Why Your Praise Matters

Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of

Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.

I hope the following message challenges, encourages, and

ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.

Let's get into the word this morning.

Okay, well, let's turn with turn to Psalm 149.

Before we do that, I don't think Pastor Adam did this, but I was,

I was. I'm always writing my message

till the time I get up here. I already preached it once, but

I was writing some more things, so I didn't want to do this

twice. But if you have served in the

military, in any, any branch of the military, I want you to

stand. Go ahead and stand if you've

you're present or if you're. Thank you so much.

Amen. Thank you so much for your

service. Yeah, Bless you.

You may be seated. Yeah.

And you know, freedom isn't free.

We we have a tendency to think that the freedoms we enjoy are

the natural state of man. But it is actually a rare

experiment in human history, what we enjoy.

And that's largely because of those who have served to protect

our freedom. So thank you so much for all you

did and all you've done. All right, let's get into the

word this morning. Psalm 149.

All right, we are. I said, I told the first service

that I'm going to be preaching on this next week as well.

I won't Roger will be preaching. But so we're we're we're in,

we're, we're talking about Psalm 2 and Psalm 149.

A couple weeks ago we looked at Psalm 2 and it's fascinating to

me that both the second Psalm in the book of Psalms and the

second to the last Psalm in the book of Psalms are bookends that

go together and it's talking about and praise how we what

Psalms chapter 2 says that the kings of the earth, the rulers

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

will try to shake off the shackles of the Lord and his

anointed. Psalm 149 says we actually place

them, we hem them in and we shackle them and bend them into

God's will and we do that through praise.

It's an amazing thing. And so these two Psalms go

together. So we're going to continue to

look at this. And I only got through the first

verse this morning. So we're, we're going to be

dealing with this for a while at this rate till, you know, till

2027. But so in 2023, March of 2023, I

finally got to go to Israel. I had never been to Israel.

And I, I hate to admit this, some of you are going to gasp

and think this is horrible, but I, I never really had a real

desire to go to Israel. I had a couple of opportunities

and it just didn't work out. And now that I've been there, I

have a deep desire to go back. How many of you ever been to

Israel? Raise your hand.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's an amazing place with a mate, of

course, tremendous history. And so I went and got to see all

kinds of things. Matter of fact, we were in a a

small village overlooking Gaza that was one of the villages

that was to be attacked seven months later by Hamas.

And I'm glad I was there before that, but it was just an amazing

time. But one of the things we got to

see that is still closed to the public, from what I understand

it's going to be opening soon, was an archaeological discovery

of what's known as the Pilgrim Way or the Pilgrimage Rd.

And it was actually discovered, I want to say, in 2004.

What happened is there was a sewage break in a potato field,

so that when they went to fix it, they hit something.

And in Israel, when you're digging and you hit something,

everything stops. You call in the archaeologist

and you look at what you hit because there is so much history

there. And they discovered what they've

now understand to be the Pilgrim Rd.

And the Pilgrimage Rd. is a pathway.

It's about 25 feet wide, this sandstone pavement way.

It was buried deep beneath the earth.

And it was the the road from the Pool of Siloam, which was a

mikvah where they would wash themselves and be ceremonially

unclean. And then they would ascend to

the Hill of the Lord and worship at the Temple Mount.

And so that was the pilgrimage road.

And it's it they're excavating it now.

You see this picture of it. This is, it is the most

extensive archaeological dig and most advanced archaeological dig

in human history. And you can see they're, they're

digging underground and they're, they're creating these metal

arches so that you can go in there and these huge stones are

part of that pavement. This is a a stairway going off

into a would have been some kind of establishment off the that

way. And then there's a final picture

which is in. I just thought I'd throw that in

there. That's a hole in the ground,

which is the entrance to another level of archaeological dig

thousands of years before this one.

So I mean, it's layer after layer of history in Jerusalem

and all over Israel. But what was interesting is this

is the this was the pathway that people would clot.

They would walk up to the Temple Mount in worship and it's where

they would sing the songs of ascent.

I want to say it starts in Psalm 125 on through there about 15

passages, which were known are known as the songs of ascent.

And they were worship courses that would be sung as they're

walking up this pilgrimage way. And so it was the, it was the

way to ascend the Temple Mount. And so it was interesting,

fascinating. It's closed to the public, but

we got to go because comes with Kufai Christians United for

Israel and that was the organization I ended up going

with. And because of their close

relationship with Israel, we were able to go down into those

tunnels and see them. And, and I they're saying in in

about 20-4 months from the time that I was there, it was

supposed to open up to the public.

