1 00:00:00,076 --> 00:00:03,269 We are made to live on God alone. 2 00:00:03,269 --> 00:00:04,690 We are made for Him. 3 00:00:04,690 --> 00:00:07,112 Your soul is made for Him. 4 00:00:07,112 --> 00:00:18,321 Every brokenness inside of us is because in one way or another we've put fuel other than God into a vehicle made to run on God alone. 5 00:00:18,321 --> 00:00:25,026 We've tried to eat something other than God, which is when we're made to feast upon Him alone. 6 00:00:25,026 --> 00:00:30,009 And so when He says, Praise my name, He's not saying I'm so 7 00:00:30,009 --> 00:00:32,211 You know, needy that I need you to praise me. 8 00:00:32,211 --> 00:00:35,303 He's saying, Your soul is dying. 9 00:00:35,303 --> 00:00:36,664 Praise me. 10 00:00:37,004 --> 00:00:40,567 The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. 11 00:00:40,567 --> 00:00:49,614 May the Spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. 12 00:00:51,496 --> 00:00:57,230 This morning we're in our seventh sermon in the series going through the Psalms. 13 00:00:57,230 --> 00:01:00,212 This is our second to last sermon. 14 00:01:00,655 --> 00:01:10,367 But even though it's not the final sermon in the entire series, it does bring us to what might be called the pinnacle of the series, the mountaintop of the Psalms. 15 00:01:10,367 --> 00:01:19,700 Because if you remember, the Psalms are structured in such a way that they move from lamentation into praise. 16 00:01:19,700 --> 00:01:26,461 Remember, when we started this series, I laid out for you each of the five books that the Psalms are built up of. 17 00:01:27,021 --> 00:01:30,102 Each of those five books has a particular 18 00:01:30,192 --> 00:01:35,854 um Emphasis of either lamentation or praise. 19 00:01:35,854 --> 00:01:41,137 And in the beginning, you have a lot of lamentation and only a little bit of praise. 20 00:01:41,137 --> 00:01:44,258 And as you're moving through, that balance is out. 21 00:01:44,258 --> 00:01:51,701 And then at the end, the Psalms have a lot of praise, and the lamentation has gone away. 22 00:01:51,701 --> 00:02:00,035 And what that's what that shape is showing us is that this whole book is teaching our hearts to praise the Lord. 23 00:02:00,035 --> 00:02:10,998 The whole book is bringing us through a journey from the night into the day, from sorrow into rejoicing, from lamentation into praise. 24 00:02:10,998 --> 00:02:17,640 And of course, praise has its place in sorrow and in the night and in lamentation. 25 00:02:17,640 --> 00:02:20,081 It's it it belongs there as well. 26 00:02:20,081 --> 00:02:26,333 But there's this sense in which praise is especially the morning song. 27 00:02:26,530 --> 00:02:29,401 It's it's the time morning as an M-O-R-N. 28 00:02:29,401 --> 00:02:36,622 Morning, the does the dawn is breaking, and praise befits the coming of day. 29 00:02:36,923 --> 00:02:48,226 And that's what we're coming to this morning, to the place where the Psalms have been moving our souls, shaping our souls, making us by God's grace into a people shaped like 30 00:02:48,226 --> 00:02:53,497 this: lamentation unto praise, sorrow into joy. 31 00:02:53,497 --> 00:02:56,978 And if you think about it, the whole the whole series has been structured that way. 32 00:02:56,978 --> 00:03:01,739 We started with looking at lament, and then we looked at different types of lament. 33 00:03:01,739 --> 00:03:07,480 Then we moved into trust, which is the hardship is still upon me, but I'm holding fast to the Lord. 34 00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:14,382 Then we looked at thanksgiving, which is as the light is beginning to break, I'm giving thanks for what I'm seeing the Lord doing. 35 00:03:14,382 --> 00:03:17,523 And now we're moving into praise. 36 00:03:17,923 --> 00:03:22,106 And this shape, this shape is not incidental, this movement. 37 00:03:22,106 --> 00:03:23,857 From lamentation to praise. 38 00:03:23,857 --> 00:03:28,441 That's the shape that God has woven into the book of Psalms. 39 00:03:28,441 --> 00:03:37,978 It matters that the prayer book of God's people is shaped like this, because this is the shape that He's working through this book into our own soul. 40 00:03:37,978 --> 00:03:43,652 It's the shape, if you think about it, of the crucified and risen Christ. 41 00:03:44,032 --> 00:03:49,376 And as I hope to show by the end here, it's the shape ultimately of all creation. 42 00:03:49,403 --> 00:03:54,274 This movement from darkness into light, from lamentation into praise. 43 00:03:54,674 --> 00:03:57,095 Now, we're going to be in Psalm 146. 44 00:03:57,095 --> 00:04:01,716 We're going to jump around a little bit, but Psalm 146 will be kind of our home base for today. 45 00:04:01,716 --> 00:04:10,238 But before we look at the text and get into the sermon, I want to just do what I've done the last few weeks, which is to lay out for you a working definition. 46 00:04:10,238 --> 00:04:11,859 What do we mean by praise? 47 00:04:11,859 --> 00:04:15,500 What do I mean by praise when I'm talking about talking about it today? 48 00:04:15,500 --> 00:04:16,580 And to do that, 49 00:04:16,580 --> 00:04:23,404 I need first to give a working definition for worship, because praise is kind of a subset of worship. 50 00:04:23,404 --> 00:04:28,937 You have worship here, and praise is a particular expression of worship. 51 00:04:29,477 --> 00:04:44,105 So one workable definition for worship is this: worship is the whole souled treasuring of something and anything that flows from that treasuring. 52 00:04:44,305 --> 00:04:49,208 So worship is treasuring something with your whole soul, all that you are. 53 00:04:49,248 --> 00:04:56,673 And then anything that comes out of that treasuring, words, deeds, actions, thoughts, that all that is counted as worship. 54 00:04:56,673 --> 00:05:12,744 That's how Paul can say all of life is worship, because all of life ought to be a outworking of what we have seen of God in Christ, a working out of the supreme treasuring 55 00:05:12,744 --> 00:05:14,202 of God in our life. 56 00:05:14,202 --> 00:05:16,293 Now, praise is a subset of this. 57 00:05:16,293 --> 00:05:18,864 Praise, I would define this way. 58 00:05:18,864 --> 00:05:26,386 Praise is declaring the particular excellencies of that object that we treasure. 59 00:05:26,487 --> 00:05:32,709 So praise has a particularly uh declarative element to it, a making known element to it. 60 00:05:32,709 --> 00:05:43,987 Here's the object I'm treasuring in my worship, and praise is however I make known the excellencies of this, through words, through songs, also through actions. 61 00:05:43,987 --> 00:05:46,609 Through my own values, through what I do in my life. 62 00:05:46,609 --> 00:05:54,635 As I am making known the excellencies of this object, I'm praising, I'm praising this one that I'm treasuring here. 63 00:05:54,635 --> 00:05:59,799 And that might sound complicated, but we all know what this is by our own experience. 64 00:05:59,799 --> 00:06:01,401 So just think about it. 65 00:06:01,401 --> 00:06:03,903 You've experienced something amazing. 66 00:06:03,903 --> 00:06:06,905 Whether it's a movie, you're like, wow, that was a that was great. 67 00:06:06,905 --> 00:06:08,736 I can't wait to tell someone about that. 68 00:06:08,736 --> 00:06:13,870 A meal that was the best you've ever had, a person who's just so great or so funny. 