Introduction:
How can we intentionally praise the Lord? (Ps 96)
- Praise the Lord Freshness . (Ps 96:1-3)
- Praise the Lord Assurance . (Ps 96:4-6)
Psalm 149:3-4 - Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.
- Praise the Lord Community . (Ps 96:7-10)
- Praise the Lord Expectation . (Ps 96:11-13)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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01:07-01:12
So one of the core pillars at Harvest is believing firmly in the power of prayer.
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I think this is pretty evident by the way our order of service is conducted and the focus that we've been emphasizing at church.
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Prayer happens during worship, after worship, before the sermon, after the sermon, and if you haven't prayed enough, there's always the prayer team in the back that you can go to during the closing worship and even go to them after service has concluded.
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Prayer is woven throughout our church.
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The commonality across all of our prayers comes from the teachings that Jesus gave in Luke 11 and Matthew 6.
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That scripture commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer is where Jesus teaches us how to pray.
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Not as a verbatim recite this, but as a template for addressing God in areas to cover in our prayers.
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And one of the first thing Jesus teaches us to do is to recognize and praise the Lord in our prayers And that's what we're going to be focusing on today praising the Lord in our prayers Now like any other commandment from God Praising has a level of difficulty involved But by difficulty, I mean our willingness to do it See, our willingness to God can be represented by a scale that goes from easy to hard.
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A sliding scale, to be precise, and in my opinion, one of the best ways to frame a small group discussion question.
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To help explain this, I want to use the whiteboard to plot an ease of praise scale out and provide some example situations that we might find ourselves in.
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We'll put easy on the bottom, we'll have hard on the top.
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And easy would be like you're bursting at the seams.
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You are, praise is forefront of mind and you're just eager to get at it.
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And hard, the complete opposite.
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Things are going bad, it's the last thing on your mind and you just want the day to be over with.
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So we'll chart these examples and then we'll see whether or not you'd be praising God.
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Everyone with me so far?
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Okay.
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So using everything I learned from Emeril Lagasse and daytime television cooking.
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Oh man, I did it upside down.
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Oh no.
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Well.
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See, they even have little mess ups.
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We'll just ignore that.
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Let's get to these examples, right?
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So the first one is you are accepted into your dream college.
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Well I would say that's a pretty easy situation to be in and plot that down there.
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And yeah, I would say in that case you'd definitely be praising God.
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The next one, a fender bender.
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I mean, it's not like you had a major accident, but that's kind of a hard situation.
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You gotta deal with insurance.
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We'll plot that right there.
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And to me, I don't know, I can't see that you would be praising God there.
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The next one is the Steelers won, but you got acid reflux from the wings.
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Well, everyone here seems to take their football pretty seriously, so yeah, That's still a nice situation to be in.
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And despite the wings, yeah, you're gonna be praising God.
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Lost your job.
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That's a tough situation.
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A situation that many people went through over the past couple of years with COVID.
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Yeah, that's not something I think anybody wants to be in and is definitely not an area where I think people would be praising God.
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And last one, a new haircut.
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Kind of a random thing, but something we might have.
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I don't know, is it middle, right?
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It's somewhere right here.
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And would you be praising God?
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I guess if you went in with bad expectations and everything turned out well, sure, let's say you're praising God.
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So looking at this chart or this scale, we should be able to draw a line to say, depending on how hard your situation or easy it is, you'd be praising God.
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So kind of right here.
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So if you're down here where it's easy, you'd be praising, and if you're up here where it's hard, you won't.
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And that's how that works, right?
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What about Paul and Silas?
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In the book of Acts, they were imprisoned, and they were in shackles on walls, and scripture says that they were praising the Lord.
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So they were up here, but they were praising.
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And there's the example in the Old Testament of Belshazzar.
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He's the king of Babylon, and he had an easy life.
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He had command over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and he knew about God from Nebuchadnezzar, but he instead decided to praise idols of silver and gold and other material things.
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So he's down here, and he's not praising.
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And Job, we can't forget about Job. I mean, he's like way off the chart, but he still chose to praise God.
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Well, this example is falling apart right before our eyes, huh?