I don't know if it is yet, but I just I thought it was

fascinating got back home, but that that was cool.

And then two weeks after I got back, we had Dean Briggs and

Mark Breesbaugh. And some of you will remember

when we had them in and they were teaching.

We did a small conference on ascending the hill of the Lord

and how in worship there is a dynamic where we ascend the hill

of the Lord and we we begin to move in authority that God is

granted to us. It was something that deeply

stirred my heart because of what God has called us to as a

people, as a church. But what I didn't expect is as I

was contemplating this, I was in prayer one day and the Lord

spoke to me about my visit to Israel.

I want to read you. I wrote down some notes from

that. I'm just going to read you what

I felt like the Lord said to me the following week in prayer.

The Lord began to speak to me about the prophetic nature of my

visit visit to the Pilgrimage Rd.

I began to sense that my trip to the excavation site was not an

accident, rather, it was a sign of what the Lord is presently

doing. Here's what I felt him saying.

Now understand that the way this was discovered, there was a

sewage break underneath the ground and you you weigh it.

Scripture says let 1 prophecy and the others judge you weigh

whether this is from the Lord or not.

I believe it was moral. Sewage has begun to be released

into the nations. In response, God is going to

facilitate the revelation of an ancient path.

He is going to once again open the pilgrimage Rd. in the

spirit, a spiritual path opened up in the days of Pontius Pilate

by Jesus himself. What they've what they've

discovered is in excavating this, that that pathway was

built during the time of Pilot. So thus it was in the time of

Christ, and we know that the reason we can ascend the hill of

the Lord and go boldly before the throne of grace is because

of what Jesus, Jesus did. And so although the revelation

is not seen by all right now, He is excavating the pathway to

ascend the hill of the Lord. What a few are being granted

access to will be open to all over the next number of years.

We must excavate this revelation.

And I believe the timing of the conference was key to this.

I really do believe that the Lord is going to teach His

Church to ascend the hill of the Lord.

So what does that mean when the when scripture talks about that?

Is that just mere poetry? Oh, that's nice.

That's cute language. Or is is there a reality that we

are tapping into in worship? If you look at Psalm chapter 2

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

and Psalm 149, they are talking about ascending in worship and

releasing the word of the Lord through praise.

And both of these passages talk about binding world rulers,

literally bending them into the will of the Lord, forcing them

to do God's bidding. And you and I have a part to

play in this in the form of praise.

Now, when I talk about the unique call on Heartland's life,

on our corporate life together, I want to be very careful when I

talk like that. I'm not saying that Heartland,

I'm not saying that it's the way we do things is better than

other churches. There are certain things we do

that are different. I believe in corporate callings

and I don't believe there's any one church that can do all that

God's called. I don't believe there's a one

stop Jesus shop. I believe we every church

carries different things and that's why the body of Christ is

vast and we need one another. But we do need to understand

what we're called to. Now, I was talking to someone

this week and I was talking about how when I came to

Heartland as the senior pastor, there were things that came with

me because they're on my life. They're part of the call of God

on my life. Same with you.

But there are other things when I arrived that came on my life

because they're on this church. And then there are other things

that I carried for years, and when I got here, it was on this

church as well. And there was a synergy between

the two. One of the things give you an

example, you know, Paul Judah was here last week.

I was telling the elders how when the first time Paul came,

he was praying over me on a Saturday night and he began to

declare. He said, I see eagles with

broken wings landing at Heartland being mended and

relaunching in the ministry. And I thought, that's nice that

Leif shared that with him. So the next day on the way to

church, I said, oh, so life shared that that word with you.

So what you talking about? I said that thing about the

eagles with broken wings. He said, no, life didn't say

anything. I saw it when I was praying for

you. I saw eagles with broken wings.

And I about drove off the road because life had given me that

word a year earlier. He said, this is a this is an

eagle's nest for eagles with broken wings, that ministers

would come here and be restored to ministry.

What he didn't know is that my brother had given me that word

five years earlier. And what I didn't know at that

time is there was a pastor that pastored this church some 25

years earlier that got up in the pulpit on a Sunday morning and

said God told me in prayer this week that Heartland it was, it

wasn't called Heartland at the time that this church would be a

healing place for wounded ministers to be restored to

ministry. Now, what do you make of that?

