoholic, and this preacher taught her to praise God, thanking you, Lord, that my husband is an alcoholic. Thank you, Lord, my wife's running around with six other men. Oh, I've gone bankrupt this week. Lord, thank you. Thank you, Lord, one of my little kids got his foot cut off. Praise the Lord, he got his foot cut off. Now, that is literally the ridiculous conclusion to which that kind of teaching takes you. If you look at this verse again, that is not what it says. It does not say, for everything, give thanks. It is not for all things, give thanks. It is in the midst of all things, give thanks. In spite of all things, give thanks. Listen, in everything, give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. It's not only not even a good translation of theology, it's not good English. It's not even good grammar. This immediate antecedent for, this is the will of God, refers back to its immediate precedent. It is not referred back to all things. It does not say, it is the will of God in all, to rejoice in all things. It is saying to us, the will of God is giving thanks, in the midst of all things. It does not refer back to all things, it refers back to giving of thanks. Now, it is Job saying, in the midst of adversity, in the midst of depression, and suffering, and boils, and dilemma, and financial catastrophe, in spite of everything, I'll praise the Lord. It does not mean to rejoice in evil situations. It means to rejoice in the midst of them, in spite of them, and needs well to be remembered. Then I think there is a third possible fallacy, that praising the Lord kind of becomes like a stereotype broken record. I was listening on the radio this morning, coming into church, strangely, and a man was using the expression, he was saying, some kids today can go down and buy dope on the street corners, just like going to the candy store, praise the Lord. And he went all through his sermon like this, and he said, I'll tell you, this is not right, praise the Lord, people are going to hell, praise the Lord. I was in Beaumont one time, many, many years ago, 20 years ago, I guess, Paul McCray and I were holding a revival, and the preacher's wife was batty as a loon. She sat right down there on the front row, like a parrot. He'd say, I'll tell you, brother, folks, you're going to hell. She'd say, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. And now they're going to burn in hell forever. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Now you can work it up in the flesh. You can work tongues up in the flesh. Preach on the radio in Oklahoma City, every sermon I used to listen to him, he'd always finish by talking in tongues, and every tongues take off, he'd always say, oh, hokey, hokey, sunday. I've heard, hokey, hokey, sunday, 10 ,000 times. Drop a nickel in his ear and pull a string, he'd go, hokey, hokey, sunday. And that's in the flesh, it's worked up. And there is a danger that we just kind of prostitute the natural desire that is inside of us to praise the Lord, that we get together and decide, well, we're going to praise him. And so everybody praises him, and we just start praising the Lord, praising the Lord, and turning it on. It needs to be the natural, spirit -induced, beautiful testimony of an uncontrolled heart filled with gratitude and love to Jesus Christ. These men could not and would not be restrained. Look at those blind men again. They said, hush, be quiet, don't do that. And they cried all the louder. It was real with them when they praised the Lord. Now you say, preacher, how then are we rightly supposed to praise the Lord Jesus? I would suggest to you there are two or three things. I'm not suggesting that we go to the other extreme. I think there are some things that we do that can help us to learn how to praise the Lord. I want you to take your finger and put one of them in Psalm 34 and one in Psalms 100, please. And let's look at both of those for just a moment. Now keep your Bibles open to the book of Psalms for a moment. About midway through the Old Testament, Psalm 34 and then Psalm 100. All right, in Psalm 34, I want to suggest first of all to you that we praise the Lord naturally. With our own words, with just what comes natural to us. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord within me and let us exalt his name together. Now mark these words. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. I will magnify him and I will exalt his name. Boast, exalt, and magnify. What does that suggest? It suggests increasing something out of its natural proportions. I don't know about you, but where I come from, to boast just means plain old purity country bragging. I am suggesting to you that to praise the Lord simply means to brag on Jesus Christ. Now we don't have any trouble bragging on each other. We may stick our tongue on our cheek when we do it. But to praise Jesus, listen, when you brag on Jesus Christ, my friend, you're on safe ground. You can't overdo it. What too much can you say in adulation to the praise of the Lord Jesus? Now understand that praising Jesus and thanking Jesus are two different things. If you invite me over for dinner and I come into your home and I get ready to leave, I thank you for coming and letting me come and tell you how wonderful it was, I'm thanking you. But if I start to brag on you and say, oh, that's the best dinner I ever had. And I never saw anybody sweep dirt under the rug as good as you can. And the kids are all dressed up so nice. I'm bragging on you. I'm praising you. I want you to look in Psalm 100 and notice something about the difference in thanking God and in praising God. Psalm 100 verse 4, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless his name. Praising him is blessing him. Thanking him is something else. In David's day, the cities were surrounded by a wall with gates. Through those gates, merchants could pass. Through those gates, visitors could come. Anybody could walk in and out until 5 in the afternoon when the gates were closed inside the gates of the city to do business. Anybody. But to be invited into the courtroom of the king, into the inner court, you had to have an intimate relationship, a personal experience, special business with the king. Just anybody could go into the gates, not just anybody could go into the court where the king was. Now he is saying it's wonderful to thank the Lord. We have national holidays of thanksgiving. Well, we don't have any national holidays of praising. To praise the Lord, to praise Jesus Christ can be the most wonderful, beautiful experience as far as getting you out of yourself and getting your inverted life all frustrated and bottled up like a bottle with a cork to just let the lid off and let yourself open up to God and begin to experience the relationship of joy that God ordains for the believer. Now he is saying it's wonderful to thank the Lord. We have national holidays of thanksgiving, but we don't have any national holidays of praising. To praise the Lord, to praise Jesus Christ can be the most wonderful, beautiful experience as far as getting you out of yourself and getting your inverted life all frustrated and bottled up like a bottle with a cork to just let the lid off and let yourself open up to God and begin to experience the relationship of joy that God ordains for the believer. It's a beautiful experience to learn to praise the Lord. Then we need to learn, of course, to praise the Lord with the Psalms. I would suggest to you that you praise the Lord using the Psalms as a kind of pump primer. Listen to some of these, Psalms 9, 1 and 2. I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart. I will show forth all thy marvelous works. Psalm 19, 1 and 3. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Psalm 27, 1. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 33, 1. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely and upright. Praise the Lord with heart. Sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Serve him with a new song. Play skillfully with a loud noise. Psalm 34, 1. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Make it Psalm 66, 1 and 2. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Sing forth the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. Psalm 92, 1. It is a good thing to give praise unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High. Psalm 103, 1 and 2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Psalm 134, 1 and 3. Bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord. Psalm 138, 1. I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods I will sing thy praise. Psalm 145, I will extol thee, my God and King. I will bless thy name forever and ever. Every day will I praise thee, and I will praise thy name forever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. And his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. Psalm 146, praise ye the Lord, praise ye the Lord, O my soul. While I live, while I praise the Lord, I will sing praises unto my God, as long as my soul shall have any being. Praise ye the Lord. Then thirdly, use music to praise the Lord. Use songs to praise the Lord. Our choir has introduced some new songs to us last week. I hope that some of them shall become as much a part of our regular custom, as nothing is impossible in sweet spirit. Something beautiful out of my life. Hallelujah. Let's just praise the Lord. But you know there are some that I've been using for a long, long time. You go to your knees in the morning. Go to your prayer closet. Shut the door. And start to sing these songs. Praise him, praise him. Jesus, our blessed redeemer. Sing on earth. His wonderful love proclaim. Hail him, hail him. Highest archangels in glory. Strength and honor unto the Lord proclaim. Then there's a good one. Revive us again. We praise thee, O God, for the Son of thy love. Think of it. Jesus, the fruition, the product, the result, the Son of God's love, who died and has now gone above. Praise him for his death. Praise him for his resurrection. Praise him that he's interceding his blood at the right hand of the Father. Praise him for heaven he's preparing. Praise him that he's coming again. Praise him that he's going to reign and bring peace. Then I like this one. We praise thee, O God, for thy spirit of light, who has shown us our Savior and scattered our night. That's the Holy Spirit. Had not the Holy Spirit come into the night of sin of our lives and revealed Jesus, beautiful and desirable, and scattered the appeal of sin, we would have still been lost in the darkness of sin. Praise Him for the Holy Spirit. Praise Him for Himself. And then how can you praise the Lord and not sing the noxology? Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts. And think of the angels, the seraphs, cherubs prostrate before Him. All the angelic chorus, everything in the earth, above the earth, under the earth, joining in magnanimous praise to the King of kings. And what of this, O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! You won't go out of your study that morning saying, Good Lord morning, when you get up each day and learn to praise the Lord. Oh, what an experience it is. You can't frown and say, praise the Lord. You can't cry and say, praise the Lord. It'll put a smile in your face and a song in your heart and warmth in your soul when you learn the beauty of praising the Lord Jesus Christ. Now my time is gone, but I must tell you one other thing that is very important. And I want you to turn to Psalm 81. Psalm 81, if you will, please. I want us to understand why we praise the Lord. Praising the Lord is not commanded by the Lord because he is some kind of egomania. It is not something that the Lord demands because the Lord needs it. It's something the Lord demands because we need it. It opens us up. It gets our minds off of ourselves and our circumstances and our problems and centered in his glorious, wonderful self. It helps us to turn our eyes upon Jesus when we look full in his wonderful face that the things of earth might grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. You see, here in the 81st Psalm, we have a wonderful illustration of what the Lord promises us to do if we will praise him. Look in Psalm 81. Sing unto the Lord aloud unto God our strength. Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm and bring hither the timbrel and pleasant harp with the psaltery. Blow up the trumpet in the new moon in the time appointed on our solemn feast day. Now he says, you praise me. You worship me like that. And down in verse 8, Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee. O Israel, if thou will hearken unto me. Now this is God's end of the pack. He says, if you learn to praise me like this, now listen, I'm testifying to you. I'm getting ready to tell you what I'll do for you if you'll praise me like this. Here is his fourfold promise in the 9th and 10th verses. First of all, there shall be no strange God be in thee. You're not going to be demon -possessed. That word strange God means a demon. You're not going to be demon -possessed if you learn to praise the Lord. The spirit -filled Christian who is learning to praise the Lord Jesus, who praises him every morning, who honors him every day, who exalts him every night, is not going to be inhabited by a demon. No strange God shall be in thee, he says. I think somehow that the sweet savor of praise to the Lord is a stench of death as vile as sulfur and brimstone in our nostrils to the nostrils of Satan. He cannot stand it. He could not stand the centuries of praising the Lord from the foundation of the world. And one day he was no longer able to stand it and he said, praise me, exalt me. Don't praise Jesus anymore. The devil can't stand a place where Jesus Christ is praised. And he can't stand to be in a man's life if that man's life is a testimony of praise to Jesus Christ. My promise is something else. Neither shall thou worship any strange God. He promises a purity of worship. Have you ever wondered really why you come to church? What is the big attraction? What you like the most? Why you drive across town? Have you ever examined your motives? Let me tell you something. If you come as a praising Christian, your motives will always be pure. You'll never worship a program. You'll never worship a song or a sermon. You'll never worship a fellowship. And that's a possibility. As long as you are praising the Lord Jesus in worship of him, he promises a purity of worship and you'll never worship wrongly. Now he promises a third thing here if we learn to praise him. He says, I am the Lord thy God. Mark those two words back to back. I am. He promises an intimate personal fellowship. A personal relationship between ourselves and him. Paul says when we are saved, we are all baptized by the Spirit into oneness with Jesus Christ. There is a spiritual fellowship between God and the believer. He indwells us. We are a part of His body. We are in one union, perfect fellowship with Him. And he says that union will be a reality when you praise me. Well, he promises something else. This is beautiful. He says, I'll open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. Fill it with what? What's he been talking about all through the psalm? What he'll do if you praise him? You see, he is saying to us that if you will learn to praise me, you can open your mouth wide and I will fill you with what? With praise. With the ability to praise me. Every Christmas, my little boys come to me and they want some money. I know what they want the money for. Or on my birthday, they want to buy us a present. But you see, I am the source and the supply. I am the source of their ability to give back to me that present. If I don't give them the money, they can't give me the gift. In the same way, Jesus Christ is saying, if you will praise me, I will give you the power, the words, the ability within you with which to praise me further. And so a purity of worship, an absence of demonic possession, an intimate relationship, and the ability and power to praise further is promised to the believer that learns to praise the Lord Jesus Christ. In closing, will you read with me Psalm 150? Everybody turn in your Bibles, please. Share them with one nearby there. Psalms 150. The last Psalm. We're going to read it all together in just a moment. Psalms 150. You have it? Hold your Bibles high. Share it with somebody nearby. Speak up. Let's read it together. Rather, praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance. Praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals. Praise him upon the high -sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Let's just praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Let's just lift our hearts toward heaven And praise the Lord. Let's just praise the Lord. Let's just lift our hearts toward heaven And praise the Lord. Bass voice would get it down too low. Okay, get us in the right key, Gerald. Let's sing it again. Are we in it? You're kidding. That's not too low. Okay, here we go. Come on. Let's just praise the Lord. Let's just praise the Lord.