07:05-07:44
So what am I missing here? Right? What am I not considering on this on this scale? I Mean, obviously this is a loaded question because if I didn't know the answer and just walked off it'd be really awkward for this sermon But it's your heart right? It's your intentionality to praise God despite your situation Right. We cannot look at our situation alone or let our situation determine whether or not we praise God. I and influence our willingness to praise God, but to make a sweeping statement that if you're up here or down there that you will or you won't be praising God is just absurd, right?
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We have examples throughout scripture that show examples of folks praising in hard situations and forgetting God when things are going well.
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So what we wanna do today is use Psalm 96 to extract truth that will help us in our prayer life, specifically with praise.
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And my hope is that these points will bring new insight into how we can praise, what we can praise God for, and who we can praise God with, so that no matter what's going on, we can boldly and intentionally praise.
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So today we'll go over four points gleaned from our passage to help bolster praise in our prayer life.
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And we'll start with point one, praise the Lord with freshness.
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And this is gonna be in verses one through three.
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Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.
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Sing to the Lord all the earth.
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Sing to the Lord, bless his name.
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Tell of his salvation from day to day.
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Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.
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This first verse in Psalm 96 comes out swinging, right?
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Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.
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This command has huge implications in our prayer life.
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The idea of singing a new song means that we praise God with freshness.
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If you have that go-to prayer when you praise God, get that out of here.
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It's time to retire your greatest hits and go for something new, something fresh.
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God is unchanging, yes, but the things and the ways He's moving in our lives is always new.
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So sing a new song.
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Well, you might ask, how do we come up with these new songs?
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Well, verses two and three give us some practical ways in how we can formulate new praise and stay fresh.
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Verse two again, "Sing to the Lord, bless his name, tell of his salvation from day to day." Now, I don't know about you all, but whenever I became saved, God still kept working in my life.
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It's not like I accepted Jesus and then he was done with me.
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Things just stopped happening.
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His salvation through his son, Jesus Christ, is constantly being put into focus in my life.
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It might be apparent in answered prayer, my provision, or a refinement in my character when I go through trials and difficulties.
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But I know that the process of my sanctification is ongoing, constant, and never will be finished.
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So how can I or anyone else who has accepted Jesus say, "Eh, I don't really have anything new I can praise God about." I mean, we all have times we act like that kid coming home from school or summer camp, giving our parents those one-word answers.
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I'm sure you all know the scenarios.
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Mom asks, "Well, how'd things go?" "Good." Then Dad asks, "Well, what'd you do?" "Stuff." And now that I'm a parent, I'm on the receiving end of that.
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But hypothetically, we go through that situation every day in our lives between us and God.
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So are you praising God?
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Are you giving God those one word praise answers?
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You just praising him for all the good things and thanking him for all the stuff he does in your life?
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Or are you praising God fully and explicitly for all he does, no matter how major or minor, from a promotion to a perfect parking spot, or from a renewed relationship to a repaired road.
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I don't know why I'm dwelling on asphalt examples right now, but I'm sure we can all raise a hallelujah when a road construction project finishes around here.
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Yeah, that's true.
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I haven't seen one yet.
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Just kidding.
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But to be fair, and as mentioned earlier, The ability for us to see that, to see that newness, can be clouded by our situations.
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Right, Job, Paul, Silas, I mean, these were extraordinary men.
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And I personally don't have the fortitude or the perseverance to find something new to praise God for when things are going so wrong.
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I get it, I understand, but it does not excuse us from praising God with freshness.
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Right, verse three, again, "Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples." This verse is telling us that when things aren't going so well, we always have the ability to look back on His marvelous works, to praise God for what He's already done.
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Now, you might think that this is like a glass half full type of mentality, but when you are in the weeds of trials, Sometimes you just need to cling too tightly to what God has done.
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That way you can anticipate what God will do and praise him again for that eventual deliverance.
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And that's probably the most challenging aspect of praising with freshness, right?
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When things are going well, you kind of know what you're gonna praise God for, right?
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It's front of mind, probably easy to recall, you're probably in a good mood.
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But when things are bad and you're needing to look back and declare what God has done for you, to declare those marvelous works, you're probably battling emotional fatigue, stress, and you just might not be up for it.
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But I would encourage you though to find something, even if it's just one of those minor things, to praise the Lord in your prayers.