69 00:06:13,999 --> 00:06:18,040 A place, you know, a state park or a particular walk. 70 00:06:18,380 --> 00:06:24,942 When you experience these things, if you're by yourself, what you want to tell somebody about them. 71 00:06:24,942 --> 00:06:26,412 I think you've experienced that before. 72 00:06:26,412 --> 00:06:37,515 You you have something happen, a meal, a movie, a story, a song, whatever it is, and you've loved it, but there's some piece of that that then wants to tell somebody, this was 73 00:06:37,515 --> 00:06:38,475 so great. 74 00:06:38,475 --> 00:06:39,665 you'd love this movie. 75 00:06:39,665 --> 00:06:41,096 this person is so funny. 76 00:06:41,096 --> 00:06:43,046 you've got to come see this park. 77 00:06:43,046 --> 00:06:45,447 You want to tell people about it. 78 00:06:45,447 --> 00:06:47,828 And that is praise. 79 00:06:47,828 --> 00:06:49,169 That's praise. 80 00:06:49,169 --> 00:06:51,610 You're expressing the excellencies of it. 81 00:06:51,610 --> 00:06:53,181 it's this part is so great. 82 00:06:53,181 --> 00:06:55,052 This part of the story is just the best. 83 00:06:55,052 --> 00:06:58,333 This meal was just the the flavors came together. 84 00:06:58,333 --> 00:07:00,054 Doing that is praise. 85 00:07:00,054 --> 00:07:01,635 Doing that is praise. 86 00:07:01,635 --> 00:07:08,738 And the Psalms are shaping our souls so that they do that about God in Christ. 87 00:07:08,738 --> 00:07:09,414 So that. 88 00:07:09,414 --> 00:07:18,311 We have souls that have seen and are seeing the desirability of God in Jesus Christ. 89 00:07:18,311 --> 00:07:27,118 So that we have souls that are not just seeing it, but savoring it, treasuring it, loving the excellencies of who God is in Christ. 90 00:07:27,118 --> 00:07:38,908 And that this then translates into a singing, which doesn't have to be verbal, it can be any action, our our proclamation, the living out of the excellence that we've seen. 91 00:07:38,908 --> 00:07:39,669 And savored. 92 00:07:39,669 --> 00:07:47,854 The psalms are shaping our souls to be like that, to be praise-oriented souls. 93 00:07:47,854 --> 00:07:50,035 Just push this up a little bit. 94 00:07:50,336 --> 00:07:54,798 The psalms are shaping us to have praise-oriented souls. 95 00:07:54,798 --> 00:07:57,220 So that's what I'm hoping to show for you this morning. 96 00:07:57,220 --> 00:08:00,882 Let me pray, and then we'll get into these things more specifically. 97 00:08:00,882 --> 00:08:02,213 But let me pray first. 98 00:08:04,167 --> 00:08:08,848 Father, it is it is one thing to stand here and talk about praise. 99 00:08:08,848 --> 00:08:22,172 It is another thing for us to live lives marked by the praise of you, even as we are feeling the groaning of this present world in our bodies and all around us. 100 00:08:22,172 --> 00:08:33,448 So I ask now this morning that you'd give me grace to be clear, to be helpful, that your word would be unfolded rightly, and that the Holy Spirit would 101 00:08:33,448 --> 00:08:44,874 would cause the excellencies of Christ to be seen by his people, savored by his people, and sung in all of our lives as praise to you. 102 00:08:44,935 --> 00:08:51,359 So come, Father, I pray, gather us into the hallelujah that you are working in all the world. 103 00:08:51,359 --> 00:08:53,480 We pray these things in Jesus' name. 104 00:08:53,480 --> 00:08:54,340 Amen. 105 00:08:56,053 --> 00:09:05,397 So you even even as I just prayed, the majority of this sermon is going to be looking at this word hallelujah, which you're probably familiar with, but the word itself means 106 00:09:05,397 --> 00:09:06,717 praise the Lord. 107 00:09:06,717 --> 00:09:08,898 It's a call to praise the Lord. 108 00:09:08,898 --> 00:09:10,059 So we're going to be looking at that. 109 00:09:10,059 --> 00:09:17,151 But before we do, I want to touch on the structure of the Psalms of Praise, because there are a number of Psalms of Praise. 110 00:09:17,151 --> 00:09:20,883 It's the second most common genre and it has a particular structure. 111 00:09:20,883 --> 00:09:24,484 And the structure is very, very simple. 112 00:09:24,550 --> 00:09:31,564 It's a summons to praise, the reasons to praise, and a summons to praise again. 113 00:09:31,564 --> 00:09:36,897 Call people to praise the Lord, tell them why, call them to praise the Lord again. 114 00:09:36,897 --> 00:09:39,889 That's that's the structure, not super complicated. 115 00:09:39,889 --> 00:09:40,929 Let me read it for you. 116 00:09:40,929 --> 00:09:46,632 I'm gonna read Psalm 146 and see if you can hear that structure as we go through it. 117 00:09:47,353 --> 00:09:48,346 Praise the Lord. 118 00:09:48,346 --> 00:09:49,494 Now pause. 119 00:09:49,494 --> 00:09:53,796 Every time you see praise the Lord, that word in Hebrew is just hallelujah. 120 00:09:53,820 --> 00:09:57,622 It's being transliterated as praise the Lord, but it's hallelujah. 121 00:09:58,383 --> 00:09:59,704 Praise the Lord. 122 00:09:59,704 --> 00:10:01,600 Praise the Lord, O my soul. 123 00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:04,547 I will praise the Lord as long as I live. 124 00:10:04,547 --> 00:10:08,050 I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 125 00:10:08,050 --> 00:10:12,933 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no salvation. 126 00:10:12,933 --> 00:10:15,995 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. 127 00:10:15,995 --> 00:10:18,797 On that very day, his plans will perish. 128 00:10:18,797 --> 00:10:23,558 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope. 129 00:10:23,558 --> 00:10:35,453 Is the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. 130 00:10:35,453 --> 00:10:37,734 The Lord sets the prisoners free. 131 00:10:37,734 --> 00:10:40,215 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. 132 00:10:40,215 --> 00:10:42,836 The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. 133 00:10:42,836 --> 00:10:44,957 The Lord loves the righteous. 134 00:10:44,957 --> 00:10:47,318 The Lord watches over the sojourners. 135 00:10:47,318 --> 00:10:52,572 He upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. 136 00:10:52,572 --> 00:10:54,973 The Lord will reign forever. 137 00:10:54,973 --> 00:10:59,954 Your God, O Zion, to all generations, praise the Lord. 138 00:11:00,654 --> 00:11:02,675 So look at our structure here. 139 00:11:03,175 --> 00:11:07,026 First, it begins with a call to praise, the summons to praise in verses one and two. 140 00:11:07,026 --> 00:11:08,176 Praise the Lord. 141 00:11:08,176 --> 00:11:10,057 Praise the Lord, O my soul. 142 00:11:10,057 --> 00:11:13,098 I will praise the Lord as long as I live. 143 00:11:13,098 --> 00:11:16,058 Now, as I said, that word praise the Lord is the word hallelujah. 144 00:11:16,058 --> 00:11:19,820 We'll return to that at the later on in this sermon. 145 00:11:19,820 --> 00:11:22,046 But what I want to draw attention to is. 146 00:11:22,046 --> 00:11:30,816 He's not only saying, Praise the Lord, all of you, communally, but then he turns around and says, Praise the Lord, O my soul. 147 00:11:30,816 --> 00:11:42,067 So he's calling himself also to praise the Lord, which is important because he's not waiting to feel like praising the Lord before he does. 148 00:11:42,067 --> 00:11:46,949 It begins not by saying, Hey, I feel like praising the Lord, so I will, just spontaneously. 149 00:11:46,949 --> 00:11:48,810 It begins with a summons. 