- Celebrating God is a Daily, Forever thing!
- CELEBRATE God Specifically by praising Him for Who He is!
- CELEBRATE God Publicly for What He has done!
- Intentional
- Inter-generational
- Theological
- Personal
- Prayerful
- COMMIT to celebrating God by Praising Him Verbally!
Faithful Celebration of God is:
Guest Speaker - Richie Reeder HBCPE Pastor
"God is so GREAT that the human mind cannot fathom Him (Isaiah 40:28, Job 5:9; 9:10; 11:7; Romans 11:33; Ephesians 3:8), but the human heart can love Him and tell others how great He is. God’s CHARACTER and God’s awesome WORKS furnish us with more material than we could ever exhaust, and we will have all of eternity to keep learning more!”
– Warren Wiersbe
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:01
How you doing Harvest Pittsburgh North?
00:03-00:10
Well greetings from within the Harvest Bible Fellowship, specifically Harvest Pittsburgh East as Pastor Jeff said right here in Monroeville.
00:11-00:21
Super stoked to be with you today. As we always do here at Harvest, we're digging right into God's Word. You can go ahead and flip to Psalm 145, and we're gonna get started in a moment here.
00:21-00:27
But just wanted to say thank you to Pastor Jeff for the opportunity to preach this morning and bring the Word.
00:27-00:56
He's been such an encouragement to us as our church is about three years old this fall And he's built into our staff and our pastors and helped out in our launch phase several years ago And so pastor Jeff just really thankful for you I remember when we met about four years ago in the fall at every church planters office Starbucks And we had a good cup of coffee just talking about the harvest Bible fellowship And what God is doing and how he's raising up men and families to go out and be church planting churches, right?
00:56-01:16
So dream and imagine with me of what Western Pennsylvania will look like in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years as God continues to raise up families and send them out with the gospel to be faithful to the mission of making disciples, to stand upon the four pillars. I think that our partnership amongst churches are just getting started. What do you say?
01:17-01:24
Amen. So super thankful for your church and for your pastor. He's a servant.
01:24-01:31
So hopefully you're already in Psalm 145. If you want to bring it up on your electronic device, go ahead and do that as well.
01:31-01:35
That's where we're going to camp out today, the crowning jewel of praise from King David.
01:35-01:50
But before we get there, let's talk just a little bit about the background of the Psalms. If you have your Bible and you split it right open in half, you fall right to the Psalms. And the thing that I love about the Psalms is I've been studying through them this summer is that there's so much variety that there's something for everyone, right?
01:50-02:48
It doesn't matter whether you're on the mountaintop or you're on the valley, the Psalms have something to speak into your life. And so joy, sadness, compassion, grief, victory in what God has done, the Psalms speak to all of those things. It doesn't matter what your personality or your mood is or your social class or where you're at in life, these passages of Scripture, the ancient hymn book of Israel, have something to say to us. And there's lots of different types of Psalms, right? There's Psalms of lament, there are Psalms of confession where we have grief over our sin, there are Psalms of joy and praise and celebration that we're going to look at today from the life of King David. There's also Psalms of wisdom with life lessons. And so before we dig in and read this passage of Scripture, I've got a question for you. You ready for a question? All right, thanks for the participation. Here's the question. What do you celebrate? Think about it for a second here. If it's taking you more than a couple of seconds you might need to work on your celebration.
02:48-02:52
We'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit, but what do you celebrate?
02:53-02:58
Maybe a couple things come to mind, but let me give you the definition of what Webster has to say about celebration.
02:58-03:01
He says, "To do something special for an important occasion.
03:02-03:13
"To praise publicly, to say that something "is great or important." All right, I killed a little bit of time there, so hopefully you have something on your mind right now of something that you celebrate.
03:13-03:14
What about this?
03:14-03:16
How about the birth of a baby?
03:17-03:19
Everybody can say on the count of three, aw.
03:19-03:22
One, two, three, aw.
03:22-03:25
That is actually my now five-year-old, Olivia.
03:25-03:27
She's practically five going on 16.
03:28-03:29
But this is our five-year-old.
03:30-03:32
And we were thrilled when she was born.
03:32-03:36
You probably celebrated the birth of kids, grandkids, but the birth of children.
03:37-03:40
What about-- go to the next slide here-- what about birthday parties?