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Could be again, the past answered prayer, your provision you received that day, a friendly conversation you had, or even just a stranger showing concern for you.
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Take that time to praise the Lord.
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I can't explain it, but when I'm just so focused on the God help me, and I'm just ready to tear into my petitions and my prayers, but instead I stop, slow down, and instead take a few moments to praise God, it just helps, right?
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That anger or bitterness that I would have carried into my prayers lifts.
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Maybe not entirely, but my mind and the direction of my prayer takes a proper path that is so much more fulfilling and intentional.
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So in your prayers, let's praise with freshness.
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We all have reasons to.
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But let's not only praise in that way, because we can also praise with assurance, which is our next point.
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Praise the Lord with assurance.
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This is in verses four through six.
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For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
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He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
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Splendor and majesty are before him.
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Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
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Now, did you know that when you praise God, you are praising the pinnacle subject in all of existence.
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There is no person, object, idea, or concept that comes anywhere close to deserving of praise as our God does.
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We have full assurance or confidence that our praise is heard and is given to someone who cares more deeply for us than any parent, sibling, or spouse.
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Now, the Bible doesn't forbid us from praising others, But when we praise others more than we praise Him, that's when problems arise.
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After all, the source of all goodness comes from God.
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So to cut Him out of that equation is foolish.
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And if you're doing that intentionally, I would say blasphemous.
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See, God has no substitute.
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Verses four and five make that clear.
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You might read the last part of verse four, the He is to be feared above all gods.
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And it makes it seem like there might actually gods, like minor gods, stuff like you might hear in Greek and Roman mythology.
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But that's not the case, because immediately it's followed up with saying that those gods are worthless idols.
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They hold no power.
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They aren't even real.
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They're decorations, pieces of wood, only useful to be burned for warmth.
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Idols are not deserving of praise.
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But how often do we get caught up in fashioning them?
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Fashioning little idols that take away our praise from God.
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I mean, maybe we don't do it intentionally as believers in Christ, but praising everything other than God seems to be an ever-growing trend.
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We live in the era of social media and the "me" focus, and that culture can rub off on you and direct your praise elsewhere.
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However, rest assured that we have no assurance in praising anything other than God.
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To help you with an example I see often, I'm part of the millennial generation.
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Sorry, up front.
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So I go on YouTube and Twitch a lot.
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These are social media platforms for video and streaming, and people over the years have made entire careers on them.
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gained a bunch of subscribers and followers. And like other platforms, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can interact with these content creators either live or through posted comments. And I can imagine the praises that these creators receive would be encouraging for them, but there are folks that put them on a pedestal and pour their hearts and souls out to them. It's ultimately sad to see that their assurance is in someone that they have no real relationship with.
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Because even the most well-intentioned content creator cannot listen to, hear, recognize, or address all the interactions that they receive.
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A majority of the praise just falls on deaf ears or is lost into cyberspace.
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And I've also seen videos where creators will react to fan art submissions, things that that people will give them.
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And they'll read the comment, they'll be like, "Oh man, I spent 700 hours on this drawing." And they'll go, "Wow, this is really great, yeah, yeah." On to the next thing.
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The point I'm trying to make with this is that God is not like that at all.
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He hears all of our praise and delights in all of it as well.
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Psalm 149, verses three through four says, Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre.
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For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation." God hears and takes pleasure in our praise. Have assurance in that.
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But maybe you aren't yet sold on praising with assurance. Well, we have verses 5 and 6 now.
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These verses speak truth about how God made the heavens and has splendor and majesty before him.
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Creation is a beautiful thing, right? We get to experience it every day, but sometimes the greatness of God can be lost on you. So when you pray, though, how often do you take time to reflect on how big God is, to set the stage that you're coming before the almighty creator of the heavens in the universe.
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Everything we see around us, it's his.
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Something as small as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, that's his.
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You see a beautiful sunset lighting up the atmosphere like a painting, that's his.
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You see a photograph of a distant galaxy from a James Webb telescope in outer space, that's his.
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God has the ultimate resume of accomplishments, and he still has plans for us, grand plans to be fulfilled when Christ returns.
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He's the only one that can do it. So praise with assurance in him.
