1 Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.
Hallelujah!!!
Praise the Lord!!!
Isn’t it great to come together to night to Praise the Lord!
To praise him for each other.
To praise him for the baptisms we saw earlier
and to praise him for last night..(I heard it was a great night last night).
Praise the Lord.
And there are many things that we can Praise Him for.
Just think of all the good things that have happened to you, that you can see or are part of your life.
Sometimes when we are experiencing good things in our lives the problem we have is remembering these come from God.
Remember, ‘Everything that is good comes from God’ (James 1:17).
And when things are going well?
When life’s good.
When you think of all the good things God has done.
It’s only natural isn’t it, to praise the Lord?
Why shouldn’t we be celebrating?
Why shouldn’t we be praising the Lord, as Psalm 150 calls us to do?
Why shouldn’t we be doing it every Sunday?
Every day in our homes, workplaces, schools and uni’s, even in McDonalds?
We should never stop remembering that EVERYTHING GOOD COME FROM GOD
Well if you are anything like me,
there are some days that I just don’t feel like it…
Ever felt like that? (pause)
There are some days when I feel;
run down,
warn out,
battered,
exhausted,
that the entire world is against me
and nothing seems to go right.
Not only do I not feel like praising God.
But often during these times I feel that God has let me down.
Ever felt like that?
Feeling that God has forgotten me
and I feel deserted.
So instead of Praising God,
from the bottom of my heart, I just want to scream at Him.
Asking him,
WHY has he left me alone?
Why am I stuck in this situation?
And God what are you going about it?
What are you going to do for me?
Anyone have moments like these??
Well your not alone check out some of the other Psalms like Psalm 22, which begins:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silenced.
Rather than wanting to praise God,
you may feel that He needs to be questioned,
even be cursed!
Or At least He needs to prove himself that He deserves your praise, because at that point in our lives,
we have forgotten not only about all the good things that God has done and will do for us,
even though many of them are right under our noses,
it is times like these that we can’t see a single thing to praise God for.
Yet Psalm 150 says….Come Praise the Lord
So why should we Praise the Lord?…………
Do we just do it blindly, hoping that if he will do something good for us?
Well verse 2 says he has already done some good, something great for us?
Listen again to verse 2.
Praise him.
Praise him for his acts of power!
Praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Or as the New King James version says
Praise Him for His mighty acts!
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
You might be still saying hold on a moment.
I don’t see his acts of power in MY life.
I don’t see his acts of power in this world.
People I love are still sick still, still dying.
I don’t have enough money to live on, let alone some left over to enjoy life.
You maybe feeling that some of your relationships are a mess.
So where are these mighty acts?
Where can I find out about these mighty acts?
How can anyone say He is so great?
At this point in time it is precisely the time to step back, to look at the big picture.
Look at Psalm 18 verse 28 that says
“You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.”
Look at the great things has God done?
And where do we find this?
In your own life,
looking at our own lives,
particularly at this point in time
we are likely to find a few great times
times worth praising the Lord for.
Times when we have been desperate and He has helped us out through a friend, through a miracle.
Some of us may need to look at a more reliable sources to find out what good things God has done and will do for us.
Something that doesn’t just look at my individual life or your individual life, but answers the question?
What great things has God done for all Christians, in the lives of others, the entire Christian community?
That source is the Bible.
In scripture, we see when it comes to God’s mighty acts, two great themes stand out.
The first you can see if you read the first few chapters of Genesis, which is summarised in the book of Revelation, which says
You(God) created all great things (Rev 4:11).
That’s right God created and continues to create the entire world.
This means not only has he created the land,the trees, the birds, the mountains,
but he also has created you and every living being.
And what is even more amazing he continues to create each of us.
The creation of you didn’t stop the day you were born, God has continued to develop you and mould you in many ways.
But not only did he create us, he created us in a special way.
He created all of us in his image own image (Gen 9:6)
this is the first of God’s mighty acts.
So as you walk around, look at the world, especially the great things of the world and you can see God at work for you.
He is providing you with food, with beauty, with enjoyment, with the things we need every day.
He makes it not only through nature but also through the gifts and talents of other humans.
Look at what God has created, look at yourself, your friends, nature, the sun and moon and as you do say God has created all this!!.
Amazing isn’t it!!