150 00:11:48,810 --> 00:11:52,116 Praise the Lord, my own soul. 151 00:11:52,116 --> 00:11:55,078 Praise him, speaking to his own soul. 152 00:11:55,078 --> 00:11:58,161 Because as I said with Thanksgiving, the same is true here. 153 00:11:58,161 --> 00:12:07,528 If we just wait until we feel like praising, maybe once in a while we will, but it's not going to be super common. 154 00:12:07,709 --> 00:12:12,892 It's not going to be one of the things, it's not going to be as common as we find it in the Psalms. 155 00:12:13,273 --> 00:12:21,983 If we just pray what we feel, then our prayers are going to fall into the ruts of our own personality. 156 00:12:21,983 --> 00:12:26,284 And we're just going to begin praying our personality to the Lord over and over and over again. 157 00:12:26,284 --> 00:12:33,486 That's why He's given us a particularly structured prayer book that says, praise the Lord. 158 00:12:33,566 --> 00:12:36,527 You need to praise the Lord, but I don't feel like it. 159 00:12:36,527 --> 00:12:37,986 You need to praise the Lord. 160 00:12:37,986 --> 00:12:39,347 Still, it's right here. 161 00:12:39,347 --> 00:12:40,408 It's right here. 162 00:12:40,408 --> 00:12:47,169 And so it is important that the Psalms of Practice to praise the Lord. 163 00:12:47,169 --> 00:12:50,334 And as we read them as our own prayers, 164 00:12:50,334 --> 00:12:53,515 We are calling ourselves to praise the Lord. 165 00:12:53,515 --> 00:12:54,286 That's important. 166 00:12:54,286 --> 00:12:57,337 That's part of the structure of this book. 167 00:12:57,477 --> 00:13:02,219 So it's legitimate to recognize sometimes I don't feel like praising the Lord. 168 00:13:02,219 --> 00:13:03,549 That's that's legitimate. 169 00:13:03,549 --> 00:13:04,860 That's true. 170 00:13:04,860 --> 00:13:11,993 Sometimes my soul is like the mower after winter, and you go out to start it and it's just not starting, not starting. 171 00:13:11,993 --> 00:13:12,983 What's going on with this thing? 172 00:13:12,983 --> 00:13:14,284 It's cold. 173 00:13:14,284 --> 00:13:15,524 That's what our souls are like. 174 00:13:15,524 --> 00:13:20,146 If you just wait to say, I don't feel like praising the Lord, I'm just down, I'm frustrated. 175 00:13:20,820 --> 00:13:31,037 But reading these psalms, praying these psalms, having these psalms before us, saying, I'm going to sit down and read this as my prayer. 176 00:13:31,037 --> 00:13:34,879 The psalm then calls us, praise the Lord. 177 00:13:34,900 --> 00:13:37,982 And we are carried into that. 178 00:13:37,982 --> 00:13:42,215 And the Psalms also help warm up our souls because that's the second thing. 179 00:13:42,215 --> 00:13:46,588 There's a call to praise, and then there's reasons for praise. 180 00:13:46,928 --> 00:13:49,844 Look at verses three through nine. 181 00:13:49,844 --> 00:13:51,855 Really starting in verse five. 182 00:13:52,535 --> 00:13:56,477 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord his God. 183 00:13:56,477 --> 00:14:06,861 Look at the litany of things the Lord does, makes the heavens and earth and sea, keeps faith forever, executes justice, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens 184 00:14:06,861 --> 00:14:16,545 the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the sojourners, upholds the widow and the fatherless, and brings the wicked to ruin. 185 00:14:16,545 --> 00:14:18,266 Every one of those 186 00:14:18,366 --> 00:14:21,627 Is a world for our soul to explore. 187 00:14:21,748 --> 00:14:28,031 But the point that I'm giving you now is the Psalms are saying, they're putting these words in our mouth. 188 00:14:28,031 --> 00:14:32,434 The Psalms are spoon feeding us like little petulant children. 189 00:14:32,434 --> 00:14:37,757 The Psalms are spoon-feeding us the right things to say, the right things to feel. 190 00:14:37,757 --> 00:14:45,641 So that as my cold heart reads these words, I'm saying, Blessed is the Lord who made heaven and earth. 191 00:14:45,641 --> 00:14:47,998 Blessed is the Lord who keeps faith forever. 192 00:14:47,998 --> 00:15:00,292 And as you're reading these things, the Lord is working on your soul, warming it up, bringing it to the point where over and over and over again we're able to feel what's 193 00:15:00,292 --> 00:15:01,142 true. 194 00:15:01,142 --> 00:15:02,922 We're able to feel what's true. 195 00:15:03,123 --> 00:15:08,364 These are given to us to pray when we don't have the words. 196 00:15:08,364 --> 00:15:14,376 What a gift when I don't have the words because of grief or frustration. 197 00:15:14,376 --> 00:15:20,849 Or coldness or numbness of heart to sit down and say, Father, give me words. 198 00:15:20,849 --> 00:15:22,730 You give me the words. 199 00:15:22,730 --> 00:15:26,031 And he puts these words of praise in our mouth. 200 00:15:26,031 --> 00:15:30,593 And he puts these reasons to praise him in our mouth. 201 00:15:30,593 --> 00:15:32,934 And that is a grace, and that is a gift. 202 00:15:32,934 --> 00:15:35,015 And that's what the Psalms of Praise do. 203 00:15:35,015 --> 00:15:38,276 And then it ends with another summons to praise. 204 00:15:38,276 --> 00:15:41,858 The last line in verse 10: Praise the Lord. 205 00:15:41,858 --> 00:15:43,408 Hallelujah. 206 00:15:43,574 --> 00:15:45,134 Praise the Lord. 207 00:15:45,134 --> 00:15:46,975 That's where this is all leading. 208 00:15:46,975 --> 00:15:48,895 That's where the Psalms are leading us. 209 00:15:48,895 --> 00:15:55,877 And I'm going to hopefully uh give you a glimpse of that's also where our souls are going. 210 00:15:55,877 --> 00:16:02,879 That's the purpose of our souls, and that's where all of creation is going, this idea of praising the Lord. 211 00:16:02,879 --> 00:16:04,480 Hallelujah. 212 00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:07,821 So we've got the structure of the Psalms of Praise in our mind. 213 00:16:07,821 --> 00:16:13,422 Let's move now to look at how hallelujah is the goal of 214 00:16:13,458 --> 00:16:26,749 Of the Psalms and of our souls, to be able to be a people who say, In the heights and in the depths, in the joy and in the sorrow, who are able to say, Hallelujah, praise your 215 00:16:26,749 --> 00:16:27,630 name. 216 00:16:27,630 --> 00:16:30,022 The Psalms are shaping us into that kind of people. 217 00:16:30,022 --> 00:16:31,493 That's the goal of the Psalms. 218 00:16:31,493 --> 00:16:36,096 Now, I've already explained this a bit, so we'll touch on this first part quickly. 219 00:16:36,357 --> 00:16:41,380 The Psalms are broken into five books, and it moves from lament to praise. 220 00:16:41,421 --> 00:16:43,134 That right there is an argument. 221 00:16:43,134 --> 00:16:46,335 This is the goal of the Psalms, to get us to praise. 222 00:16:46,655 --> 00:16:52,237 Also, every one of those five books ends with a praise to the Lord. 223 00:16:52,237 --> 00:16:52,997 Hallelujah. 224 00:16:52,997 --> 00:16:56,138 Every one of those books ends with the phrase, hallelujah. 225 00:16:56,138 --> 00:17:00,439 And so there again we see this is the purpose of the Psalms. 226 00:17:00,520 --> 00:17:07,982 And the whole Psalter itself, the whole book of Psalms, ends with this repeated uh 227 00:17:08,148 --> 00:17:11,959 Gathering together of psalms of praise, praise, praise, praise. 