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So we ought to praise with freshness, praise with assurance. For our third point, I'm going to take a little bit of a detour from "how" to "who" with "Praise the Lord with community" verses 7 through 10.
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Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts.
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Worship the Lord in in the splendor of holiness.
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Tremble before him all the earth. Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established. It shall never be moved.
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he will judge the peoples with equity." In these verses, we have a sense of a gathering of believers to come and praise the Lord.
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Verses 7 and 8 continue with praise to God and the truth that we need to ascribe or attribute glory and strength to his name, verses 9 to revere him, and verses 10 to declare his unchanging righteousness. I mean, all of these are wonderful aspects of God that we ought to praise him for, And I don't want to take away from that part of the psalm, but I do want to focus on the language of plurality and the sense of people coming together to praise.
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Families of the people, all the earth, say among the nations.
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Right? This is verbiage that is giving a sense of prayer, communal prayer.
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So what does this mean for our prayer life?
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Well, it's that we ought to make our praise and our prayers among believers Now hold on you might think about you know, matthew 6 where jesus talks about the hypocrites who stand In the and pray in the synagogues in the street corners, right?
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But understand that those folks Jesus was talking about there were seeking to glorify themselves to bring attention to themselves and glory to themselves Right the look how spiritual I am. Look how all these words i'm heaping up to god But that's not what I'm talking about here, because the focus of our praise is to draw attention to God, not us.
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Just wanted to be clear with that.
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But for those that have been around Harvest for a while, periodically, we'll get into prayer groups before the sermon and pray together.
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Now, I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I for one, I actually really enjoy it.
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You know, there's an opportunity to meet new people, But more importantly, there's an opportunity to share our praise.
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And this isn't announced ahead of time, you know, unless you're on staff.
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So we're all coming into these groups with different situations and things going on in our life.
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Right? I mean, we could be up here, dealing with some hard stuff.
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We could be down here, dealing with some easy things.
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And our group could be all people going through hard things, all people going through easy things.
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It could be a mix, right?
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So, regardless, we're all coming together to praise the Lord.
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And despite what's been going on in my life, something that I try to do during those prayer groups is to focus my prayer time mainly on praising God. The reason being is that I remember others doing that and sharing what God has been doing in their life, and it's just such an encouragement for me, and I'm sure it was an encouragement for the others that were hearing it as well. I mean, there's nothing wrong in those prayer groups with bringing our petition. I mean, we still need to pray for those things, still need to pray for deliverance and for God to work in our lives, but for me, praise just always hit harder and had a much more lasting impact, because I got to see God move outside of my individual life and instead in the lives of others. I mean that is such a wonderful testimony of God's faithfulness throughout all believers.
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And honestly that might be the pick-me-up that you need to refocus your personal prayer life so that you again can gain assurance and praise with freshness as we mentioned earlier. You know even if you aren't able to gather, maybe you're sick, staying home, watching the stream, you still belong to a church body. You know, you're not the only fish in the sea, so that you still need to praise communally. Praise God for what He's done with others. This probably is in front of mind when you pray, right, to pray for others and what God has done in their lives, but I would encourage you to focus your praise on on those marvelous works and deeds that God has done for others.
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You know, my own kids have even humbled me more than once when they brought up others in their prayers instead of themselves when we pray at night.
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All that to say it's good to shift the focus from ourselves periodically.
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So finally for today, the last way that we can bolster our intentionality of praising in our prayer is to praise the Lord with expectation.
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And this is the remainder of Psalm 96, verses 11 through 13.
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Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice.
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Let the sea roar and all that fills it.
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Let the field exult and everything in it.
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Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord for he comes.
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For he comes to judge the earth.
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He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.
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Verses 11 and 12 declare that God's creation is rejoicing in him because they know he is coming.
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And as believers, we should share that same sentiment and praise God with the expectation that he will return to judge the earth and do so according to all the promises that he's written throughout scripture.
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His truths and promises are certified mail with a tracking number.
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you can expect them to arrive.
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You know, one of my favorite sayings in recent years is a nothing burger.
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And if you don't know what that is, it is a letdown of your expectations.
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It's the promise of getting a double Baconator from Wendy's, but when you take it out of the wrapper, all they give you is the top and bottom buns.
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There's no meat, there's no cheese, there's no bacon, there's not even any condiments on the bread.