03:41-03:45
When you're young, you can't wait for your birthday party, right?
03:45-03:48
When you're older, you kind of intentionally forget about it, right?
03:49-03:50
But we celebrate birthdays.
03:50-03:53
Graduations are something that we celebrate as well.
03:53-03:54
It's kind of a coming of age of sorts.
03:54-03:57
And some people like them, some people hate them.
03:57-03:58
But how about weddings?
03:59-04:00
Weddings, we celebrate weddings.
04:00-04:03
This is actually my wife and I, Reagan, nine years ago.
04:03-04:04
And I know what you're thinking.
04:04-04:06
You're like, wow, she's gotten more beautiful with every day.
04:06-04:08
And what happened to Richie?
04:08-04:11
But yeah, that is our wedding picture from nine years ago.
04:11-04:14
So super thankful for my wife and the support that she is.
04:14-04:20
And here's the thing, because you're sitting in Pittsburgh today, I know that you are good at celebrating.
04:21-04:21
You know why?
04:21-04:22
Check this out.
04:22-04:24
Zambelli fireworks, right?
04:24-04:25
Let's go to the next slide here.
04:26-04:29
World class, city skyline, three rivers, Zambelli fireworks.
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No city does it just quite like Pittsburgh.
04:32-04:32
Amen?
04:33-04:33
Amen.
04:34-04:34
And here's the thing.
04:35-04:38
Four days from now, the Steelers open training camp.
04:38-04:41
So we know that you know how to wave your terrible towel, right?
04:41-04:42
You can celebrate that.
04:43-04:46
I know some of you are thinking, wow, I can't believe it's football season already.
04:46-04:47
It truly is.
04:47-04:54
And then here's one thing that because you're sitting in this room, I know that you know how to celebrate better than most cities because you're from Pittsburgh.
04:54-04:55
And what does Pittsburgh do?
04:56-04:58
Better than most cities, we celebrate championships, right?
05:00-05:00
Amen?
05:00-05:03
How many people are still on the high of the Penguin Stanley Cup final?
05:04-05:05
All right, we got several people.
05:06-05:15
But here's the thing, there is something inside the human spirit that God put inside of us that's part of our nature that causes us, that makes us want to celebrate, right?
05:16-05:22
And so when we look at how God created us, we can't help but think that we are created for celebration.
05:23-05:26
And the focal point of our praise should always be God.
05:27-05:31
So let's go to the passage in scripture, Psalm 145.
05:31-05:38
The big idea today is that celebrating who God is and what he has done should always consume us.
05:38-05:40
And so I'm gonna read this and I hope that you follow along.
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Psalm 145, "I will extol you, my God and King, "and bless your name forever and ever.
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"Every day I will bless you "and praise your name forever and ever.
05:54-05:59
"Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, "and his greatness is unsearchable.
06:00-06:04
"One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.
06:05-06:09
On the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
06:10-06:14
They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.
06:15-06:20
They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
06:21-06:25
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
06:26-06:31
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
06:31-06:36
All your work shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you.
06:36-06:44
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
06:45-06:50
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
06:51-06:54
The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.
06:55-06:59
The Lord upholds all who are falling and rises up all who are bowed down.
07:00-07:04
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
07:04-07:08
You open up your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
07:08-07:13
The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and kind in all his works.
07:13-07:18
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
07:18-07:21
He fulfills the desire of those who fear him.
07:21-07:24
He also hears their cry and saves them.
07:24-07:28
The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
07:29-07:43
mouth will speak the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever." Wow. The crowning jewel of praise, this Psalm of David, Psalm 145.
07:44-08:05
I hope that every time that you go to study God's Word, you take a moment to take a little bit of time and research the authorship, who wrote it, who the person is writing them to, and then also the background in the context. And when When we take a couple minutes to look at this passage of Psalm 145, we see that King David is the author of this passage.
08:05-08:09
It's actually the last psalm in the book that's attributed to King David.
08:09-08:10
And here's the crazy part.
08:10-08:20
When you look at the original language in Hebrew, this is actually an acrostic, where each verse takes a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and he pens it out so that it's a song.
