The Praising Life
Download MP3Well, good morning. So, 8 years ago, I was sitting in my office in San Antonio, Texas. I had been working in youth ministry in Texas for a few years at that point, And I used to listen to a podcast from a college ministry in Birmingham, Alabama called University Christian Fellowship. It was the college ministry where I feel like the Lord, just impacted my life and my heart in a great way. So as I was engaged in ministry, I continued to listen to the UCF podcast, as a way to have nourishment for my own soul as I was pouring out so much in ministry.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting in my office listening to that podcast and hearing the news that Joel and Lauren Brooks were leaving that post to plant a church in East Birmingham. Well, that happened, by the way. And I and I remember in that moment when I heard that news, just a little prayer that bubbled up in my heart, and and it went something like this. Lord, if I could ever have the opportunity to be a part of that, I'd really love to. Now the Lord answered that prayer in really two ways.
Speaker 1:The first way, later that year, Mandy and I moved back to Birmingham, and we were able to be a part of Redeemer in some of the early years. So this congregation has already meant a ton to our family. But then, after 7 really wonderful years at Mt. Brick Community Church, I felt like the Lord's answered that prayer in another way. So to say that I'm honored to be here really is an understatement.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for having me, Mandy and I. We look forward to getting to know you. I've always admired Joel and Lauren so much. Josh Howson, one of you guys' other pastors, has been one of my closest friends since probably middle school days. If you guys know Josh Howson at all, you'll understand what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1:One of the goals of my life is to not do anything that would make him embarrassed to be associated with me. One of the highlights of the last few years of my life has been the friendship I've been able to build with the White Castle, another one of you guys pastors. And the Reverend Jeff Hine has shepherded my soul on more than one occasion. He's really been a pastor to me. So to be a part of this team, is really something.
Speaker 1:So so many of you are very, very thankful. Last week, Mark Cribbs from this pulpit, one of our elders mentioned fitting in around Redeemer and the need to grow a beard in order to do so. I need to tell you something now, okay, we need to talk. I'm an adult, I'm a grown up person, I have a wife, I have kids, I have a mortgage. I've been in, you know, ministry for years, like I'm a grown man, but I cannot physically, literally, I cannot grow a beard.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've been this is a couple weeks worth right now in prep for today. So we're gonna have to connect some other way. No, honestly, I'm honored to be here. And would you turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 150? Psalm 150.
Speaker 1:As Joel mentioned earlier, this morning we began a sermon series for the summer in the Psalms, And we're calling it the anatomy of the soul. And that's a phrase from John Calvin. John Calvin famously said that the Psalms are the anatomy of all the parts of the human soul. For there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that's not represented here as a mirror. In other words, the Psalms are gonna tell us something about the greatness and the grandeur and the glory of God.
Speaker 1:They're gonna do that. The god who rules and reigns over all things. The Psalms are gonna show us something of him. But what Calvin's getting at is that they do another thing. They show us something of ourselves, of who we are.
Speaker 1:They show us what it's like to to be us, to they they show us the fullness of what it means to be a human being and what it means to belong to God, to to live in response to God as we walk around in this world that God has made. A world that is broken, yes, but a world that God is redeeming. And the Psalms teach us and speak to us and they speak for us as we read these passages. They shape us as we make our way through life. The Psalms are these ancient songs and poems.
Speaker 1:There's something of a worship manual of ancient Israel, the book of common prayer for ancient Israel, if you will. But they're more than that. The Psalms have always been understood in our tradition, in the Christian tradition, to be central to the formation of our souls. I love the Psalms, and I'm excited, and I think we are excited as a pastoral team to engage these together this summer. So so Psalm 150.
Speaker 1:Let's read it together. Praise the lord. Praise god in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his mighty deeds.
Speaker 1:Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance. Praise him with strings and pipe.
Speaker 1:Praise him with sounding cymbals. Praise him with loud clashing symbols. Let everything that has breath praise the lord. Praise the lord. Let's pray together.