Let every matter be established in the the mouth of two or three

witnesses. God is trying to bring an

awareness to this church. Some of the unique fixtures in

the spirit, some of the unique calling on our our church.

That doesn't make us better. It makes us different and we

need to be about the the Father's business.

Another dimension to what God has called us to as a church is

the unique praise and worship that comes out of this house.

There's something different at times about Heartland.

The way I was trained in Bible school is you launch and praise

you get, you celebrate and praise, and then you landed into

this intimate worship. And it's the slow songs at the

end and you know, everybody's wiping their eyes and then you

get up to preach. There's nothing wrong with that,

that that's a valid way to do it, but that's not how Heartland

usually does it. We start out in intimacy and we

ended praise. Why?

Because it has to do with the call of God on this church.

You see, praise is different than worship.

What the psalmist in Psalm 149 refers to as high praise.

He says in high praise you bind kings with fetters and rulers

with shackles of iron. What is he talking about?

He's talking about this element of warfare that comes in high

praise. You see, worship is there, it's

for an audience of one. When we're in worship, we're

singing straight to Him. It's the IT, it's similar to the

sweet nothings you whisper into the ear of your spouse if you're

married. It's that those intimate

exchanges that we talk there, there, there's, it's just for

Him. That's what worship is.

But praise is different. Praise is the declaration of who

he is, not just towards God but towards the atmosphere, towards

even the rogue rulers and the and the principalities and

powers and heavenly realms. So praise is a way to re

acclimate our mind and recalibrate our minds and also

to impose those truths on the enemy.

There is a warfare element to praise.

So when we're worshipping, we're talking to him about who he is

and we go into this high praise. There are times where we're when

people are shouting and jumping and pumping their fists in the

air. What is that?

Is it just because we like music around here?

Although we do, there's more to it than that.

It's it's enforcing the will of the Lord in praise.

You see, praise is about confronting the false narrative

of the enemy. We come in here and praise is a

protection for our own minds to protect us from a fence because

life begins to crowd in on us and and make us feel like God is

abandoned us. At times the enemy tries to

create a narrative, reinterpret the circumstances of your life

to rob you of victory. And so praise is the way you

establish that victory and you hold the line.

What does Paul say in Ephesians 6 in the evil day, when you've

done all you can stand? And then he says it again, and

when you've done all you can stand, sometimes that's all you

can. But you, all you can do is stand

on that ground and say, I'm telling you, I don't understand

this. I don't know why all this is

happening, but this I know God is good.

And we hold that ground. And that's an act of warfare

because the enemy wants to create a narrative in your mind

to interpret your circumstances and push you off the ground of

victory. And once you give up that

ground, it's a whole different deal.

It's one thing to fight from victory, it's another thing to

fight for it. You have you give up the high

ground and now you're trying to get back to where you were.

And I use that terminology very carefully when I talk about the

narrative. That's where we get the word

narrator. And a narrator, of course, is

when there's a scene on the screen or there's a scene on the

the stage and there's circumstances happening, but

then there's a voice off screen infusing those activities with

meaning, filling in the back story so you know how to

interpret what's going on in front of you.

That's the purpose of a narrator.

And the enemy has a narration for your life and God has a

narration for your life. And depending on who you tune

into will determine whether you live in victory or defeat.

And so when we come in and worship and we, we, there's

times, let me put it this way, your praise is at its most

valuable when you're going through the hardest times

because that's when you need it most.

And that's when you are in the thick of the battle and you're

pressing back the narration of the enemy.

You're imposing the truth upon him.

You're encroaching on his activity and saying I refuse to

listen to your interpretation of my life.

And you're fighting for that ground.

And that means something. And it means something more than

just between your two ears. That's where the first battles

won. That's where the first battles

thought fought in the area of your thoughts.

But the fact is it there's an effect that our praise has that

goes beyond what we believe in between our two ears and so and

praise and worship where it's more than just us having

intimacy with the Lord. There is an external expression

and environmental effect that our praise has.

When we're worshipping God and we go into the high praise and

we begin to declare the goodness of his character, what we're

doing is we're declaring the excellencies of his nature and

character and imposing them on the narrative of the enemy.

And when the enemy begins to tell us that God has abandoned

you, he really doesn't care if if God really loved you, X

wouldn't be happening in your life.

And you fight and you stand and you declare those things.

You're pushing back the enemy. And there's a breakthrough that

many of you have felt in worship, may not have been able

to articulate it, but all of a sudden it's like you broke

through something and all of a sudden the rarefied or the air's

clear. You can see farther.