08:21-11:39
In many Jewish practices, this psalm right here was actually sung and recited twice in morning and then once in the evening service each day. It amazes me too that I mean we know the author if you've studied God's Word or read the Old Testament you see that that David was a shepherd boy turned valiant war hero right? And David used his power as he was anointed king over all of Israel he used it for good. He also used it for deceit right? He was poetic, he was musical, and he wrote about half of the Psalms. So it's important for us to understand that as we dig into how David calls us to celebrate our great God this morning. We'll pick it up in verses 1 and 2 right here going back in. This is the first thing that I want you to see in this awesome passage this morning and that is celebrating God is a daily forever thing. When do we celebrate? We celebrate God daily forever. Look at verses 1 and 2. I will extol you or exalt you, my God the King. Exalt means to lift up, to highly exalt and bless your name. When? Forever and ever. Every day I will bless you. Say every day. Every day I will bless your name. To bless your name means to celebrate God's perfections. No days off, no personal days, no graduation days. We don't get days off from praising the God of the universe. See here's the thing, here on earth we have the to prepare for heaven where we will praise our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ forever and ever and ever. So here's a question that's legit that you might be asking. You might say, "Richie, what happens when I don't feel like praising God?" We all have emotions. We all have bad days, right? There are times that we do not feel like praising God, but here's the great news today. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how much evil may seem to prevail in the world, God still sits on his throne, amen? He is sovereign, he is trustworthy, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, which means he never changes, right? And so you might have a simple prayer that says, "God, I recognize who you are, I recognize what you've done, I want to celebrate you daily, forever." And that simple prayer might be, God, thank you that things are just normally not this bad, right? That may be your simple prayer of praise each day to God. But here's the thing, based on a lot of the events in our world, in our country, in the last month here, there's many days that we wake up and don't feel like praising God, right? If the need for our human race is mercy and love and forgiveness, then we need to run to the hope of the cross. We need to run to Jesus and everything. The solution for America today is not in a bunch of laws. Yes, our country was founded upon principles that a lot of them are biblical, but what we need is the hope of the gospel. What we need is the good news. What we need is not more laws but more Jesus. So I see here that when we see what David is doing in verses 1 and 2, we need to understand that we see the Psalms as a whole, not just one Psalm.
11:39-13:12
David wrote a lot of different Psalms, and when you recognize that he was at a place of brokenness in a lot of the Psalms, he was at a place where he questioned God and cried out and said, "God, why have you forsaken me?" Many, many times. He didn't get to this place of praise in Psalm 145 overnight, did he? No, he didn't. Do you think that David had a history with God? I think that he did, right? You know, when he was running from Saul and fearful for his life, God protected him. When he was a valiant war hero in battle, God gave him victory. When he was the unassuming lightweight in the fight with Goliath, God gave him victory to kill the nine-foot giant, right? So David had a history with God and he saw God be faithful again and again and again and again. And let me ask you this question today, what is your history with God? What has God done in your life that you can recall that even on the worst of days to say, "God I praise you because you are faithful, you are sovereign. I've seen you do this and I've seen you do this and I've seen you do this and you have saved me Father and we praise you." You know I've been talking with Pastor Jeff, I understand that you've been studying through the book of Acts, you know, and seeing that in the book of Acts the Holy Spirit has empowered you for good works, to be witnesses, even in the face of perseverance, right? Things will not always be roses, but that does not negate the fact that we should celebrate God daily, forever.
13:15-15:12
You know, one question that I ask myself as I go through this passage is, "How does my daily routine incorporate praising God?" You ever think about that? If we're supposed to celebrate God daily, forever. How do I set myself up spontaneously but also in a planned way to celebrate God on a daily basis? Maybe that means getting alone with God at a specific time, specific place to read God's Word, to pray for you each day, an elongated time each week. Maybe that means that says, "Hey, you know what? For the first ten minutes when I get in the car on the commute in the morning, you know, I might play the air drums while I'm listening music or whatever, but I'm gonna praise my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for the first 10 or 15 minutes of my commute every day. Maybe it's spontaneous, maybe it's something that you do off the cuff, but ask yourself that question, whether spontaneous or planned. How does your schedule, how does your routine help set you up to praise God each day? The second thing that I desire for you to see in this passage is, starting in verse 3, we celebrate God specifically by praising Him for who He is. This is God's character right here. Look at verse 3, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and His greatness is unsearchable." You know, the NIV here says, "His greatness no one can fathom." If we've looked at when we should celebrate God daily forever, we now look at how we celebrate Now here's the thing, you can compare one man against another man, right? You can compare one athlete versus another athlete. Set this year aside and comparing Andrew McCutcheon, the Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder, to all the other outfielders in Major League Baseball, he's been an amazing outfielder over the last five years. I know that he's having a rough year this year, right?
