Rev. Terence Gray: Good morning. Sometimes when you go to the hospital you just see the doctor but then there are other times when you go to the hospital when you see the doctor but the doctor is accompanied by residents. The distinction is some hospitals exist just to provide care and there's no problem with that, but some hospitals exist to train up the next generation of doctors and Ward Church wants to be the kind of church that trains up the next generation of ministry leaders and pastors. Few years ago we started a pastoral residency program. We've already graduated two residents through that program and this morning we're introducing our newest pastoral resident Noah Grimm and his wife Abby Grimm.
You give them a warm War Church welcome. They both have grown up here in the area so they're not strangers to the area. Noah in particular grew up at Cornerstone EPC which is a daughter church of Ward Church, Ward Planet, Cornerstone years ago and Noah experienced ministry through there. His father is a pastor at Cornerstone EPC. He's finishing up at Westminster Theological Seminary with hopes of going into the pastorate.
His wife, Abby, is a kindergarten teacher in Brighton as well, and so she has her own gifts and calling, and we look forward to spending time with them over the course of the next couple of years. And so we see them today, love on them, take them out to coffee, invite them over for dinner and let's just just cover them with love and nourish them as they experience this residency here at Ward Church. Noah, the pulpit is yours my friend. Go for it. Alrighty.
Speaker 2: Well, as pastor Terence said, my name is Noah Grimm, and my wife and I are just excited to be able to have the opportunity to serve and be in community with you all for the next two years. But right now, in this moment, I'm most excited to be able to bring the word for us here today. So as we start our time, the first question I wanna ask is this, what is praising the Lord? Or maybe even more personally, what does praising the Lord look like in your life? As we've been doing here at Ward over this summer, we have been looking at the Psalms, reflecting on their truths, the emotions that they address.
And now we're at the very end of the book. We're at the very last Psalm, and we are going to be seeing how this Psalm attempts to answer what praising the Lord looks like. Growing up, my dad was a missionary. And so with him being a missionary, we lived in The States, but he would often go with my grandparents to Bolivia to support and equip their fellow in country missionaries. And so when I was in fifth grade, my sister and I, along with my dad and my grandparents, we went to Bolivia for the first time.
And that's where we met Lorenzo. Lorenzo was a parrot. He was this bright, colorful, giant macaw parrot, and living in the mission house in the backyard, he had learned different phrases being at the house. But there's one phrase that I remember him reciting all day, and I thought it was literally the coolest thing ever as a 10 year old to have this bird just be able to say whatever or anything you said to him. And so he would always say this phrase.
And I remember whether you said it to him and you paired it back, if it was a morning wake up, a midday reminder, or an evening farewell, this is what he would always recite. It was like a song stuck in his head. And I'll tell you what he said in a little while. Because if we think about it, we aren't Lorenzo. Not just because we aren't just this giant colorful bird, but because for many of us, our lives are not filled with song, worship, and praise all the time.
More often than not, we find ourselves on life support when it comes to worshiping God. And that might be due to a multitude of different circumstances, whether it be to hardship, mourning, or grief, whether it be because you feel yourself distant from the Lord because of some undisclosed sin or because of the busyness in your life, Or maybe you've been fixated upon other things to worship, whether it be sports, relationships, or geopolitics, or maybe you just walked in the ward today not knowing if you had anything left to give praise to the Lord for. And if that's you in some way as you came here, know that this message is for you as much as it is for everyone else. And if you remember nothing else, I want you to remember this command from Psalm one fifty. It says, hallelujah, give praise to the Lord.
And for the rest of our time, we'll be considering these different questions, the where, the when, the how, the who, and the why we should praise the Lord. And that will help us answer what praising the Lord looks like according to the Bible. But before we get into all that, let's pray one more time. Lord, as we come to you right now, as this time is set apart to seeing the truths of your word and allowing your gospel, your glory, your story to come out, I ask that ultimately, Lord, you prepare our hearts. I ask that you move me aside for the sake of your word and your truth.
But anything that I say that is not pleasing in your sight, I ask that it is brought to nothing. And ultimately, Lord, that you get the glory through this time and the truth of your gospel. Ask all these things in your precious, holy, and matchless name. Amen. So our first question, where should we praise the Lord?
And I think our author makes it pretty easy for us to understand as he says in verse one. He says, praise him in the sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Our author gives us two places that we're to worship God, in the sanctuary and in the mighty heavens. And I think it's important for us right now to recognize in this moment here now, we are worshiping.
We are praising God in his sanctuary. We are in the congregation of the kingdom of God. God in his loving kindness also has tangibly reminded us as a church of what it means to be a part of this congregation as Farmington Hills is worshiping for their last Sunday in their location. There's a great deal and sense of emotion today for them, whether it be loss, sadness, or grief. And we, alongside them, feel those same emotions, yet we do not mourn this change without hope, without praise, because God still has his hand at that church.
The gospel will still be proclaimed in Farmington Hills. Ultimately, the truth is the congregation of the kingdom of God. The people of God is not limited to the walls of Ward Church. It's God's place. It's His set apart place.