Speaker 1:Lord, as we so often do, lord, we ask you in this moment that your spirit would really be our teacher. Lord, in your kindness and in your mercy, would you speak to us? Lord, what a waste of time it would be if a guy stands in the front and talks. Lord, but we need your spirit to take these words, to enliven them, to shape us, to change us, to give us great hope in you. So we ask that you do that now.
Speaker 1:In the name of Jesus Christ our lord, we pray. Amen. I really like to read books and fiction. Great stories are my favorite. And whenever I pick up a great story, a great work of fiction, I do something really terrible.
Speaker 1:I turn to the very back. This horrifies my wife. And I read the last paragraph first. I mean, who does that? But there's something about seeing the end that helps us make sense of the whole, to help us anticipate where the thing is going.
Speaker 1:And I say that this morning because in our journey through the Psalms this summer, we begin at the end with Psalm 150. Scholars say that Psalm 150 is an intentionally crafted conclusion to all the Psalms. In fact, the last 5 Psalms, Psalm 145 to 150, conclude the whole collection. They gather together all the themes that have come before, and Psalm 150 is an intentional, emphatic, and passionate exclamation point to everything that comes before. In Psalm 150, you heard me read it, is about this idea of of praise.
Speaker 1:I mean, the the whole poem centers around this first phrase, praise the Lord. It's the famous Hebrew phrase, hallelujah. So Psalm 150 is this passionate and practical call to God's people to worship and to praise. And according to the logic of Psalm 150, by the sheer notion that we have breath in our lungs means that we are called upon. We are responsible to praise and to worship.
Speaker 1:Okay, psalmist. So so why? Why should we worship? And verse 2 tells us look at verse 2. Praise him for his mighty deeds.
Speaker 1:Praise him according to his excellent greatness. This first serves as a fitting outline of the bible's theology of worship. We'll take it in reverse order, praise him for his excellent greatness. The bible over and over and over again will call on God's people to worship him for his greatness, for who he is, for his holiness, his unparalleled uniqueness, for his glory, for his worth, for his significance. Worship God because for goodness sakes, this is God we're talking about.
Speaker 1:He's the God of all things. And if you've caught a glimpse of who he is, what else are you gonna do But worship him and praise him. But it's not just that. Praise him for his mighty deeds. The Bible's also gonna call on us over and over and over again to praise God for the things that he has done.
Speaker 1:It's not just who he is. It's also what he has done specifically, what he has done for his people, for his acts in history, tangible, real things that he did to create and to bless, to make promises, and to over and over again keep them, to save and to deliver, to rescue, and to redeem. In the Old Testament, a phrase like praise God for his mighty deeds is somewhat shorthand in the Old Testament for the great exodus event. The great moment when God swooped in and rescued and redeemed his people from slavery in Egypt. When he brought them out of that land and made covenant promises to them.
Speaker 1:As a congregation, you guys have walked through the book of Exodus, which is really important because it forms the foundation of everything we know about our salvation. So a phrase like praise him for his mighty deeds, the exodus event is probably in view. Praise him, yes, because he's great. Praise him, yes, because he's glorious. But praise him because he's brought his greatness to bear for his people.
Speaker 1:In the bible, god is decidedly not some kind of abstract deity in the sky demanding some kind of baseless foundationless worship. No. He has done real things for his people. So praise him. Praise him.
Speaker 1:And look at verses 3 to 6. Becomes emphatic, doesn't it? Praise him with trumpet sound. So psalmist, how are we supposed to do this praising? With trumpet sound, with lute and harp, tambourine dance sounding cymbals, loud clashing cymbals.
Speaker 1:In other words, praise him, and the way you do it is with any possible thing you can find. Praise him. And verse 6 becomes even the highest point of the Psalm, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. In other words, Psalm 150 tells us that in every way we can think of, with everything we can find, and more importantly, most importantly this morning, with everything that we are is to be brought before God in praise. The Old Testament will tell us a lot of things about praising and worshiping in a setting like this, in the gathered worship of God's people.