228 00:17:11,959 --> 00:17:16,840 And the whole book of Psalms ends with Psalm 150, which goes like this. 229 00:17:18,181 --> 00:17:28,494 Praise the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heavens, praise him for his mighty deeds, praise him according to his excellent greatness, praise him with 230 00:17:28,494 --> 00:17:36,466 trumpet sound, praise him with lute and harp, praise him with tambourine and dance, praise him with strings and pipe. 231 00:17:36,534 --> 00:17:40,897 Praise him with sounding symbols, praise him with loud clashing symbols. 232 00:17:40,897 --> 00:17:47,081 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord. 233 00:17:47,081 --> 00:17:48,702 That's how the Psalms end. 234 00:17:48,702 --> 00:17:55,046 So I think it's quite clear these psalms are about praising the Lord. 235 00:17:55,187 --> 00:18:06,258 God in his sovereign wisdom has put a 150 chapter, 2400 verse, hallelujah, at the center of 236 00:18:06,258 --> 00:18:07,719 Of the inspired scriptures. 237 00:18:07,719 --> 00:18:09,360 That's what this book is. 238 00:18:09,741 --> 00:18:12,683 That's how he has shaped the Bible. 239 00:18:12,703 --> 00:18:20,089 And that matters because this book is given, as I've said over and over again, even this morning, this book is given to shape our souls. 240 00:18:20,270 --> 00:18:28,818 So if the shape of this book is praise the Lord, it's shaping us to have souls that say, Praise the Lord. 241 00:18:28,818 --> 00:18:30,798 So that's the second thing we'll move to now. 242 00:18:30,798 --> 00:18:31,779 Hallelujah. 243 00:18:31,779 --> 00:18:35,664 It's the goal of the Psalms, it's the goal of our 244 00:18:35,664 --> 00:18:36,834 souls. 245 00:18:36,955 --> 00:18:38,515 What do I mean by that? 246 00:18:38,875 --> 00:18:48,369 I mean that proclaiming with all that we are the surpassing excellencies of God is actually the purpose of our existence. 247 00:18:48,369 --> 00:19:00,044 And it doesn't have to just be in words, but to have a life that burns with a luminosity that says, God in Christ is great. 248 00:19:00,044 --> 00:19:05,162 That's what we're made for, to praise the name of this God, to praise 249 00:19:05,162 --> 00:19:08,264 The excellencies of this God. 250 00:19:08,264 --> 00:19:18,512 Now, when I say that, I want to make two clarifications, and we're going to spend a little bit of time on these because this is important for us experientially. 251 00:19:18,512 --> 00:19:19,863 Two clarifications. 252 00:19:19,863 --> 00:19:26,157 First, when I say our soul, the goal of our souls is to praise the Lord. 253 00:19:26,242 --> 00:19:32,262 I want to be clear that this praising is not a duty, it's our deepest pleasure. 254 00:19:32,958 --> 00:19:38,661 And secondly, I want to be clear that this praising is not for God's sake, but for our sake. 255 00:19:38,721 --> 00:19:40,842 So let me look at those two together. 256 00:19:40,842 --> 00:19:47,626 First, praising the Lord is not a duty, it's our deepest pleasure. 257 00:19:47,886 --> 00:19:49,118 I'm going to give three reasons for that. 258 00:19:49,118 --> 00:19:54,030 So if you have your notes, this is where they'd be helpful because we're digging into a particular point. 259 00:19:54,030 --> 00:20:02,550 But I but I think it's important for us to see this because when somebody says, you know, we're created to praise the Lord, you might think, well, I gotta do that. 260 00:20:02,550 --> 00:20:04,071 Okay, I guess I've got to do that. 261 00:20:04,071 --> 00:20:07,992 No, it is it is the greatest pleasure of our souls. 262 00:20:07,992 --> 00:20:11,674 Three reasons praising the Lord is not a duty but a pleasure. 263 00:20:11,674 --> 00:20:20,578 First, to praise is the consummation of our gladness in that which we are praising. 264 00:20:20,578 --> 00:20:31,622 To praise an experience or a person or whatever it might be, that act of praising is the consummation of our gladness in. 265 00:20:31,902 --> 00:20:32,983 What we are praising. 266 00:20:32,983 --> 00:20:35,505 So again, back to the example I used just a moment ago. 267 00:20:35,505 --> 00:20:38,066 You have a meal, an incredible meal. 268 00:20:38,066 --> 00:20:42,429 You watch a movie that's just perfectly put together. 269 00:20:42,429 --> 00:20:44,571 You hear a beautiful piece of music. 270 00:20:44,571 --> 00:20:48,273 You visit an incredible place in the world. 271 00:20:48,514 --> 00:20:51,676 And you love the experience, but what do you want to do? 272 00:20:51,676 --> 00:20:54,438 You want to praise it to someone. 273 00:20:54,438 --> 00:20:55,959 You want to tell someone. 274 00:20:55,959 --> 00:20:58,060 You want to share it with somebody. 275 00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:01,052 If it's as small as, hey, listen to this joke that I heard. 276 00:21:01,096 --> 00:21:09,159 Or if it's as big as you've I want you to meet the woman I'm hoping to marry, or whether it's the story is just awesome, you've got to read it. 277 00:21:09,159 --> 00:21:15,938 Whatever it is, the treasures, the things we value, we want to tell others about. 278 00:21:15,938 --> 00:21:18,560 We want to praise to others. 279 00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:20,612 And praising like that is not a duty. 280 00:21:20,612 --> 00:21:25,246 You don't say, well, now I gotta go tell five people about this movie, about how good it was. 281 00:21:25,246 --> 00:21:26,547 Who am I gonna tell? 282 00:21:26,547 --> 00:21:31,006 No, praising is the crowning joy of that experience. 283 00:21:31,006 --> 00:21:35,307 You think you go out of the theater thinking, I can't wait to tell whoever it is. 284 00:21:35,307 --> 00:21:38,908 I can't wait to talk to them about this meal or whatever it is. 285 00:21:39,068 --> 00:21:40,459 It's the crowning joy. 286 00:21:40,459 --> 00:21:47,891 And in fact, by praising the experience, we enter more deeply into the joy of that experience. 287 00:21:47,891 --> 00:21:57,693 So too with God, our joy in him, our satisfaction in him is deepened and crowned as we praise him. 288 00:21:57,793 --> 00:22:00,834 As we praise him, as we speak of him. 289 00:22:00,834 --> 00:22:10,039 As hallelujah in its various ways comes from our lips and from our lives, we are gathered more deeply into the joy of him. 290 00:22:10,039 --> 00:22:21,275 You tell somebody about his goodness, you talk to people about it, or or you write a poem about it, or you journal about it and share a thought with somebody, or or you are sit 291 00:22:21,275 --> 00:22:26,368 down with your grandchild and tell them why the Lord isn't going to forsake them, whatever it might be. 292 00:22:26,368 --> 00:22:30,802 As we speak about him, we enter into the joy of him. 293 00:22:30,802 --> 00:22:32,323 More deeply. 294 00:22:32,323 --> 00:22:36,544 And in fact, our joy in him will be less. 295 00:22:36,784 --> 00:22:46,628 And our life in him will be shrunken if our soul doesn't know how to praise him, if we can't speak of him, if we can't join in that praise. 296 00:22:46,628 --> 00:22:48,709 So that's the first piece. 297 00:22:49,009 --> 00:22:54,192 Praising is not a duty, it's our pleasure because it's the consummation of our joy in the Lord. 298 00:22:54,192 --> 00:23:00,714 Second, praising the Lord is our deepest pleasure because it gathers us into something that is more than ourselves. 299 00:23:01,416 --> 00:23:07,288 Human beings were created to orbit a center. 300 00:23:07,309 --> 00:23:12,551 That's that we're created to orbit something at the center. 301 00:23:12,551 --> 00:23:16,112 We are not created to be at the center. 