00:00:00.000 - 00:00:26.880

Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of two psalms. First the psalm number 113, then the psalm number 150. Praise the Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. From the rising of the Sun to

00:00:26.880 - 00:00:48.640

its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with

00:00:48.640 - 00:01:17.400

princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord. And then the psalm number 150. Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty firmament. Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his

00:01:17.400 - 00:01:45.880

exceeding greatness. Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with timbrel and dance. Praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals. Praise him with loud clashing cymbals. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. And may God bless to us

00:01:45.880 - 00:02:18.800

these readings from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I'd like to think with you this morning about praising God. The praise of God is the enthusiastic adoration of God. It is the active display of the joy of faith.

00:02:18.800 - 00:02:42.560

And I don't see much about it in our time. Of course, in almost every Christian group or fellowship of which you're our part, you will hear someone say at one time or another, "Praise Lord." And I'm sure that that word is said with real enthusiasm and feeling, yet at the same time it's said almost as easily as one

00:02:42.560 - 00:03:08.040

might say, "Pass the salt." The fact of the matter is, the praise of God is not simply the mouthing of those words, "Praise the Lord." Praise, as it's defined in Scripture, is the active display of the joy of believing. And I don't see much of that about us. One of our captains of industry said a few years

00:03:08.040 - 00:03:39.000

back that when most people arrive at the leadership level in business, they are 100% enthusiastic and 0% experienced. Then he said after they serve for a while and come to the time of their retirement, one finds at the end of their period of work that they are 0% enthusiasm and 100% experienced. The

00:03:39.000 - 00:04:06.800

best men and the best women, he said, are those who have a balanced mixture of both experience and enthusiasm. Well, that's what praise is. Praise is a balanced mixture of the knowledge and experience of God and enthusiasm, joyful action in his behalf. And I don't see much of that about us. Now look at the

00:04:06.800 - 00:04:26.320

words of the Psalm before us this morning. The psalmist begins his hymn to God with the word "Hallelujah." It's translated in the Revised Standard Version, which we used this morning, "Praise the Lord." "Hallelujah" is two words, "halal," which means to praise, and "yah," which means the Lord. He begins by

00:04:26.320 - 00:04:48.800

praising the Lord and then, having said that, he immediately adds, "Praise the name of the Lord." Now to a Hebrew, the name represents the whole being of the one named. That's the reason we're told in the Commandments that we may not take the Lord's name in vain. When you take the Lord's name in vain, you are, in

00:04:48.800 - 00:05:16.440

Hebrew thinking, taking the whole being of God in an improper way. What the psalmist is saying to us is that we are to adore God in the full knowledge of who he is. In other words, real praise always begins with understanding. It's not just flattery. Now we respond to flattery. I mean a good shot of

00:05:16.440 - 00:05:38.040

flattery is like a good shot of vitamin A or any other vitamin you might take. The advertising industry knows this. They always seek to get us on their side by some properly applied flattery. Just two weeks ago, I got a letter which began as follows. It was advertising the issuing of a new magazine whose name I will not

00:05:38.040 - 00:06:04.760

mention because I don't want to give it a plug. And the letter began as follows, "As you undoubtedly know, your name is on several mailing lists in which you are classified as being highly literate, progressive, interested in world affairs, good literature, and science. Therefore, I know you will be interested in what I

00:06:04.760 - 00:06:32.320

have to say." Of course I was interested. It describes me so exactly. Well that kind of flattery is part of the advertising technique. They know what buttons to press in me to get the response that they wish. But God has no buttons. Praise is not to be mere flattery. The name of God that is used in

00:06:32.320 - 00:06:57.840

this 113th Psalm, which we're focusing on this morning, is the name Jehovah. Now if you want to know what Jehovah means, you have to go way back in the Old Testament to the book of Exodus and there to the sixth chapter. And at the third verse, God is speaking to Moses and he says, "And I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by

00:06:57.840 - 00:07:26.080

the name of God Almighty. But by the name of Jehovah I was not known to them." Then he goes on to say to Moses that you will know me as Jehovah and he proceeds to define what Jehovah is. Jehovah is the God who sets the people of the Hebrew nation free from slavery in Egypt. In other words, when we say Jehovah or when