Speaker 1:But the Old Testament and the Psalms will also begin to push us for something more. Something that's hinted at in this let everything that has breath phrase. So the Bible will present a picture of worship and this praise, and it says that it's something that actually spills beyond a gathering like this, that it becomes integral to who we are. It becomes every moment, every breath we take. It's a totalizing full life kind of worship.
Speaker 1:Your life and my life is intended to be a complete response to this call. His words, his greatness, the things that he has done for us is supposed to be always before us, the Psalms will tell us. The Psalms will talk about needing to have him on our minds both day and by night. It's gonna talk about our going and our coming. It talks about God knowing and searching us deep deep in our souls.
Speaker 1:In other words, this worship is is not just something in a gathering like this, though that is vitally important. It's something that spills beyond and becomes a complete picture of our lives. This is what Paul is getting at in Romans when he says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Every part of who you are is to be brought before him in this worship. That's what Psalm 150 calls us to.
Speaker 1:This is what Psalm 150 is about. We praise the Lord. We worship him for good reason, for who he is, for what he has done with everything that we can muster, with all the energy we can find, with all the passion we have, with everything that we are. That's Psalm 150. But it begs a question, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Or at least it has for me as I've worked on this passage, and it's a question I haven't necessarily been able to escape in my time here. And I wonder if it's a question that you've been thinking as you've heard me talking right here. And the song the question is something like this. Okay, psalmist. I get it.
Speaker 1:My life is supposed to be a praising life. My life is supposed to be a worshiping life. But how do I get here? How do I do this? How do I make my life such that Psalm 150 could be used to describe it?
Speaker 1:How do I live this worshiping, praising life? See, for some of us in the room, we've been in church our whole lives. And I'm keenly aware that many of you came in this morning pretty sure you were supposed to make your life a life of worship. But how's that really going for you? Well, I think Psalms 1 through 149, everything that goes before is an attempt to answer that kind of question.
Speaker 1:The Psalms will paint a picture of what that worshiping, praising life really looks like in practical terms. And I believe that this is how it's answered, and it's the main thing I want you to hear this morning. A worshiping life, a praising life, defined by the Psalms is a life that brings everything, all of it, before God, before God's presence, before God's face. That's a worshiping and praising life. And when I say all of it, I mean all of it.
Speaker 1:Every thought, every fear, every joy, every doubt, every longing, every hope, all of it before God. All of it. Even those things. Those things that you think you're the only one who think it, those things. What about those feelings of of brokenness and guilt and shame?
Speaker 1:Yes. But what about those deep struggles, those young adult struggles of identity? Who am I? What makes me valuable? What will give me my sense of worth?
Speaker 1:What about those thoughts? Absolutely. Bring them before god. What about those inescapable feelings of of of weakness, of helplessness, of of insecurity in this world? Bring those before god.
Speaker 1:What about those deep dark experiences of grief and lost or sadness? Those dark and doubting depressed thoughts. What about that crushing like an elephant is sitting on your chest overwhelming, drowning, weight of anxiety and stress you feel? What about the loneliness, the anger, and the rage, and the frustration both big and small? All of those things too.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, also the feelings of elation and gratitude and happiness and amazement and wonder of joy. The Psalms are gonna tell us to take all those things, those real things deep in our souls and turn them over before God and before his presence. I heard a pastor say one time, if you think it, you have to pray it. And what I want us to see together this summer is that the Psalms are the means. They are the words, they're the things that give us the language to help us know how to do that, even when we have no idea what to say.
Speaker 1:And they're the exact right tools for this task. These words give us access, a path by which to be in God's presence, to worship him, to bring the whole of our human experience before him. The Psalms are the means by which we do that. They are these ancient poems that teach us to bring all of who we are before all of who God is. I have a little boy that you guys will get a chance to meet named Henry.