15:12-17:50
But hey, he's been an amazing outfielder. Why? Because you can compare him against other outfielders in Major League Baseball. You can compare his stats and his batting average and how many home runs he's hit and his wins above replacement and all that kind of stuff and you can see that he stacks up as one of the best outfielders in Major League Baseball. But here's the thing, can God be compared to anything? God is so great and what's this verse say? "Greatly to be praised" and his greatness is unsearchable. No one can fathom it. I love what Charles Spurgeon says about this verse in the Treasury of David, he says, "Worship should be somewhat like its object. Great praise for a great God. There's no part of Jehovah's greatness which is not worthy of great praise. No chorus too loud, no orchestra too large, no psalm too lofty for the lauding of the Lord of hosts. When we meditate most and search most studiously, we shall still find ourselves surrounded with unknowable wonders which will baffle all attempts to sing them worthily. The best adoration of the unsearchable is to own him to be so, and close the eyes in reverence before the excessive light of his glory." We're looking at God's character, and I've just got to put something up on this slide right here. I mean, take a look at this right here. God's character. You basically avoid every single rule and presentational skills that you would learn in organizational communication class when you put this many words on the screen, but this is our great God right here. He's King, great, unsearchable, mighty, glorious, wondrous, awesome, good, famous, righteous, gracious, merciful, compassionate, loving, patient, steadfast, powerful, faithful, everlasting, kind, strong provider, sustainer, satisfier, near, preserver, listener, just, worthy, eternal. That right there is your great God. That is the same God that David had relationship with the same God who parted the Red Sea and the same God who is sovereign over your situation today, amen? This is your great God. He's all of those things. And when we see the beauty of God's character, we realize how feeble we really are, right? There's many times that I look at the character of God in this passage and say, "I have such a long ways to go." Take the attributes in this passage and do a little bit of introspection and say God Which of these characteristics did you desire to infuse by the power of your spirit into me?
17:51-18:22
You know Lord, you're gracious and merciful am I Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love God. You are good to all it says twice in Verses 13 and then again in verses 17. He's kind in all his works We ask my little Olivia all the time, "Olivia, were you kind and respectful today?" So she's doing some introspection on that, but what about for you today? Which of those 30 different characteristics does God want to infuse into you to make you more holy and sanctified?
18:23-18:28
And here's the thing, when we recognize who God is and all of these things, it should change how we pray, right?
18:28-18:36
You know, I talk to a lot of folks that say, "You know what, in a public context, Richie, I'm just not really sure what to pray or I'm just kind of a little embarrassed.
18:36-18:39
I don't know how to pray out loud, I don't know how to pray in a group, and that's okay.
18:40-18:42
We're all in a stage of growth regarding that.
18:42-18:49
Or somebody might say, "I'm sitting at home and I know that I read God's Word and I want to pray, but I just don't even know what to pray." And you know what?
18:49-18:54
I tell people when you're in that situation, when you don't know what to pray, pray Scripture.
18:55-18:58
And this is an amazing passage to do that with.
18:58-19:06
You can go down through this entire 21 verses and say, "Lord, you are my God and King, and this morning, I bless your name forever and ever.
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I want to bless you every day, God.
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And today, as I go about my day, I recognize that you are great.
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You're greatly to be praised, and so on and so forth.
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You can walk down through here praising God for who he is.
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The next thing that I'd love for you to see in this passage is that we should celebrate God publicly for what he has done.
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Celebrate God publicly for what he has done.
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Look at all of the awesome works in this passage that we see, verse four.
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"One generation shall commend your works to another." Verses six and seven, "They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds and declare your greatness, pour forth fame of your abundant goodness." This phrase pour forth fame in many other translations is translated as celebrate, to celebrate our great God and King.
19:56-20:03
Verses 11 and 12, "They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds.
20:04-20:11
There's no way that we can celebrate God properly by only celebrating him in private.
20:11-20:14
It must be done publicly as well.
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Got another question for you.
20:18-20:20
How many people here are good at partying?
20:22-20:22
Hand in the air.
20:22-20:25
Some of you are like, this is church, Richie.