00:07:26.080 - 00:07:53.880

the psalmist in this psalm says Jehovah, he is speaking of the God who frees, the God who releases, the God who saves. And when we think of God, our praise of him is not to be mere flattery. It is to be adoring God because we know that he has set us free, that in and through him we are saved. Praise, you see, is not

00:07:53.880 - 00:08:17.880

self-generating. You can't just plant a seed of praise and expect it to grow. Praise arises as a response to something that is above and beyond what we expected. You don't praise your employer when he pays you exactly what you've earned. You do praise him when he gives you something beyond that, a bonus you

00:08:17.880 - 00:08:37.720

did not expect. Children don't praise their parents nor to society when parents are only giving to their children what the law of society and culture requires. But when parents go beyond and love their children to the uttermost, that is something which truly deserves to be

00:08:37.720 - 00:09:02.200

praised. Well, what we're to think of, the psalmist says, is this. Think of how God sets us free. Think of how we are saved by God. And in thinking of that, you will find praise arising within you as you meditate on the immensity of God's love. You know, once Prince Metternich was sitting in front of a fireplace and he

00:09:02.200 - 00:09:29.160

was watching some puppies play on the hearth, and he said to someone sitting with him, "I feel like God looking down on the amusing antics of my people." Now that remark by Prince Metternich is good testimony to the fact that smart people can say some very stupid things. The fact of the matter is, God does not look down

00:09:29.160 - 00:10:05.380

upon us and our antic amusements. The God of whom we speak was crucified for us. He is the God who marches through all of the centuries and with infinite patience finally climbs upon a cross and says, "Adam, Adam, it is now time to come home." God is love. You know, we praise a lot of things in life, don't we? We praise our

00:10:05.380 - 00:10:27.820

friends. A reader praises a book he's just read. We praise the hiking trail over which we've just hiked. Skiers praise the slopes. Those who are caught up in golf praise the course. We praise the weather. Beautiful day, isn't it? We praise the actor. We praise the home team. We praise our children. We praise the

00:10:27.820 - 00:10:49.860

splendor and the glory of the flowers. We praise the butterflies that we see. We say to other people seeking to encourage them, "Did you ever see anything as beautiful of that? I mean, that's really one of a kind. Isn't that a glorious sunset?" What the psalmist is saying to us is this, that we must, going beyond these

00:10:49.860 - 00:11:15.380

things of earthly praise, think about the infinite love of God as it is made known to us in setting us free. We need to behold God in all of the purity and all of the strength of his loving. We are to focus on him and feast on him and think about him and speak about him and sing about him and sigh about him. His name

00:11:15.380 - 00:11:43.140

should be the first word we utter in the morning. His name should be the last word we utter at night. Every breath of ours should be a breath of praise to God because God is love and God loves us. That's what praise is when it's uttered with understanding, the lifting up of the God who frees us. In other words, praise

00:11:43.140 - 00:12:04.860

is gratitude expressing itself. Notice the three times here in these first verses of the psalm. The psalmist brings this up. He says, "Praise the Lord, praise all ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord." And as we've already pointed out, this Lord of which he speaks is the one who took his people and set

00:12:04.860 - 00:12:24.940

them free of Egypt, took them away from that place where they had to make bricks without straw, took them away from that place of stink and flies, took them away from that place where their sons were thrown into the Nile to certain death, took them away from slavish obedience to Pharaoh to a loving response to God. Now

00:12:24.940 - 00:12:51.700

it's when you think about how you've been freed like that that praise wells up within you. What I'm saying is, unless you're a very new Christian, you must have some memory of some time when God has delivered you from something. And we need to underscore those memories, to remind ourselves of how God has been

00:12:51.700 - 00:13:15.620

good to us, to focus more on the goodness of God than we do on the Super Bowl, to focus more on the goodness of God to us in our own particular and specific lives than we do on some new novel that we've read or motion picture that we've seen. We need to build into ourselves the habit of gratitude. Unfortunately that

00:13:15.620 - 00:13:35.980

word "habit" has taken on a bad connotation. If you say to someone, "He has a habit," in our parlance today it's like referring to someone who is in some way dependent upon drugs or alcohol or some other chemical dependency. It's sad that the word "habit" has taken on that connotation because, you see, it's habit