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There's no substance.
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It's a complete letdown of your expectations.
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We see this often.
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Politicians, celebrities, news media, that's one of their favorite meals to serve, nothing burgers.
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It's easy, cheap, and no effort on their part.
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But our Lord, our God, He never serves that.
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His promises are complete, full, honest, and true.
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And like a five-course dinner spread, his promises stretch over all aspects of our lives.
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So in our prayer life, praise God with expectation that he will accomplish what he's written.
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You know, this can be big picture eternity expectations, or even just expectations in how he's gonna work in our daily lives.
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You know, things like he will provide joy, peace, hope, wisdom, steadfastness.
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You might be in a situation where it seems hard to praise God.
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You're running low on those attributes.
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But do you believe that he will provide?
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Do you praise him for what he will provide?
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You know, so often in our prayers, we praise God retroactively for what he's done.
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Instead, let's change it up.
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Let's pray proactively and praise God for what he will do.
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Now, not to dwell on the downward spiral what's going on around us, but there are daily news stories about horrific crimes, legislation seeking to undermine God's design, and people openly mocking Christians and our beliefs.
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This world has an overall sense of decay and rebellion.
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Let me ask you, does this scare you?
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I mean, sure, I think what's going on around us is very unsettling, but more importantly, should this scare you?
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Not if you believe in Scripture and in Jesus Christ.
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You know, the events transpiring around us are to be expected.
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You know, Psalm 96 was written before Christ first came, but for us, we have the privilege of knowing that Christ will come yet again.
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Now I mentioned earlier that God still has plans for us.
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He gave us the book of Revelation that gives us a play by play in how this will happen.
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This is prophecy of what will come.
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Despite that, Revelation can bring anxiety to Christians.
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But I would say that that should not be the case.
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Because when he returns and fulfills all that is written, our template for the Lord's Prayer, it's gonna change.
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because we're only gonna be left with praising God.
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There won't be a need for provision.
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God will have accomplished that perfectly in eternity.
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And there won't be a need for forgiveness.
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Sin just simply ain't gonna exist.
30:28-30:30
So in the long run, God wins.
30:31-30:32
We all know that.
30:32-30:35
So let's all praise him with expectation.
30:38-30:49
Now looking back at our ease of praise scale, we should be able to apply these four points to wherever you fall on this scale, to bring you back into the fold, to praise God in your prayers.
30:51-30:54
If you're down here and things are going well, that's great.
30:55-31:04
I want you to encourage others in your testimony with how the Lord is working in your life, and I want you to sing a new song when you praise God.
31:05-31:09
And also, don't forget to praise Him for what God is doing in the lives of others.
31:11-31:19
But if things aren't going so well, if you're dealing with some tough situations, I want you to lean on praising with assurance and expectation.
31:20-31:25
God is unfathomably mighty and can accomplish anything.
31:25-31:27
Be confident in Him.
31:28-31:30
His promises are more reliable than Toyotas and taxes.
31:32-31:33
Expect Him to work in your life.
31:35-31:38
But no matter where you're at, praise God.
31:41-31:48
Lord, I want to thank you today for giving me the opportunity to praise you through this sermon.
31:49-32:17
And Lord, as our church goes through the prayer guide this month, I want to ask you, God, to put on everyone's hearts the idea that we can praise you before our petitions, that There might be some challenging areas that are presented in the prayer guide, but God, you are sovereign, and we don't know your plans, but we know that you will work everything for your will.
32:19-32:24
And despite our situations, Lord, wherever we fall, we can praise you.
32:26-32:26
We thank you, Lord.
32:27-32:31
Thank you for this time together, and thank you for this church body.
32:32-32:34
We ask this all in your son Jesus' name.
32:35-32:35
Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Psalm 96
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why do you think praise is unintentionally left out of prayers? How can you be sure to include praise before petitions?
Of the four ways to help us intentionally praise (freshness, assurance, community and expectation) which one do you need to focus on?
What idol in your life has stolen/is stealing praise from God? Why do people praise idols and why is it ultimately foolish?
Do you have an example where someone else’s praise of the Lord helped you?
Bonus: On a scale of 1 – 10, how satisfied are you with your ability to praise God?
Breakout
Pray for one another!