302 00:23:16,232 --> 00:23:25,956 We begin to break down and get frustrated, and people get hurt, and problems spring up all around when we are at the center. 303 00:23:25,956 --> 00:23:28,417 We're not made to be at the center. 304 00:23:28,417 --> 00:23:30,102 It's like putting 305 00:23:30,102 --> 00:23:32,483 Gravel into your car and expecting it to run. 306 00:23:32,483 --> 00:23:33,653 It wasn't made for that. 307 00:23:33,653 --> 00:23:35,724 It's going to break a lot of things. 308 00:23:35,784 --> 00:23:38,945 We are made to orbit the center. 309 00:23:38,945 --> 00:23:48,388 And yet the culture drives us continually at every single point, saying, You're the center, you're the center, you're the center. 310 00:23:48,388 --> 00:23:50,629 You'll only be happy in the center. 311 00:23:50,629 --> 00:23:53,374 And that's, of course, a demonic lie. 312 00:23:53,374 --> 00:24:04,478 Because being at the center is where bitterness and anxiety and frustration and anger and envy and fear and lust, all those things flourish when I'm the center of my world. 313 00:24:05,099 --> 00:24:18,224 But when we are orbiting a center, when there's something bigger than us that we are orbiting around, gazing upon, when we're gra when we're gathered into the gravitational 314 00:24:18,224 --> 00:24:22,196 field of something bigger than us, that's where freedom is. 315 00:24:22,196 --> 00:24:23,407 That's where peace is. 316 00:24:23,407 --> 00:24:28,530 That's where rest and hope, love and generosity, the fruits of the Spirit, that's where they're found. 317 00:24:28,530 --> 00:24:32,073 As we orbit the one for whom we're made. 318 00:24:32,073 --> 00:24:34,515 And praise helps us do that. 319 00:24:34,515 --> 00:24:50,486 Praising the Lord, speaking his excellencies to our souls or to one another, praise helps to orient us around the center of God in Christ and takes us out of the center, which is 320 00:24:50,486 --> 00:24:51,336 our joy. 321 00:24:51,336 --> 00:24:53,067 You don't want to be at the center. 322 00:24:53,067 --> 00:24:54,427 You don't want to be at the center. 323 00:24:54,427 --> 00:24:55,627 I don't want to be at the center. 324 00:24:55,627 --> 00:24:58,688 And yet we keep trying to get back in there. 325 00:24:58,828 --> 00:25:00,348 But that's where death is. 326 00:25:00,348 --> 00:25:01,639 That's where the gravity is. 327 00:25:01,639 --> 00:25:03,459 All the gravity presses on the center. 328 00:25:03,459 --> 00:25:05,150 And we stand there and think, this is great. 329 00:25:05,150 --> 00:25:07,050 I want everybody to I want to be the very center. 330 00:25:07,050 --> 00:25:10,211 And we're just going to be crushed by the gravity. 331 00:25:10,211 --> 00:25:15,032 We're meant to orbit the Lord, and praise, praise helps us to do that. 332 00:25:15,052 --> 00:25:21,086 Third, praise is our deepest pleasure because it sets our eyes on. 333 00:25:21,106 --> 00:25:22,486 Reality. 334 00:25:22,487 --> 00:25:23,898 It sets our eyes on reality. 335 00:25:23,898 --> 00:25:26,109 Now, maybe some of you, this isn't true. 336 00:25:26,109 --> 00:25:31,502 You're not all wearing glasses as I am, but you have these little floaters in your eyes, which you can see sometimes. 337 00:25:31,502 --> 00:25:36,455 Like just little like clear things that float around, and you guys are thinking, wow, he's got a problem. 338 00:25:36,455 --> 00:25:36,875 No, no. 339 00:25:36,875 --> 00:25:38,796 Some of you know what I'm talking about. 340 00:25:38,796 --> 00:25:41,658 There's little floaters that are floating around in your eyes. 341 00:25:41,658 --> 00:25:45,520 And if you pay attention to them, it can be really distracting. 342 00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:47,221 And you're like, it's just, it's always there. 343 00:25:47,221 --> 00:25:48,658 It's always moving around. 344 00:25:48,658 --> 00:25:52,681 And if you're focusing on them, it's going to be frustrating. 345 00:25:52,681 --> 00:25:56,633 But if you say, I'm just going to look at life, I'm going to look at what's around me. 346 00:25:56,633 --> 00:25:57,901 I'm going to look at reality. 347 00:25:57,901 --> 00:25:59,315 I'm going to look at the people I love. 348 00:25:59,315 --> 00:26:01,966 I'm going to look at the world that's beautiful around me. 349 00:26:01,986 --> 00:26:03,747 Those floaters just kind of disappear. 350 00:26:03,747 --> 00:26:04,728 You don't think about them. 351 00:26:04,728 --> 00:26:06,008 They're not there. 352 00:26:06,189 --> 00:26:08,670 In a similar way, I'm not saying one-to-one. 353 00:26:08,670 --> 00:26:14,878 In a similar way, the pain, the hardship, the sorrow, the loss, the difficulties. 354 00:26:14,878 --> 00:26:22,582 The the anxieties and the this is so important, the stressors of this life, they're like these floaters. 355 00:26:23,062 --> 00:26:24,343 Not in the sense that they're meaningless. 356 00:26:24,343 --> 00:26:30,567 I'm not saying everything's meaningless like that, but in the sense that they're not what we're supposed to be looking at. 357 00:26:30,567 --> 00:26:32,888 They're not ultimate reality. 358 00:26:32,888 --> 00:26:35,049 They're not the main thing. 359 00:26:35,049 --> 00:26:44,566 And praise helps us look past the floaters of anxiety and this situation, that situation, this pain, that look. 360 00:26:44,566 --> 00:26:50,071 Pass them upon what is reality, upon the one for whom we are made. 361 00:26:50,071 --> 00:27:01,280 Praise gathers us up into the song of heaven so that we can see the hardships of this life, not as false and meaningless, but as rightly ordered around the center. 362 00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:06,063 So for all these reasons, praise is not, I guess I gotta do it. 363 00:27:06,063 --> 00:27:13,169 No, it is our joy, it is our pleasure, it is, it is, it is what our souls are made for. 364 00:27:13,529 --> 00:27:14,810 Secondly, though. 365 00:27:14,902 --> 00:27:19,585 Praise is not for God's sake, but ours. 366 00:27:19,585 --> 00:27:22,046 You've you've maybe heard this, you've maybe thought this. 367 00:27:22,046 --> 00:27:24,487 Boy, all these calls to praise the Lord. 368 00:27:24,487 --> 00:27:31,551 Maybe God's kind of unconfident in himself and and and egotistical and he needs people to kind of praise him. 369 00:27:31,551 --> 00:27:35,693 That's a that's a shallow God, isn't it, who needs a lot of praise. 370 00:27:36,254 --> 00:27:38,635 But that that's the broken way to think about this. 371 00:27:38,635 --> 00:27:45,008 Think it imagine if oxygen were sentient, if oxygen were a person. 372 00:27:45,662 --> 00:27:55,229 Okay, would oxygen be vain or egotistical or unconfident in its own goodness if it said, You need to breathe me. 373 00:27:55,229 --> 00:27:56,790 You need to breathe me. 374 00:27:56,790 --> 00:27:59,912 Are you gonna say, phew, oxygen, always thinking about yourself? 375 00:27:59,912 --> 00:28:00,883 You're so egotistical. 376 00:28:00,883 --> 00:28:06,637 You want me to just breathe you and and thinking that's oxygen saying, I'm so great. 377 00:28:06,637 --> 00:28:13,301 No, we are we will die a painful death if we don't breathe oxygen. 378 00:28:13,301 --> 00:28:14,440 We must 379 00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:15,511 Breathe oxygen. 