It is something we can praise the Lord for!!
But there is a problem.
But there is still a problem isn’t there?
When we look at the world we don’t always see beauty, we don’t always see great enjoyable things.
God’s natural resources are damaged.
There are even times when we look at ourselves and say…”I don’t think that my life is perfect. It is not
so beautiful, my body it ain’t so great”
So how can I praise the Lord?
Surely if God created it….everything should be great….be perfect.
So why isn’t it?
In the world there are wars…tragedies…disasters…
and in my own life some parts of it are ok, some even great.
But there are parts of my life that have got problems.
So how can I praise the Lord?
Why?
Because despite God creating the world, creating you in His own image, everything has been corrupted by sin.
And sin brings us discomfort.
Sin not only causes discomforts in our lives and in the world.
Sin also stop us, it closes off our relationship with God.
Sin left untreated will stop us from entering heaven.
This brings us to another great act of God.
What he does about sin!!!
To deal with sin God sent Jesus into our world.
He sent you Jesus.
Jesus does at least two things for us
He is here for us when we are going through difficulties, when life is tough.
In fact he comes to help us in these times of troubles
Listen to Jesus in Matthew 11:28,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”
and in John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
And this is why in 2 Corinthians 1:3, Paul says:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles
We can Praise God for being with us through all our troubles!!
But Jesus does something even more spectacular for us.
Remember sin left untreated prevents us from getting into heaven.
The problem is that God has standards.
Standards which mean to get into heaven we must be perfect.
Free from all sin to gain eternal life
Yet we are not, and no matter how hard we try,
even the best of us can never get rid of sin from our lives.
Instead of rejecting us.
Instead of God saying well Richard your not good enough so get out of here, there is no place for you here,
God says "I love you. I want you in heaven with me"
He shows his love for us by sending His own son Jesus into the world for you and me not only to be with us through all our difficulties, but so we can get into heaven.
This is achieved by Jesus suffering, dieing and being raised again for you and for me.
That’s how much God loves us.
That’s how he saves me, He saves you.
How he makes us good enough for heaven.
So instead of being excluded from the life in heaven he offers us this eternal life.
As Paul says to the Colossians
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation (Col 1:21-22)
In God’s eyes you are now considered Holy, that’s something to Praise God for.
As Jesus says in John 12:47 “For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it”.
This is why we can really praise the Lord
Praise the Lord for his mighty acts, his greatness.
God not only creates us, but he also cleanses and purifies us so we can get into heaven.
He makes us pure by forgiving us for all our sins, not just once, but frequently like when we participate in Holy Communion, when we eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus.
But we don’t just praise the Lord because he has saved us.
We don’t just do it privately so only God and I can hear and see.
We praise God publicly, like tonight in worship.
Because Jesus was raise from the dead not just for one ethnic group, one type of person but for all living things.
So no wonder we can say with the Psalmist let everything that breathes Praise the Lord.
I am not saying that everyone will be saved, but that Jesus was crucified and raised so that all might be saved.
It is true that some may reject Jesus, but the opportunity exists for everyone to be saved not by their own mighty acts,
but by God’s mighty act that occurs through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
We praise Him publicly so the whole world can see and hear how good God is!!
That God loves them.
And this may explain the diverse range of instruments and ways of Praising the Lord…the Psalmist mentions in verses 3 to 5.
Look at them
trumpets
harps, lyres,
tambourines,
strings and flutes,
dancing,
and loud clanging cymbals.
Individually they make their own noise.
Their own statement of Praising the Lord.
Some of them you may like,
some of them you may prefer did not exist.
Some of you may prefer sweet pleasant sounds over loud noises,
but just like every congregation,
just like the body of Christ,
as Paul discusses in first Corinthians,
there are many parts,
many different types of people, some quiet, some loud, some introvert and some extrovert.
All working together to make a united sound and vision that together Praises the Lord.
This praise is something that can be seen and heard by the world.
All living creatures can see and hear praise as they come into contact with Christians who are praising God.
So when you praise the Lord with the personality and the gifts God has given you,
you are proclaiming to the world that God has also done a mighty acts for you.
So Praise the Lord
Praise the Lord for his mighty acts
for what he has done for you
for what he has done for everyone you know
Praise him so that others may Praise him.
Amen