20:25-20:27
I don't really know what I'm supposed to say.
20:27-21:49
I'm not talking about red solo cups and getting trashed anything like that. I'm talking about partying, having a great time. Some of you are like, "Yeah, I'm pretty good at that." Others are like, "I don't know what you're talking about." And maybe you believe the lie that to be a faithful follower of Christ that you have to choose between having fun and following Jesus. Did you know that those are not two mutually exclusive things that God has called us to live a life that is glorifying to him that has trials at times, but that we can have fun and celebrate in the midst of it? And here's the thing, when you learn how to celebrate God properly for who he is and what he's done, you learn in turn how to celebrate the rest of life. God wants you to celebrate publicly with public praise. And here's the thing, you look on social media, our culture wants to be known for partying, right? We want to be known as cool so that we can exalt ourself and be accepted. But what if we were known for our celebration of God, our Creator, our King, not so that we would be accepted or that we would be exalted, but that He would be glorified, He would be magnified, He would be extolled and exalted in worship above all things. You know, I think sometimes when we think about celebrating God publicly, we're known too many times as Christians for what we're against rather than what we're for. We need to take a more proactive and more offensive way of celebrating God.
21:50-21:55
So here's an introspective question when it comes to how we use social media.
21:55-22:17
Everybody's all over it these days. But what if our Facebook posts and what if our Instagram feed looked a lot more like exalting Christ instead of saying, "Hey, I want everybody to think the best of me and I want everybody to look at me and think well of me." Sobering question for many of us. But how do you celebrate God publicly?
22:17-22:22
I can't think of public praise for God without thinking of the field of public relations and promotions.
22:23-22:32
One of the things that several of us got a chance to do when I was in college 10 years ago was to work for the Detroit Tigers in their promotions and public relations department.
22:32-22:35
It was actually a year where they were good and they actually went to the World Series.
22:36-22:44
One of the things that we did was script the announcements and script the public relations of what was going to be broadcast on the radio and then also in the ballpark.
22:45-23:25
just felt so empowered that we were communicating on behalf of a Major League Baseball team. And it was a thrill to see the rush of the crowd as the announcer said something that several of us on the team were like, "Wow, we collaborated and we wrote that." It was such a thrill. But here's the deal, while several of us had an opportunity to be on public relations for the Detroit Tigers, all of us are on God's public relations team. You have the opportunity to communicate what God has done in your life. The God of the universe, does he need you on his team? No, absolutely not, but he uses us as his mouthpieces to celebrate who he is publicly. We have the privilege of being on God's public relations team.
23:26-24:21
Now as we continue down through this passage, the Psalms are such a tough type of book to preach through and study through sometimes because there's so many themes, unlike the narratives in the New Testament and the epistles. But verses in Psalm 145 that outline what faithful celebration of God is. And so the first one of those that I'd love to see is faithful celebration of God is intentional. You can write that down. It's planned. It's prepared. It's specific. I mean, all you have to do is look at the way that David wrote this psalm, knowing that it's an acrostic through the Hebrew language that each verse starts with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. I mean, I remember what it was in second grade, right? Your teacher says, "Write your name down the left-hand column of the paper. Now pick an adjective that describes you that matches with each letter in your name." That was hard as a second grader, right?
24:22-24:56
But David goes to the Psalms and he writes an acrostic that's beautiful in the original language that we can't take the time to dive into today. But if he took that time to be intentional, maybe God says, "Hey, you're artistic, you're musical, you've written poems in the past. Maybe this week one of the ways that you can celebrate God is to write something glorifying about Him, what He's done in your life and His marvelous works. You know, when I think of being intentional, one of the things that my daughter Olivia loves to do each month, it's kind of become a little ritual in our family, is when we pay the bills, we celebrate it.
24:56-25:13
We say, "God, you are faithful." We pray together as a family and say, "Thanks for paying the bills this month." And then she says, "So I can still watch Disney Channel?" Yes, you can still watch Disney Channel. We paid the cable bill, we paid all the bills, the lights are going to stay on, but we praise God intentionally for being faithful because we don't take it for granted.
25:14-25:20
What is it in your life that you want to set up as a family, as an individual, to intentionally celebrate God?
25:21-25:23
I encourage you to answer that question today.
25:24-25:31
Moving along in verse 4, we see that one generation shall commend your works to another faithful celebration of God.