380 00:28:15,511 --> 00:28:16,871 We're made for it. 381 00:28:16,871 --> 00:28:23,034 So if oxygen were to say, breathe me, oxygen's not trying to build up its own ego. 382 00:28:23,034 --> 00:28:26,995 Oxygen is loving us by saying, You've got to breathe me. 383 00:28:26,995 --> 00:28:28,256 You are going to die. 384 00:28:28,256 --> 00:28:29,516 Breathe me. 385 00:28:29,516 --> 00:28:32,497 That's oxygen's love for us. 386 00:28:33,038 --> 00:28:35,619 So too, you see where this is going. 387 00:28:35,719 --> 00:28:39,000 We are made to live on God alone. 388 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:40,421 We are made for Him. 389 00:28:40,421 --> 00:28:42,842 Your soul is made for Him. 390 00:28:42,842 --> 00:28:43,902 Every 391 00:28:44,118 --> 00:28:54,042 Brokenness inside of us is because in one way or another, we've put fuel other than God into a vehicle made to run on God alone. 392 00:28:54,042 --> 00:29:00,725 We've tried to eat something other than God, which is when we're made to feast upon him alone. 393 00:29:00,725 --> 00:29:07,938 And so when he says, praise my name, he's not saying, I'm so, you know, needy that I need you to praise me. 394 00:29:07,938 --> 00:29:11,049 He's saying, your soul is dying. 395 00:29:11,049 --> 00:29:12,389 Praise me. 396 00:29:12,390 --> 00:29:13,492 You must. 397 00:29:13,492 --> 00:29:24,049 You must enter into this living, receiving, treasuring, and singing of my excellency, because that's what you are made for. 398 00:29:24,049 --> 00:29:30,768 So praising him is not for him, as if we would take a breath and say, There, oxygen, you happy now? 399 00:29:30,768 --> 00:29:31,484 Are you happy? 400 00:29:31,484 --> 00:29:32,275 I breathed. 401 00:29:32,275 --> 00:29:33,816 No, no, no. 402 00:29:33,816 --> 00:29:40,080 Our praise of God is our deepest joy because it's our life, it's our spiritual respiration. 403 00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:43,462 We will suffocate spiritually. 404 00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:52,958 If we are not praising God, we will suffocate spiritually if we're not praising God, if we're not saying hallelujah. 405 00:29:52,958 --> 00:30:04,006 So that then moves to one more point I want to clarify before we move to our final point, which is all of creation as having hallelujah as its goal. 406 00:30:04,067 --> 00:30:06,168 This is listen to this. 407 00:30:06,188 --> 00:30:11,993 Hallelujah, this word we've been talking about, praise the Lord, this thing we've been talking about. 408 00:30:11,993 --> 00:30:13,206 It is impossible. 409 00:30:13,206 --> 00:30:17,329 Possible apart from the crucified and risen Jesus. 410 00:30:17,329 --> 00:30:21,011 There is no praise the Lord apart from Christ. 411 00:30:21,011 --> 00:30:26,615 There is no hallelujah apart from Jesus slain and raised up again. 412 00:30:26,615 --> 00:30:27,706 Well, how is that? 413 00:30:27,706 --> 00:30:29,257 How can I say that? 414 00:30:30,038 --> 00:30:35,481 Because praise the Lord, praise Yahweh, hallelujah. 415 00:30:35,481 --> 00:30:38,903 It is a call to praise a particular person. 416 00:30:38,904 --> 00:30:42,598 It's not just praise, it's praise. 417 00:30:42,598 --> 00:30:57,389 Yahweh, praise this God, praise the God of this Bible, praise the God who makes himself known here, and that God will be known in no other way than in his slain and risen Son. 418 00:30:57,389 --> 00:31:04,454 Crucified and risen Jesus is the final and defining face of God. 419 00:31:04,494 --> 00:31:10,098 And now that Christ has come, you cannot, we cannot think of God. 420 00:31:10,098 --> 00:31:11,889 Apart from the slain and risen Christ. 421 00:31:11,889 --> 00:31:14,130 His face is Christ. 422 00:31:14,130 --> 00:31:16,781 Before the coming of Christ, he wasn't known. 423 00:31:16,781 --> 00:31:24,724 It's as if God was standing with his back to us or just the side of his face, and it was enough to say, praise the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 424 00:31:24,724 --> 00:31:38,490 But now that Christ has come and made himself known in his death and resurrection, there is no such thing as praising Yahweh apart from knowing him in the slain and risen Jesus 425 00:31:38,490 --> 00:31:39,530 Christ. 426 00:31:39,860 --> 00:31:49,035 Which means when we say hallelujah, praise the Lord, we're ultimately calling ourselves and others to know Christ. 427 00:31:49,155 --> 00:31:53,998 That word, hallelujah, praise the Lord, has embedded in it. 428 00:31:53,998 --> 00:32:00,821 Know Christ, know who God is in the slain and risen Jesus. 429 00:32:01,202 --> 00:32:08,682 So, in that sense, if I've said hallelujah is the goal of our souls, we also have to realize that. 430 00:32:08,682 --> 00:32:13,364 Hallelujah has an evangelistic bent toward it. 431 00:32:13,425 --> 00:32:24,851 To be able to say hallelujah implies I'm calling myself and others to praise God as he's known in Jesus, which means they need to know God as he's known in Jesus. 432 00:32:24,851 --> 00:32:28,313 If they're going to praise the Lord, they need to know the Lord they're praising. 433 00:32:28,493 --> 00:32:33,916 And so hallelujah includes this element of making him known. 434 00:32:33,916 --> 00:32:36,348 And now you might think, oh, well, I'm not good at that. 435 00:32:36,348 --> 00:32:37,622 You know, I'm not good at 436 00:32:37,622 --> 00:32:39,282 Telling other people about Jesus. 437 00:32:39,282 --> 00:32:43,784 We just had Ryan here last week and he's a missionary and he can do that sort of thing. 438 00:32:44,064 --> 00:32:52,046 But here's what I'd say: the way we make Jesus known to others so that they can praise him is just by praising him. 439 00:32:52,346 --> 00:32:55,527 Our praise of the Lord is our making him known. 440 00:32:55,527 --> 00:32:57,567 You don't have to do anything more than that. 441 00:32:57,567 --> 00:33:00,048 How do you make known how good the meal was? 442 00:33:00,048 --> 00:33:03,019 Just say, boy, you the pizza at this place, you've got to try it. 443 00:33:03,019 --> 00:33:04,269 It's delicious. 444 00:33:04,269 --> 00:33:07,048 Or the movie, boy, you won't just wait for the end. 445 00:33:07,048 --> 00:33:08,989 You're gonna be amazed by what happens at the end. 446 00:33:08,989 --> 00:33:11,159 That's how you're telling people about the movie. 447 00:33:11,159 --> 00:33:12,261 You're just praising. 448 00:33:12,261 --> 00:33:13,782 You're just talking about it. 449 00:33:13,782 --> 00:33:18,144 How does how does a football fan praise his team or tell you about his team? 450 00:33:18,144 --> 00:33:19,705 Well, it's gonna be very clear, right? 451 00:33:19,705 --> 00:33:26,448 Everything he's wearing, the way he makes time for it, like he's making that known to you just by praising his team. 452 00:33:26,949 --> 00:33:33,062 We make Christ known, not through some anxious, fiddly, well, maybe I can tell you something. 453 00:33:33,062 --> 00:33:36,886 I don't know, I'll you know, this nervous evangelism make. 454 00:33:36,886 --> 00:33:40,768 Christ known by praising him to the people around you. 455 00:33:40,768 --> 00:33:41,668 Let me. 456 00:33:42,108 --> 00:33:45,266 I have hope because Christ is risen. 457 00:33:45,266 --> 00:33:47,591 I want to tell you how much hope I have. 458 00:33:47,591 --> 00:33:51,752 I have peace because I belong to a Savior. 459 00:33:52,233 --> 00:33:54,414 How do you get through this situation? 