Things are clear. You have the victory between

your two ears, and you walk out of that service and you're

looking at things differently. And here's the crazy thing is,

your circumstances haven't changed yet.

You have the same circumstances you had when you walked into

church, when you walked out, but there's something different

going on in your heart. Why?

Because you have secured the victory in high praise.

High praise is warfare. We are enforcing the crown

rights of King Jesus, declaring his goodness on the earth in our

circumstances. We refuse to give into that

false narrative of the enemy. And that is crucial, especially

when you feel like it the least, because that's when the battle

is the thickest. And we take that stand and we

impose that on the enemy. But again, that has it's, it's

goes beyond what's going on between your ears.

There really is an environmental cosmic effect that praise has

that Psalm chapter 2 and Psalm 149 talk about.

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

And so we need to grasp this because if we don't, what

happens is we come in here and we think, oh, we sing because we

like it. It's like singing these cute

little ditties, you know? Oh, I like that guitar riff, you

know, And it prepares for the worship or for the word.

We just kind of blow past this and we don't realize that we are

doing Kingdom work here. This really matters.

The mindset that you grab, that you come in here and you

understand I'm going to engage heaven and I'm going to impose

heaven's edicts on the earth, and I'm going to shift events in

my life in the place of praise. Some of you were here when Paul

was speaking last a week ago this Saturday on soaking and,

and he, we, we come in, we, we were in soaking.

And then he said, stand up, make some declarations.

And I'm going to tell you I already had some in the holster.

I was ready. I, I pulled him out and I knew I

didn't have to search for something to declare.

There's some things I want to see some movement on in my

personal life. There's some things I want to

see movement on in my family, in our region.

And so there's a place where we ascend the hill of the Lord and

you hit that pocket of authority where you can begin to declare

and move things. And this, this is very, very

important because otherwise what you do is you're just this

little stick tossed to and fro down the little stream of life.

Life happens to you and you can't try to keep a good

attitude while you're being thrown about by the waves.

And God never intended for you to live that way.

No, it's not that we can just Willy nilly just declare

anything we want. Psalm chapter 2 talks about the

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

decrees. It says there's decrees.

Psalm 149 says that we carry out the sentence written against

them. So both of them, there's

something that's been decided in heaven that you and I pick up on

earth and we begin to declare those things and we use the

authority given to us to do so. Now you hang around here any

time at all, you're going to hear me quote Psalm 8 and

Hebrews chapter 2. This is a big deal because if we

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

don't understand the principle in those two verses, what we end

up doing is we end up giving away our authority and we let

life happen to us rather than imposing the will of God through

us on the earth. Psalm chapter 8 is very clear.

Psalms 8 · chapter mention

What is man that you are mindful of him, the Son of man that you

would visit him. You made him a little lower than

the angels and put everything under his feet.

God delegated the earth to man. Yes, we abdicated that through

sin, but we have it back in Christ.

Ephesians chapter 2 chapter one last two verses.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

God put everything under Christ's feet.

Comma for the church, the fullness of him who fills

everything in every way and by the way, the reason the church

is the fullness of him and the reason this this the context of

this passage we're going to get into in a minute is the

assembly. The ecclesia is because that's

the fullness of him. Every one of us have a portion a

measure that we bring to the table.

Every church has something they carry and together the body of

Christ is the fullness of him. And so we need one another.

So let's look at this here. Look at look at verse one, if I

can get my computer to cooperate.

Look at this praise the Lord sing to the Lord a new song, his

praise in the assembly of the godly.

So right from the outset, the psalmist, the second to the last

Psalm playing off the second Psalm in the book, he says

praise the Lord. So this is our marching orders,

Praise him. And it's different than worship.

He's not talking about this intimacy thing.

He's talking about warfare where we come in and we make it.

We begin to declare the goodness of God over our circumstances,

over our nations and the nations of the earth.

He says sing to the Lord a new song.

That word, new song is very specific.

It means what it says, a new song, something that's never

been heard or seen before. It's new material.

What he's talking about is prophetic worship, where we

declare what, what is the now of God, not just the knowledge of

God. See, there's a lot of good

things we could release. There's a lot of good things we

can preach on it's, but it's not about the general knowledge.

What is the now of God? What's on God's heart right now?

Prophetic worship is nothing more and nothing less than

singing. What is on the heart of God in

that moment? We're directed by him to release

his word and has an effect. What is the word in season?