It's the first place He has chosen for His people to hear, proclaim, and worship Him. That's why our psalmist says this first, and that's why we can worship God here at Ward Church. God can be worshipped at Hill City, and God can be worshipped anywhere. Yet at the same time, we can't get our verse confused. The psalmist is not saying that we are to only worship God at church.
Actually, he's saying that we should worship God everywhere. Now you might be saying, Noah, I don't know what version you are reading, but verse one does not say everywhere in Psalm one fifty. Here's the thing. The word the author uses for heavens in verse one is the same word used in Genesis one when God is creating the heavens and the earth. That word can often be translated as firmament.
The point of this word in Psalm one fifty is to be a hyperlink, a callback, a reminder to the reader that who their true creator is, is in everything, in everywhere. Everything on earth and in the sea, on land, in the sky, in the space between declares of its true creator, and therefore, it requires us to praise the Lord. And so practically, where do you praise God? At the same time, are you convinced that you can praise the Lord everywhere? Or do you believe the world's lie that there is a place that is too dark, there is a location that is too remote, that there's a spot of brokenness in your life where God does not deserve to be praised.
The truth of what verse one proclaims is that there is no corner of our lives that is too dark. There is no location that is too remote, no hole that is too deep, that God is not present, and he is not deserving of our praise and worship. Our first point is this, the Lord is to be praised everywhere. Moving to our second point, when should we praise the Lord? What we should understand from the entirety of this Psalm is the fact that the author is arguing for a constant continuous praise of God.
13 times. 13 times in six verses, the author commands the reader to hallelu, meaning to give praise. Further, this verb implies an intense repetitive action. And the fact that this psalm is poetry, it makes it almost rhythmic how he punches the beginning of every line to hallelujah, It's like our author is just fixated upon this command. When I was six years old, my family decided to go to Disney World.
And lovingly, the most memorable part of that trip was our day in Epcot, namely because my parents regrettably told my six year old self that we would be going to the LEGO store that day. So you can only imagine how that day unfolded. After every country we visited, every attraction, every ride, every transition we had, the first thing that came out of my mouth was, can we go to the LEGO store yet? I was fixated upon that one idea. My family and now even my wife have turned this memory into a verb, and they call it epcotting.
Our psalmist is epcotting. He's so focused. He's so intent. He's so driven by the idea of worshiping the Lord that it's the only thing he speaks of doing. The first thing that comes out of his mouth is, hallelujah, give praise to the Lord.
But as I said earlier, we often struggle as humans to worship God. We allow the what's of our lives, our hopes, our actions, our sins, our interest, our failures, our circumstances, all of those things to dictate when we worship the Lord. So ask yourselves, genuinely, when do you worship the Lord throughout your week? Or more practically, outside of this one hour on Sundays, what are you doing with the one hundred and sixty seven hours of the rest of the week that is keeping you from worshiping the Lord? As Christ says in Luke chapter nine, he says, if anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
The call of a Christian is to be a daily living sacrifice, worshiping and serving the Lord. So so far, we've discussed where we should praise God being everywhere. We've discussed when we should praise God being all the time. Now we're going to discuss the how, how we should praise the Lord. If you turn to verses three through five, you'll notice that the psalmist gives us a litany of different instruments to worship and praise God with.
Trumpets, lutes, harps, tambourines, strings, pipes, and cymbals, all while singing and dancing. It's a long list. And at this point, most worship directors start to sweat a bit because they all know that, as we know, there's a great multitude of opinions on how to properly practice praising God. But again, we can't get this Psalm confused. These verses aren't a prescription for how to properly practice praising God, how to worship God.
Rather, they are an illustration. They're a description of how praising the Lord is a part of our human nature. As one commentator notes, he says, music and movement are elements of human creativity. God, in his loving kindness, he has blessed us to be reflections of him. As it says in Genesis chapter one verse 26, he says, then God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness.
The reality of these verses is that no no matter how God has wired you, no matter how he has knit you together as we read in Psalm one thirty nine a few weeks ago, He has given you talents, abilities, gifts, and creativity, all to be able to praise and worship him. The question becomes, how are you using those gifts? That same commentator I noted earlier goes on to point out this sobering reality of these verses, that these elements, they have often been misused in ways that do not honor and worship the Lord. And that's pretty obvious to us in our world today, whether it's found within our music, in media, through our careers and competencies, our athletics and achievements, or our pursuits and posture towards others, so often, so often, we as man, we choose to worship with the godly gifts we've been given. We choose to worship the idols of ourselves and the idols of this world rather than worshiping and honoring the Lord.
How are you using your gifts to worship the Lord in your everyday life? Practically, consider your time here at Ward. On September 13, there will be a ministry fair that will be held that allows all the different ministries at Ward to be put on display and have you engage with them. How may you be able to go and hear the Lord calling you to engage, serve, volunteer, or plug into one of those groups in a way of ultimately worshiping Him. I encourage you to prayerfully consider going to that and seeing how you may be able to worship the Lord through your engagement here at Ward Church over this next year.