460 00:33:54,414 --> 00:34:00,876 Because I belong to one who died and rose again, who's the best thing I've ever seen, ever known in my whole life. 461 00:34:00,937 --> 00:34:03,067 We make him known by praising him. 462 00:34:03,067 --> 00:34:04,808 So hallelujah. 463 00:34:04,904 --> 00:34:11,656 Is a call to know God in Christ, but hallelujah is also making God known in Christ. 464 00:34:11,656 --> 00:34:17,267 And it's unto this that we're called in our life and in all of history. 465 00:34:17,267 --> 00:34:19,418 And that's where we're going to end today. 466 00:34:19,478 --> 00:34:21,139 All it hallelujah. 467 00:34:21,139 --> 00:34:33,882 Praise the Lord, is not merely the goal of the Psalms, it's not merely the goal of our souls, it is also the goal of all creation, all of history. 468 00:34:33,980 --> 00:34:41,215 Everything God is doing and has done is coming to the point of proclaiming hallelujah. 469 00:34:41,395 --> 00:34:43,777 Let me give you a place where we see that. 470 00:34:43,777 --> 00:34:46,678 Sa Phili Philippians two. 471 00:34:47,499 --> 00:34:48,570 This is well known. 472 00:34:48,570 --> 00:34:51,182 We read this a lot, but I'm gonna read it for you again. 473 00:34:51,182 --> 00:35:00,107 Philippians two, this passage pictures for us the shape of all history, the shape of all reality. 474 00:35:00,408 --> 00:35:03,688 Philippians chapter two, verses nine through. 475 00:35:03,688 --> 00:35:04,008 Eleven. 476 00:35:04,008 --> 00:35:05,720 I'll I'll start in verse six. 477 00:35:05,720 --> 00:35:08,501 But just you can either turn there or just listen with me. 478 00:35:09,442 --> 00:35:20,940 Actually, verse five, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be 479 00:35:20,940 --> 00:35:32,980 grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself. 480 00:35:32,980 --> 00:35:38,172 By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 481 00:35:38,172 --> 00:35:51,305 Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under 482 00:35:51,305 --> 00:35:59,407 the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 483 00:35:59,407 --> 00:36:01,550 Now, when that text says Lord, 484 00:36:01,888 --> 00:36:08,621 Paul is drawing upon a passage in Isaiah 45 where the Lord in view is Yahweh. 485 00:36:08,641 --> 00:36:18,655 So even though the word here in Greek is the normal word for Lord, Kyrias, Paul is drawing upon an Old Testament text where Yahweh is being referenced. 486 00:36:18,655 --> 00:36:25,728 So what Paul is saying here is every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus Christ is Yahweh. 487 00:36:25,908 --> 00:36:31,186 He is the Lord, and that will be to the glory. 488 00:36:31,186 --> 00:36:33,286 of God the Father. 489 00:36:33,567 --> 00:36:45,750 This, Christian, is the pattern that every moment and every molecule, every memory and every experience, every person and every passion in all of history is moving to this 490 00:36:45,750 --> 00:36:46,670 moment. 491 00:36:46,670 --> 00:36:50,031 Everything is moving to this moment. 492 00:36:50,031 --> 00:36:55,232 And everything we could say then is being conformed to hallelujah. 493 00:36:55,353 --> 00:37:01,218 All of reality, if you play back the recording of all reality, ever listen to a 494 00:37:01,218 --> 00:37:03,600 Slow, slow motion recording. 495 00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:04,611 You can't hear what it's saying. 496 00:37:04,611 --> 00:37:06,442 It just sounds like sound. 497 00:37:06,442 --> 00:37:12,828 And if you slow it way down, it just sounds like it just points, little points. 498 00:37:12,828 --> 00:37:14,949 You have no idea what's being said. 499 00:37:15,390 --> 00:37:18,953 Imagine every one of those as a second in history. 500 00:37:18,953 --> 00:37:20,234 The whole thing played out. 501 00:37:20,234 --> 00:37:24,577 Some of them are deep and weighty and sorrowful, some of them are high, but you're like, what is going on? 502 00:37:24,577 --> 00:37:26,058 Just all this sound. 503 00:37:26,599 --> 00:37:30,832 When you put all the sound recording of history together. 504 00:37:30,954 --> 00:37:42,488 And you play it back as it will be played back, it will say, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, praise God in the slain and risen Jesus. 505 00:37:42,488 --> 00:37:45,379 That's what all this is saying from the beginning to the end. 506 00:37:45,379 --> 00:37:47,119 That's what your whole life is saying. 507 00:37:47,119 --> 00:37:49,120 That's what everything is saying. 508 00:37:49,140 --> 00:37:50,320 Hallelujah. 509 00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:54,102 Praise Yahweh as we know him in Jesus Christ. 510 00:37:54,102 --> 00:37:55,922 And you get a picture of that here. 511 00:37:56,490 --> 00:37:59,583 First, there's a summons to praise, just like the Psalms of Praise. 512 00:37:59,583 --> 00:38:00,984 There's a summons to praise. 513 00:38:00,984 --> 00:38:01,854 Where? 514 00:38:01,854 --> 00:38:03,436 Creation itself. 515 00:38:03,436 --> 00:38:09,270 Creation, just the being of creation, is a summons to praise the Creator. 516 00:38:09,270 --> 00:38:15,726 Just by saying, Let there be, God summons all of creation to praise the one who said, Let there be. 517 00:38:15,726 --> 00:38:20,530 So the beginning, just the fact that anything exists, is a summons to praise. 518 00:38:20,530 --> 00:38:24,933 And then we find the reasons to praise laid out here. 519 00:38:25,010 --> 00:38:25,870 He 520 00:38:25,898 --> 00:38:36,634 Humbled himself, being equal to God, he humbled himself by becoming obedient, being born in the likeness of men, taking on the form of a servant, becoming obedient even to the 521 00:38:36,634 --> 00:38:40,626 point of death, and then being raised up from the dead. 522 00:38:40,626 --> 00:38:43,908 That is the reason to praise the Lord. 523 00:38:43,908 --> 00:38:53,373 All the reasons we could lay out, the ones we saw in Psalm 146, he's protector of widows, father to the fatherless, he takes care of the needy, he performs righteousness, 524 00:38:53,393 --> 00:38:55,080 everything we could ever say. 525 00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:59,091 About why we praise the Lord is bound up in this. 526 00:38:59,312 --> 00:39:10,116 Christ takes on flesh, bears the sins of his people, dies in their place, rises up again, gathers them to himself as their Lord. 527 00:39:10,116 --> 00:39:14,557 The crucified and risen Jesus and the gospel of his cross. 528 00:39:14,557 --> 00:39:18,179 This is the reason we praise God. 529 00:39:18,179 --> 00:39:24,787 At all every other reason is built into that one, because Christ is the embodied character of Yahweh. 530 00:39:24,787 --> 00:39:37,877 And then finally we see here that all of creation is gathered to this final point, this summons to praise in verses 9 to 11, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. 531 00:39:37,877 --> 00:39:47,103 And you know what you can put in there, not just angels and demons and humans, every memory, the knee of every memory in your life. 532 00:39:47,163 --> 00:39:54,595 Right now, there are perhaps memories that stand brazen in their opposition to God. 533 00:39:54,599 --> 00:39:56,590 Look at me, you'll never get over me. 534 00:39:56,590 --> 00:39:57,911 I'll never bow. 535 00:39:57,911 --> 00:39:59,562 You'll never get over this pain. 536 00:39:59,562 --> 00:40:01,453 You'll never get over that you did this. 537 00:40:01,453 --> 00:40:03,814 You'll never get over this situation. 