And so as we're up, we're in worship.

We're looking for that What what has oil on it and you can feel

it. There's times we'll hit that.

It's paid dirt, man. There's something there's oil on

that thing and it's going to make a difference.

See, the danger is, is that you and I think that what we see

around us is all there is that we come into worship and it's

nice songs and then we hear a nice sermon.

Five points to having a good marriage and we go home.

But in reality, we step in here. We're engaging the spiritual

realm. Hebrews chapter 12 is very

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

clear. He says you have not come to

Mount Sinai. We're talking about ascending

the hill of the Lord. He says the hill that we ascend

is not Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai was a it was the

the, the mountain where they received the law and there was

condemnation and there was tremendous fear.

They weren't allowed to touch it.

And even Moses, who would talk to God as a friend face to face,

was trembling in fear and thought he would die.

And the writer says that's not the mount we come to, but you

have come to Mount Zion. And Mount Zion, it says, is the

spiritual Jerusalem. So this this idea of the

mountain of the Lord of Mount Zion is this spiritual reality

that the the writer of Hebrews is trying to paint for you and I

and he says a number of things about it.

And what he's talking about is what is the reality that we

encounter when we come together as the body of Christ?

What are we encountering here? One of the things he said we

it's the spirit spirits of men made perfect, the redeemed were

made holy. And he says, I love this phrase

of myriad of fest of angels and festal gathering.

That's a wild phrase. Millions of angels and festal

gatherings. You know, when we gather to

worship, the angelic begins to settle in around us and we join

in worship with them. It's not just us down here.

And we need a grid work for this because if we're if we're not

careful, we just think that we're down here jumping around

trying to get God's attention and God's come some disconnected

way. Every now and then he'll bump

Gabriel. Hey, Gabriel, they're down there

doing it again. Why don't you, you know, answer

a prayer form or something get you know, that's not what's

going on. There is an engagement of heaven

and earth when we gather in his name, when we be, especially

when we begin to praise, because what we're doing is we're

declaring his goodness over against the situations in the

earth. And it's that dynamic that

Scripture says he inhabits, or he enthrones himself.

In the midst of literally high praise is a coronation of the

king. It's us crowning him all over

again. And he comes and he begins to

exert his rule. From the midst of that, he, he

begins to move in and begins to move out and do things in the

earth. But again, if we don't realize

that, we come in, we sing some songs in disconnected ways and

then get ready to hear a nice little sermon, when in reality

we need to come prepared because we've come.

We've stepped in to do Kingdom business.

We come to Mount Zion, the spiritual Jerusalem.

We come and we engage heaven, and God begins to move through

our praise. And that is what this passage is

about. Now, again, these psalms are the

records of prophetic seers, of psalmists.

David was known as a prophet Asaph, one of his primary guys

in the House of prayer. What David established, the

Tabernacle of David Asaph, it says was a seer, meant he saw

things in the Spirit and he ministered as a prophet under

David's direction. And So what the Psalms are is

they are records of what they encountered as they saw things

in the Spirit and they left them behind through scribes for you

and I so that we could find the tracks to discover the same

things. You see, David broke into some

things and then he, he, he articulated those so that we

could enter into the same thing David is.

Let me let me just say that until you are able to articulate

what you've broke into, you haven't really fully learned it

yet. The final, the final building

block of what God does in you is your ability to give it away.

And until you can give it away, you don't really have it yet.

And have you ever heard of the Trivium?

The it's, it's a classical education.

It was, you know, kids learn Latin and it's a dead language,

but it's the base of a lot of different languages.

Well, for, for centuries, what was called the Trivium, it was

the way in which children were were taught.

And the Trivium, it starts out with memorizing many facts, then

it's argumentation and then it's giving it away teaching others.

And so it's a progression. And it's, it's fascinating

because it really matches the stages of a child, a little

child. They can memorize volumes of

material. That's why you just teach them

songs about all this stuff. I can still remember Conjunction

Junction. What's that fun?

How many? You know what I'm talking about?

See, it's you could sing along with me.

How do I remember that? Because it was put to music.

I was a little kid. I learned that stuff.

Or a noun is a person, plays or thing.

You know all those. So you have all these songs.

Some of you are looking at me. Whoa, you dated yourself.

So you you learn, but then it's that debate.

How many of you had kids that will debate you?

They're in that stage, but in under that mindset that that

ancient way of training children.