00:13:35.980 - 00:14:04.820

that builds character. It's habit that builds character. You see, we're not really free. We talk a lot about free will, but the fact of the matter is that none of us is really totally free insofar as our past and our relationships are concerned. I, for example, cannot imagine myself forging a check. I mean, if

00:14:04.820 - 00:14:28.940

I try to think about forging a check, it is inconceivable to me that I would ever forge a check. How about you? If I said to you, "Do you believe that you could take an axe and chop the life out of someone?" That thought is so horrifying, it's so revolting that you say to yourself, "I don't believe I really ever

00:14:28.940 - 00:14:47.500

could do that." This is what we mean when we say about somebody, "She is very dependable." When we say she is dependable, we are saying that the experience of her family and the experience of her friends and the influence of her faith and the influence of the school that she attended, all of these things have gone

00:14:47.500 - 00:15:09.860

together to build up the habit of dependability within her. And you just can't easily erase that. We cannot obliterate that which is part of our past. I remember when I was in college, we conducted some experiments to see if you could get a person to do something contrary to their character while they

00:15:09.860 - 00:15:33.900

were under hypnosis. And we soon discovered that you could not. Even when a person is under hypnosis, a person will not violate the dictates of her character. What I'm suggesting is that we need to build into ourselves the habit of gratitude. We need to forge into our very beings the memory of the good

00:15:33.900 - 00:15:56.500

things that God has done for us. I'm not speaking today in favor of some crass behavioral determinism. I'm not saying that we are so influenced by that about us that we cannot change. I am saying that we can select the things which will influence us. We can build those things into our being. We can, because these

00:15:56.500 - 00:16:22.700

things become part of us, become immune to that which leads many people to despair. That word "immune," we owe that to Louis Pasteur, you know. Louis Pasteur was a great scientist and he was also a great Christian. And one of the greatest days in the history of biology was the day that Louis Pasteur wrote in his diary,

00:16:22.700 - 00:16:47.660

"Once a cow has anthrax but gets better from it, all the anthrax microbes in the world cannot give her another attack because she is immune." The day that that was discovered, that that truth became known, is as important as the day in which we discovered that the Sun does not go about the Earth but the Earth

00:16:47.660 - 00:17:17.820

about the Sun. You see, it's a great thing to know that we can become immune. And what I'm saying is that the habit of praise, reflecting again and again on God's goodness in our lives, can help to make us immune from the sadnesses of human experience. That's the way the psalmist closes his psalm. He says, "Praise

00:17:17.820 - 00:17:38.980

is to be independent of time and circumstance." Notice his words, "Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore." You see, no matter what happens. "From the rising of the Sun to its going down in the bright hours and also in the dark hours, the Lord's name is to be praised." What this psalmist

00:17:38.980 - 00:18:05.700

is writing, a thousand years before the Apostle Paul lived, Paul echoed when he wrote, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content." Darkness comes into all of our experiences. Religion is no escape from hurt in life. And we are not being taught by the psalmist here that we are to thank God

00:18:05.700 - 00:18:30.000

or praise God for everything that happens to us. The Bible does not teach us to be thankful for all things but to be thankful in all things. That is, circumstances about us may be evil. For these we have no gratitude. But in the midst of these, we can have gratitude for ours is a God who loves us and who sets

00:18:30.000 - 00:18:50.340

us free. And the memory of that, underscored, built into our character, sustains us so that we come through the darkness. I remember a few years ago I was traveling in the Soviet Union and we were in Moscow. I was with a group of about 30 other Americans. We had a Russian guide. You can only have Russian

00:18:50.340 - 00:19:12.820

guides. The Interista Bureau of Soviet Affairs handles all guides. And as we were driving across a square, this guide was a woman, suddenly became very excited and she pointed out one side of the bus to a building which she said was a department store given over entirely to the sale of toys for

00:19:12.820 - 00:19:31.260

children. It was called Toy World. And she went on and on and on about this place. Now we had been in the Soviet Union a good length of time and we knew, having been in so many stores, that those stores are virtually empty. There's no production of consumer goods. Everything goes to military. Everything goes to