Speaker 1:He just turned 4. And fairly recently, he had one of those epic meltdowns. And it was the an interesting particular kind of meltdown that parenting parents will relate to. It was the kind of meltdown that's not quite toddler, but it's also not like full on boy. It was somewhere in that dark land in between.
Speaker 1:It was it was this irrational meltdown. He was so upset about something, and I said, buddy, you've gotta tell daddy what you're thinking. You gotta tell daddy all of what you're thinking. And you know what he said? He looked at me.
Speaker 1:He goes, but I don't know how. You tell me. Something of that is what's going on in the Psalms. Now it's really, really important to remember that this bringing all of who we are, those deep things before God, is not just for the sake of venting. See, it's like when we bring all of who we are, yielded and submitted in this open handed posture before God, he begins to take those things and to take us and to shape us and to mold us into who it is that he wants us to be.
Speaker 1:He begins to sanctify those thoughts. You and I live in a culture, that a philosopher named Charles Taylor calls, a culture obsessed with what he calls the age of authenticity, Authenticity. Okay. And he doesn't mean by this like a good thing, like we're gonna authentically be in friendship with one another. That's not what he means.
Speaker 1:What he means is that you and I live in an age of authenticity, meaning that we live in a culture that that's obsessed with finding ourselves, with knowing ourselves, with discovering ourselves, with even redefining ourselves. It's a lot of pressure, and it's self absorbed. It's what the reformers would have called the curving in on the self. And to always look inside to define ourselves somehow is a path of exhaustion and and and death at the end of the day. But, see, when we bring these things before god, he can take them and begin to point them and to shape them.
Speaker 1:The Psalms teach us that we will actually find our real selves, our best selves, when we allow god to do the giving of ourselves, when we allow god to do the shaping of who we are, when we give those things to god for him to deal with and then to deal with us. But we have to bring all of it before him. We have to be honest. So that's the praising, worshiping Psalm 150, life. With everything that we are, We praise him.
Speaker 1:We bring all of who we are into his presence. Lastly, I would be remiss if I not remind you that all of this comes together. It all becomes possible because of the person and work of Jesus. There's an ancient tradition that in that understood the Psalms to be the very prayers of Jesus. See, Jesus, we're told, took on human skin, and he lived the human experience fully.
Speaker 1:This is something that I struggle to even get my mind around that Jesus was the most human human ever. He was fully human. He felt the fullness of the human experience. The Bible tells us that it tells us that he he felt our feelings, that he was tempted in every way that we were. This is how he can have sympathy for us.
Speaker 1:He's our sympathetic high priest, the book of Hebrews will tell us, that he's been there, he's felt that. Here's what this means, Jesus. This is Jesus, the God of all things, the one in whom all things hold together. The Bible tells that Jesus knows what it's like to be you. That you could have a conversation with him, Jesus, you don't understand.
Speaker 1:And he'd say, I know. I know. But you don't get how I do get it. I know. Jesus lived those things before us, for us, But he did it without sin.
Speaker 1:In other words, he lived this worshiping and praising bring of all all of who we are before God life perfectly, and he did it for you and for me. So we have Jesus. Our lives are hidden in him. Our life is united in his life. And the Psalms at every turn you'll see this summer will point us to him.
Speaker 1:If you think it, you have to pray it, all of who you are before all of who god is. Would you engage these texts with us this summer? Let's pray together. Lord, we ask that you would help us be real and be honest before you. Lord, we pray that you'd help us be real and honest before one another.
Speaker 1:Lord, that you teach us to be a worshiping and a praising congregation. Lord, yes, with with guitars and with with drums and with cymbals, lord, with every instrument we can find. But, lord, also with the total total picture of who we are, with every thought, with every action, that we would live all of those things before you in your very presence. Lord, grant us as a congregation this kind of worshiping life. Would our worship, lord, spill beyond here?
Speaker 1:Lord, would it draw people to you, king Jesus? God, we ask that you'd be near to us this summer as we walk through these precious songs and poems. Lord, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our King. Amen.