How you worship the Lord is not merely dependent upon your musical abilities. Rather, it is on how you are using your gifts and talents that God has given you and your heart posture behind them. If you're still following with our outline, you will see that we've talked about the where being everywhere. We talked about the when meaning all the time. Now we've talked about the how we worship the Lord, is with all that we do.
Now we're going to consider the who, not the band, but who should worship the Lord. Verse six gives us a pretty clear answer. It says, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Beyond this being the newest line in a contemporary Christian song that we just sang, the voice and the claim of the author is profound. He's saying and he's commanding that all things that have breath are to praise God.
The word he uses for breath literally translates all the breath, meaning every man, every woman, and every child. Every bird, every beast, every plant, every tree, every living thing that requires oxygen for to breathe, for their hearts to beat, for their being to function is able to do so because the Lord is the one who created us and who gave us the breath of life. Thinking of our friend Lorenzo, the parrot from Bolivia, he was probably the creature that I think embodied the command of verse six better than any being that I had ever met. Every day, whether morning, afternoon, or night, he would cry out saying, He did that until the day he passed. A bird with a brain literally the size of a walnut was better than anyone that I had ever met in following the command of Psalm one fifty.
Hallelujah. Give praise to the Lord. It's humbling for me to think that even God's creation is often more faithful than I am at worshiping and giving him praise. Maybe this is you here today. Maybe you're here and you have never cried out with praise to the Lord.
Whether that's because you don't believe that God exists, you don't understand who God is, or you don't feel worthy to give him praise. Regardless, The truth is whether you accept it or not, this command is universal. And one day, all living creatures will praise and give God the glory. As Paul says in Philippians chapter two verses nine through 11, he says, therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and on heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The answer to who should give praise to the Lord is a universal reality.
Everything that has breath, Praise the Lord. As we've considered all of these questions, there's one that remains. Why? Why should we give the Lord praise? And the psalmist gives us an answer to why we should praise him in verse two.
That's why I chose to skip it until now because of what the verse says. It says, praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. The psalmist, as he's writing these words, is reflecting on the fact that all of these books declare of God's works and his unmatched greatness. Yet even the psalmist knew when he was writing these words, God's works weren't finished just yet.
Because he knew that one day the Lord would send someone who would not only lead and guide his kingdom, but redeem it. This coming savior would redeem his people from sin and brokenness of this world and from their own hearts. This savior would display the greatest act in all of history by laying down his life and raising again in new life for the sake of his people and his kingdom. His sacrifice was a declaration that it didn't matter wherever, whenever, or however sin, death, and brokenness attempted to gain a foothold in this world, they would never have the final say. And because of this, we worship.
We praise the apostle Paul declaring as the apostle Paul did, declaring that death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? For the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christian, the reason why we worship and praise the Lord is because we have found victory over sin and death through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The question becomes, have you accepted it? As we apply these questions to our lives, we reflect upon all that we have considered here this morning. Further, we have to remember the command of Psalm one fifty, Hallelujah, give praise to the Lord. For those of you who are believers, see how Psalm one fifty is describing what praising the Lord looks like.
That praise and worship is not dependent upon when, where, or how you praise God, but rather it's dependent on why we praise God. So in your daily lives, you should be asking yourselves these simple questions. Where in my day can I worship? When in my day can I worship? How in my day can I worship?
And then tangibly give yourself some goals. In the evening before I go to bed, instead of going to my phone for five to ten minutes, I'm going to pray and thank God for the day that I have had. When I'm working out, instead of listening to random secular music, I'm gonna take that time, and I'm gonna listen to worship music. Consider what the Lord is doing in my life through that week. Maybe further pray with him to see where he is leading you.
On September 13, my family and I were going to go to the ministry fair. We're going to engage in all the different areas that we we want and have interest in. And before we go, we're going to leave with two or three opportunities to say, I'm gonna prayerfully consider this, and how I might be able to engage with this group, plug in with this group, and be more connected in praising the Lord at Ward Church. These are just some of the ways that we can praise and worship God, and some of the ways my wife and I are hoping to do that over these next few weeks. As for those of you who haven't placed your faith in Christ, the reality of verse six will happen.
Everything that has breath will praise the Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ, he will be praised. The question is is are you willing to follow him? If you're curious, you have questions, or you're feeling convicted, I encourage you to come find me after service. I would love to talk.
Or further, go to the connection desk and check out and talk with someone there. My challenge to you today is to not leave here without first talking to someone about where you're at with your walk with Christ. As we end our time, I felt it would be wrong for us not to do it in song. And so we're gonna sing a version of the doxology that I felt was quite fitted fitting for what we've talked about here today. You'll know the first part.
And then the second part, I encourage you to follow along as you can. So if you would, would you stand with me in singing together?
Speaker 3: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below praise him above ye heavenly host Praise father, son, and holy ghost. Praise the father. Praise the son praise the spirit now with us every moment all our days. God be praised.
Yes. God be praised.
Mark Ordus: Let's pray.
Speaker 2: Father, son, and holy spirit, creator, sustainer, and savior, we give you the praise for we have found victory through your son. Hallelujah. Give praise to you. Let our praise be forever in you and your name. And I ask all these things in your precious, holy, and matchless name.
Amen.