00:19:31.260 - 00:19:51.860

heavy industry. And we couldn't understand why it is that she suddenly was so excited about a place which we knew if we went in we would find virtually bare to the walls. And as she was directing our attention this way, I happened to look the other way. And here on the other side of the square was the

00:19:51.860 - 00:20:16.020

Lubyanka prison. Now the Lubyanka prison is the most infamous prison in the Soviet Union. It's the headquarters of the NKVD, the Russian secret police. Into its gates thousands have gone and never been seen again. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn went in to Lubyanka and then for decades became

00:20:16.020 - 00:20:45.740

lost in the gulag archipelago that stretches out from that place, that hideous place. Now what this girl was trying to do, you see, was to let us think that, well, we were living in a toy world. But over here was the hard, brutal, cruel reality of Soviet oppression, of the destruction of freedom, of pain and hurt,

00:20:45.740 - 00:21:12.820

and all that's hideous. Well, life is like that. It's not just a toy world. There are Lubyanka moments in it. But the scriptures never try to delude us in looking one way only. The scriptures confront both realities. And the scriptures say to us, and the psalmist announces it here again, "If we will, in

00:21:12.820 - 00:21:36.620

even the Lubyanka moments of life, praise God, we will find that we are immune from despair and final destruction of spirit." In a sense, we're like a castle, each one of us. And about us there are the strong walls of our faith. Now outside are gathered many enemies, and they have strong weapons of war. And they're trying

00:21:36.620 - 00:21:57.240

to cut us off from the water of life. They're trying to besiege us so that we will have to surrender. But what they do not know is that high up in the mountains there is a stream of clear and pure and fresh water, which comes down below the surface and wells up within the castle. So that the people who are

00:21:57.240 - 00:22:18.780

within the castle always have that pure, fresh, sweet water. They will never be defeated by that which is outside of them. And what we are being taught here by the psalmist is this, "Though all kinds of forces gather about us to do us in, and though they have all kinds of strange and awful weapons of war, if we

00:22:18.780 - 00:22:39.060

have about us the walls of faith, and if we have within us, coming down from the heights where our help is, if we have within us that bubbling stream of praise." Not just when things are good, not just when we're healthy, not just when we're employed, not just when we have enough money, not just when the family is well,

00:22:39.060 - 00:22:59.140

not just when the car is running and the TV's not on the blink. It's easy then, but if we at every moment, in illness and trouble and fear and sorrow and doubt and hurt, have that water from the mountains, that praise, a habit of praise arising within us. If we know that God sees us, that God loves us, and that God

00:22:59.140 - 00:23:27.380

will save us, then we can stand. On November the 22nd, 1654, Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician and philosopher, had an experience of God. And it was so awesome that he wrote it down. He wrote down, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the God of

00:23:27.380 - 00:23:49.460

philosophers and scholars, certitude, certitude, feelings of joy and peace, God of Jesus Christ." And not wanting ever to forget that, he sewed it in the lining of his coat, right over his heart. And what I'm saying this morning is this, if we sew praise by habit into our lives, right into our hearts, then we will never

00:23:49.460 - 00:24:15.340

finally despair. So let the words of this psalm be your words. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun, the name of the Lord is to be praised. Say

00:24:15.340 - 00:24:43.980

that. Mean that. Live that. And you have not only praise in you, but power also. And you can go out of the doors of this church this morning with your shoulders thrown back and a smile on your countenance, because you belong to God and God belongs to you. Go out into the world today saying with all your heart,

00:24:43.980 - 00:25:29.020

"I rejoice in his Son and I am glad." Let us pray. Oh God, we remember so many things. Help us to remember most of all the deliverances you have built into our lives. Oh God, fill us with the memories of thy goodness. Teach us how good it is to be set free from sin and that which is hurtful and ugly by claiming the

00:25:29.020 - 00:26:25.740

promises of praise. May we in all of our lives, from this time forth and forevermore, when the sun is rising, when the sun is setting, always be in praise. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Amen. [Music]

00:26:26.740 - 00:28:31.740

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

00:28:31.740 - 00:28:32.560

- Okay.