25:31-25:33
Secondly, is intergenerational.
25:33-26:56
You know, verses 4 through 7 here in the passage stress the importance of passing from one generation to the next what God has done in the tradition of who he is. You know, I love when you read throughout the Psalms and study them that there's specific times in the Psalms that talk about the importance of investing in the next generation. Psalm 45, 17 says, "I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations." Psalm 48, 13, and 14 says that you may tell the next generation that this is our God. Psalm 71, 18, "Do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation. Psalm 78 6, that the next generation might know so that they should set their hope in God. And here in Psalm 145 verse 4, one generation shall commend your works to another. What does it mean to commend your works to another? It means to boast, to praise, to laud, to praise highly, especially in a public context, to make exuberant statements about someone or something as to their excellence. Notice the words here in the passage in verse four when you stick your nose back in Scripture here that it doesn't say one generation shall merely teach your works to the next generation. It says one generation shall commend to make exuberant statements of God's faithfulness. This is praise and exaltation of our God here in verse four.
26:56-27:03
This is not teaching only, this is stories about God's faithfulness. So let Let me ask you that question.
27:04-27:08
How are you investing in the next generation to commend God's works to another?
27:08-27:11
I think that you can kind of break down this principle into two different buckets.
27:11-27:14
One would be family, and the other would be church, right?
27:15-27:21
And so when it comes to family, families, parents educate their kids.
27:22-27:24
Parents disciple their kids.
27:24-27:25
What's the role of the church?
27:25-27:31
The church comes along and empowers and equips and gives resources to the parents.
27:32-27:49
many times in life we see this all over the place that we love to outsource our parenting, right? We love to outsource our dry cleaning so we go get that done elsewhere. We love to outsource our cooking so we go eat elsewhere. We love to outsource watching our kids so we take them to daycare. Nothing wrong with that at all, but we have to test our motives with a lot of this outsourcing.
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Are you as parents investing in your kids, commending the works of God to them? And then when it comes to church, I think many times in America we struggle with intergenerational ministries. A lot of times we just kind of seclude and segregate an age group to go do something on their own. But what would it look like, just imagine with me for a moment, what would it look like if the older generation was looking to invest and build relationships and empower the younger generation and it wasn't just one-sided but the younger generation was humble and teachable and willing to learn and willing to hear the stories of of what God has done.
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Commending God's works to another generation is so important.
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Pastor John Piper says this, "It is the biblical duty of every generation of Christians "to see to it that the next generation "hears about the mighty acts of God.
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"God does not drop a new Bible from heaven "on every generation.
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"He intends that the older generation "will teach the newer generation to read and think "and trust and obey and rejoice.
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It's true that God draws near personally to every new generation of believers, but he does so through the biblical truth that they learn from the preceding generations.
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The spirit comes down vertically, you might say, where the truth of God is imparted horizontally.
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Here's the thing.
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When it comes to the church, the church is just one generation away from extinction.
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Every family is just one relationship away from not walking with Christ.
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And the question for us today is what are we going to do about that?
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When we think about what King David said here in verse 4, "One generation shall commend your works to another." How will we impart God's faithfulness to the next generation? Big time question for us to lay awake at night tonight and think about. Next you can write thirdly down there that faithful celebration of God is theological. It's God-centered. It's not man's ideas about God, but it is Christ-centered. It's who God reveals himself to be. Too many times we go to God, too many times we go to prayer thinking that we know who God is, and we end up praying or talking about things that God does not reveal himself in Scripture. If we want to know who God is, we can look at this passage all throughout. The greatness of God in verse 3, "Great and greatly to be praised and His greatness is unsearchable." Make your way down through the passage of those 30 attributes and characteristics of God, we know who God is, and so our worship, our celebration of Him must be based on who He reveals Himself to be, through general revelation, through His creation, and Warren Weirsbe says this, "God is so great that the human mind cannot fathom Him, but the human heart can love Him and tell others how great He is. God's character and God's awesome works furnish us with more material than could ever be exhausted, and we will have all of eternity to keep learning more." What does verse 3 say? "His greatness is unsearchable." Fourth thing there, the faithful celebration of God is, is that it's personal.
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You can write that down. We can't live a celebratory life of exuberant public praise to God if we're not experiencing powerful, personal times of praise behind closed doors.