538 00:40:03,814 --> 00:40:07,716 The knee of every memory will bow to Christ. 539 00:40:07,716 --> 00:40:12,039 Every memory in your life will confess him as Lord. 540 00:40:12,039 --> 00:40:15,841 Every experience in your life will confess him as Lord. 541 00:40:15,841 --> 00:40:24,447 Every moment in your life will bow its knee to Jesus Christ and say, He is Lord. 542 00:40:24,805 --> 00:40:27,626 That is the moment that is before us. 543 00:40:27,626 --> 00:40:40,692 Every moment and molecule in our lives and in all creation will confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 544 00:40:40,692 --> 00:40:42,552 That is where this is going. 545 00:40:42,552 --> 00:40:51,376 That is what our lives are for, to be folded in to this hallelujah, to play their part in that broken up sound wave that we don't hear yet. 546 00:40:51,376 --> 00:40:53,713 We can't hear it yet, but we play our part. 547 00:40:53,713 --> 00:41:02,097 And when it's played back, the depths and the heights will all be part of this hallelujah to God in Christ. 548 00:41:02,878 --> 00:41:15,265 So to release our little dreams and goals and trophies and kingdoms and to be joined to this great hallelujah. 549 00:41:15,265 --> 00:41:17,746 That's the purpose of our existence. 550 00:41:17,887 --> 00:41:22,799 And maybe it includes your our goals and dreams and trophies, maybe it does, but to just say, 551 00:41:22,877 --> 00:41:24,878 Look, this is this is what I'm here for. 552 00:41:24,878 --> 00:41:31,637 To be into this, to praise this one, to be gathered into this moment for my life. 553 00:41:31,637 --> 00:41:33,371 I mean, our lives are like this. 554 00:41:33,371 --> 00:41:35,482 Our lives are just so fast. 555 00:41:35,482 --> 00:41:40,584 And pray, Lord, may this life, when it's played back, be hallelujah. 556 00:41:40,584 --> 00:41:47,147 Just be praise to your name, so that it can be part of that greater word that you're speaking in all creation. 557 00:41:47,147 --> 00:41:51,953 To sing hallelujah with our hands and our feet and our mouths. 558 00:41:51,953 --> 00:42:01,551 So long as we have the use of them, with our money and our time and our skills, with our weakness and our sorrows and our losses, with our failures and our sufferings and our 559 00:42:01,551 --> 00:42:13,451 brokenness, with our joys and our victories and our blessings, to have all of that say, hallelujah, to praise God and the crucified and risen Jesus with all that we are. 560 00:42:13,451 --> 00:42:15,072 That's what you're made for. 561 00:42:15,072 --> 00:42:16,533 That's what I'm made for. 562 00:42:16,533 --> 00:42:17,824 That's what we're made for. 563 00:42:17,824 --> 00:42:21,777 That's our great joy and our healing and our life. 564 00:42:21,927 --> 00:42:24,019 And the Psalms help us do that. 565 00:42:24,019 --> 00:42:26,660 The Psalms help us do that. 566 00:42:26,660 --> 00:42:33,224 They shape our soul so that in all things we can praise God in the slain and risen Jesus. 567 00:42:33,605 --> 00:42:37,368 And we can embody that together. 568 00:42:37,368 --> 00:42:41,650 We can embody that praise now as we come to this table. 569 00:42:41,650 --> 00:42:43,011 This is part of it. 570 00:42:43,011 --> 00:42:51,683 This this this is this is part of it because in Revelation chapter five, John has a vision that includes. 571 00:42:51,683 --> 00:42:53,514 All of space and time. 572 00:42:53,554 --> 00:43:00,057 And what he sees is the slain and risen Lamb standing at the very center of the throne of God. 573 00:43:00,218 --> 00:43:15,406 And he sees all of angelic and earthly creation, all of the visible and the invisible, all of time and all of space gathered in worshipping orbit around the center of the slain and 574 00:43:15,406 --> 00:43:16,647 risen Lamb. 575 00:43:16,647 --> 00:43:21,061 And that moment is really a visionary expression. 576 00:43:21,061 --> 00:43:23,122 Of what we just read in Philippians. 577 00:43:23,122 --> 00:43:29,123 That moment is a vision of what God is doing and making of all things. 578 00:43:29,123 --> 00:43:38,506 And in a very real way, we here in Sabina, Ohio, are entering into that moment right now. 579 00:43:39,006 --> 00:43:46,768 That moment, because this little wooden table is representing for us the throne of God. 580 00:43:46,788 --> 00:43:50,053 And these elements on this table. 581 00:43:50,053 --> 00:43:59,475 Are picturing for us the Lamb enthroned upon the altar throne of the whole universe, reigning as Lord and God. 582 00:43:59,916 --> 00:44:09,018 And as we come to this table, to this throne, to this Lamb together, we are representatives of the redeemed creation. 583 00:44:09,018 --> 00:44:20,123 We right here, in all of our weakness, we are representatives of the whole redeemed creation, gathering around the throne of the Lamb and praising him. 584 00:44:20,123 --> 00:44:28,815 As we come to his table to take him and to confess with our whole bodies, this one is my savior. 585 00:44:28,815 --> 00:44:31,496 This one is my Lord and my God. 586 00:44:31,496 --> 00:44:33,377 This is the reason I praise him. 587 00:44:33,377 --> 00:44:39,038 The broken body, the spilled blood, the risen one who reigns now from the throne. 588 00:44:39,038 --> 00:44:42,999 This is why I say hallelujah. 589 00:44:42,999 --> 00:44:47,641 And this is why all of creation will be gathered into that hallelujah. 590 00:44:47,641 --> 00:44:49,071 He was slain. 591 00:44:49,287 --> 00:44:52,840 His blood has ransomed a people for God. 592 00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:55,822 And behold, he is alive forevermore. 593 00:44:55,822 --> 00:44:58,043 Worthy is the Lamb. 594 00:44:58,043 --> 00:45:00,925 So let's come and worship him together. 595 00:45:00,925 --> 00:45:04,247 Let me let me pray and then we'll move into this time. 596 00:45:05,408 --> 00:45:09,131 Father, we praise your name. 597 00:45:09,531 --> 00:45:15,315 We praise you as the excellent one, as the one who has given us a savior like no other. 598 00:45:15,315 --> 00:45:17,683 We praise you, Lord Jesus. 599 00:45:17,683 --> 00:45:19,114 There is no one like you. 600 00:45:19,114 --> 00:45:21,336 There is none among the gods. 601 00:45:21,336 --> 00:45:23,558 There's none among the philosophers. 602 00:45:23,558 --> 00:45:28,472 There's none among the entertainers and the rulers and the kings of this world. 603 00:45:28,472 --> 00:45:32,605 There's no one who gives anything as you give it. 604 00:45:32,605 --> 00:45:34,347 There is no one like you. 605 00:45:34,347 --> 00:45:38,440 And we praise you as our Lord and our God and our King and our Savior. 606 00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:46,941 And we thank you, Father, that you are working all things to sum up all things in this Christ. 607 00:45:46,941 --> 00:45:59,968 So that every tongue, every moment, every memory, every experience will confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of your name. 608 00:46:00,489 --> 00:46:02,290 Thank you for that hope, Father. 609 00:46:02,290 --> 00:46:04,251 We praise you in Jesus' name. 610 00:46:04,251 --> 00:46:05,251 Amen. 611 00:46:05,391 --> 00:46:15,677 Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabinah, Ohio, to see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. 612 00:46:15,817 --> 00:46:19,224 Come worship with us on Sundays at 10 a.m. 613 00:46:19,224 --> 00:46:23,170 or visit our website at Kingstreechurch.org.