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See, when you look in verse 5 here, at the end of the verse, we see all these exuberant statements that King David makes in praise to God. But look at verse 5, "On the glorious splendor of Personal meditation precedes public praise.
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Personal meditation precedes public praise.
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Our public praise should be an overflow of what God is doing in our lives.
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It shouldn't be just a one-time thing that comes spontaneously, but it should be an overflow of what He has already done.
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If you're wondering why public praise sometimes seems forced, if you're wondering why you're just not really into it, I would ask you, how is your personal time of praise?
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How is your personal time and meditation with the Lord?
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You can't go public without being personal.
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And lastly, faithful celebration of God is prayerful.
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If you look at the tail end of this passage on verses 18 through 20, it says the Lord is near to all who call on Him.
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To all who call on Him in truth, He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him.
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He also hears the cry and saves them.
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Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
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Verses 18, 19, 20, call on him.
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Call on him.
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What does James 4, 2 says?
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You don't have because you have not asked.
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We call on a personal God in prayer.
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We call on him because he is our loving father.
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We don't just hope, but we know and expect that he will meet our needs.
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Lastly, point number four, commit to celebrating God by praising Him verbally.
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Talked about the when, talked about daily, forever.
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We've talked about how we celebrate who God is and what He's done, but we commit to celebrating God by praising Him verbally.
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Lastly, look at verse 21, "My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord." David commits to saying, "I will extol you every day, and I will do it verbally, God." We look at all of these different exclamatory phrases in here, and we see the verbal phrases of speak, call, tell, declare.
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It's mentioned nine times alone just in there, along with a lot of other fervent phrases.
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My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord.
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See, David didn't write this psalm just to be worshiped and whispered in the closet.
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but he wrote this psalm for us to extol publicly and verbally.
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You can just read these verses to sense his enthusiasm.
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And that's why I'm so jazzed up about it today, is that David took his praise public.
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I mean, look at all of these celebratory actions.
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We'll put them on the screen behind me here.
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But amazingly, he says all of these things.
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Extol God.
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Bless his name.
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Praise him greatly.
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Commend God's works to others.
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Declare God's mighty acts.
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meditate on his majesty and wondrous works, speak of his might and great deeds, declare his greatness, pour forth or celebrate the fame of his goodness, sing aloud of his righteousness, speak of the kingdom, tell of his power, make known his deeds, call on him, fear him, love him, and speak the praise of the Lord. Isn't that a testimony for us to take into this week? So many examples of what we can do to celebrate God publicly. And here's the thing, like I recognized earlier, we don't always want to celebrate God every day. But celebrate everything that you can.
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You hear me on that today? Celebrate everything that you can. And celebration is a decision. Now my family and I have walked through many trials over the last couple years with my daughter Micah. She's about a year and a half old and she was born with a genetic disease that we didn't know about at the time. And so on day three of life she went into a genetic crisis. It was transported very quickly to Children's Hospital and we didn't know if she was going to see day four of life.
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And I remember my wife had just had a c-section so I was pushing her in the wheelchair across the hospital going from one doctor's meeting to the next.
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And there were many tears, and I was pushing her in the wheelchair, and we just cried out and said, "God, you are sovereign. Would you spare our daughter's life, not so that we can have all these memories with her, but would you spare our daughter's life, God, so that she would grow up, be able to verbally proclaim who you are, and give testimony to your great name?" And so there were many times that song lyrics like those in the Psalms came to mind. One was from vertical church band written by John Guerra and it goes like this.
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I believe everything that you say you are. I believe everything that you say you are. I believe and I have seen your unchanging heart in the good things and in the hardest part. I believe and I will follow you. So as I pushed my wife through the hospital, we would cry and we would sing songs like that because it was a decision, it was a choice that we had to make that celebrating God and worshiping Him, even on the darkest of days, brought about a peace that passes all understanding. And so I challenge you today. We could have gone out and we could have pouted. And by the grace of God, my daughter Micah is doing well today, still has a long road ahead of her with health challenges, but God has given us a peace that passes all understanding and a comfort and a hope in Jesus.
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As we celebrated who he was, even in the valley, he showed himself real to us.
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Now let me challenge you with this.
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Celebrate who God is and what he's done on a regular basis.
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Let it consume you.
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You know, you can wave your terrible towel and that's all well and great.
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happy birthday, celebrate the graduations, the wedding bells, everything that we talked about. You can celebrate the fact that Lord Stanley is in his proper place right now.
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But don't forget, don't forget that celebrating God is a daily forever thing. And we have so much ammunition to praise God with for who he is and what he's done. You know, this message could land in a couple places with you today. Maybe you're saying, "You know what? I just don't get I don't get this celebratory thing of this far-off God who's not personal to me.
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And if there's something that's gonna take you from apathy to joy, it's the gospel.
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So maybe you're here today and maybe you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord, as your Savior, as your God that is worthy of celebrating because he's turned you from darkness to light.
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Maybe today can be your day of salvation.
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And maybe you know Christ and you hear this message And you say, I have such a long way to go with celebrating my great God and King the way that David did here in this passage.
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Maybe your prayer to God today is exactly what David prayed back in Psalm 51 of, God, restore to me the joy of my salvation and renew a right spirit within me.
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Maybe that's your prayer today.
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Let's wake up with a thankfulness each day for what God's given us, for the breath in our lungs.
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So we cry out to Him in the joys and the sorrows.
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Let's praise Him for who He is and what He's done.
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Let's praise Him daily forever, for His character, for His awesome works.
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I'll leave you with this before I pray.
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It says in Philippians 4.4 that you might recognize the passage that says rejoice in the Lord always.
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And again, I'll say rejoice, right?
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I love the way that the message puts it.
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Celebrate God all day, every day.
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I mean, revel in Him.
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Celebrate our great God this week.
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Would you pray with me?
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Father God, we ask that through the power of your spirit, that you would infuse these truths from the Psalm of David into our lives in the way that you see fit.
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God, we know that we're not perfect in the way that we celebrate on this earth, let alone how we celebrate you, our great God and King.
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Father, would you do a great work in us?
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Would you do a great work in us as we seek to not just be celebratory just for the sake of being celebratory, God, but may it be a genuine overflow of our soul for who you are and what you've done.
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For your amazing character, God, that we looked at that David proclaimed throughout the psalm and for your amazing works.
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God, may we not just celebrate that publicly, but would we intentionally commend it in the next generation to exuberantly not only teach, but share stories of what you have done, God.
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Thank you for this passage of scripture, Father.
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May we verbally praise you here on Earth as we prepare for eternity, where we will praise you forever and ever.
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In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray.
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Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Psalm 145
What Do You Celebrate?
If what we celebrate shows what we value, than what is your celebration (or lack thereof) showing about what you value?
What about when I dont' feel like celebrating (praising God)? David had a history with God…what's your history with God? What has he done in your life that you need to be giving Him public praise for?
How does you daily routine incorporate praising God?
30 Observations of who GOD is from Psalm 145:
King, Great, Unsearchable, Mighty, Glorious, Wondrous, Awesome, Good, Famous, Righteous, Gracious, Merciful, Compassionate, Loving, Patient, Steadfast, Powerful, Faithful, Everlasting, Kind, Strong, Provider, Sustainer, Satisfier, Near, Preserver, Listener, Just, Worthy, Eternal…
Which of these characteristics encourages you / strengthens you / means the most to you?
How can this passage change our prayer life?
Take the attributes of God in this passage and do some introspection - Which characteristic of God do you need to ask the Holy Spirit to infuse into you?
Do you agree with the assertion that most Christ followers can improve how we celebrate?
What if your Facebook Wall and Instagram Feed reflected how great your God is, rather than "how great you are?"
Faithful Celebration of God is:
Intentional
Inter-Generational
Theological
Personal
Prayerful
Which of these themes from Psalm 145 resonated with you the most? Which of these is the most challenging for you?
Name several of the Verbal Phrases and Celebratory Actions from Psalm 145.
David’s Celebratory Actions:
Extol God, Bless His Name, Praise Him Greatly, Commend God’s works to others, Declare God’s mighty acts, Meditate on His majesty & wondrous works, Speak of His might & great deeds, Declare His greatness, Pour forth (or CELEBRATE) the fame His goodness, Sing Aloud of His righteousness, SPEAK of the Kingdom, TELL of His power, Make Known his deeds, Call on Him, Fear Him, Love Him, and SPEAK the praise of the Lord!
Give an example of what it would look like to live out these actions in your life.
How can you effectively COMMEND God’s works to the next generation?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.