They believe that until you can give it away, you haven't really

learned it. And that's true.

So much so that Philemon tells us, and I want to say it's verse

six of the book of Philemon. He says I would that you would

share your faith comma so that you know what you have.

In other words, it's in the process of giving it away that

you learn. I had a Bible school professor.

He said one time he was asking the Lord or the Lord asked him.

He said, do you know why I called you to ministry?

And he thought, man, I guess because I'm so committed, I'm

naturally insightful. Lord, why was it?

He said the Lord spoke this to him and it was very humble of

him to do so. He said the Lord said it was the

only way to keep you holy, to keep you handling holy things.

There's something about forcing, giving it away.

It causes you to really kind of press it out and articulate it

and learn it and grasp it. And So what God does in your

life is meant to be given away to others.

And it's in the giving that you get further revelation and

understanding. And so David broke into some

things. And then what he did is he

systematized his form of worship.

David discovered some things about God, and he created this

whole system called the Tabernacle of David.

He broke the rules. Moses had the three court

system, got it from God himself. God said build it according to

the blueprint. And God took Moses in these

encounters and showed them there's a three court system,

the the whole outer court, the holy place and the holiest of

all and how it's all supposed to work.

And David is looking at that saying, but it's not fair.

I'm left on the outside. You got to look at Psalm 132.

I wish we had some time to look into Psalm 132.

It is an amazing passage. But David says this.

He said we heard about it in Ifathra.

I came upon it in the fields of jar.

What David was saying is that is a young boy living in Bethlehem,

which is another word for Ifathra, another another phrase

That's that's if father was Bethlehem.

David was saying as a young boy, I was raised in a father in

Bethlehem and I'd heard a rumor that the ark of God, this box

that God said I will dwell between the cherubim.

It was literally a throne that they would carry and God would

go with them and they knew this is a meeting place.

And David heard a rumor. See, Saul had taken it into

battle. It got captured because they

weren't honoring the presence of the Lord.

And the Philistines broke out, depending on your translation,

if they broke out in tumors or some translations say they broke

out in hemorrhoids, they didn't want it anymore.

We don't know which. Suffice it to say, if you don't

honor the presence, being in the presence is an uncomfortable

thing. So they sent it back and they,

the, some of the Israelites opened it and were killed.

And so they took it out and they put it in the fields of jar or

another word for Koriath, Jerem. And that's where the ark dwelt,

I want to say for about 20 years.

But David gives us a little insight in Psalm 132.

He said, he said, listen, when I was a young guy, I heard there

was a rumor that the ark, the creator of the universe, sits on

that box, and it was in my region.

And David said, I got to get there.

See, this explains a lot about David.

There's something in David's heart that said, if God's there,

I've got to get there and I've got to check this thing out.

He said, I heard about it in Bethlehem and I came upon it in

Kariath Jerem and it ruined David for the rest of his life.

The first thing he did when he ascended the throne, he said

I've got to get that arc to me. I've got to put it smack dab in

the center of my regime and everything is going to orbit

around the presence of God. And he called it the Tabernacle

of David. And it didn't have a three court

system. It had one court and they didn't

have a veil to protect them. You know what protected them?

Intercessors who we just sang it day and night, night and day,

would worship the Lord. David hired on his own dime

hundreds of worship leaders and intercessors and prophets and

scribes. And they would just worship God

day and night. And they would go into these

encounters and they would write them down.

And we have them in the forms of Psalms.

And it explains why the Kingdom exponentially increased under

David's regime, because David entertained the presence of God.

David was hungry. And what he discovered in

private, he created a system that other people could enter

into. And it became known as the

Tabernacle of David. And by the way, it's the one

that God said, I will rebuild. God isn't interested in

rebuilding the temple of Solomon or the tent, the Tabernacle of

Moses. What he wants is the Tabernacle

of David, where night and day he's entertained.

So when the psalmist says, come, bless the Lord, all you servants

of the Lord who stand by night in the House of the Lord, it's

referring to those that David had hired and around the clock.

They were entertaining. They were, they were around that

ark worshipping the Lord. And God began to move powerfully

in the nation of Israel, and it expanded and their enemies fell

before them. And many of these psalms were

psalms that they received and encounters, and they declared

over their enemies that we will bind those kings with fetters in

these rulers with shackles of iron, says God says in Psalm 2.

As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill, saying that

God's going to rule from that place.

Zion is just a very small mountain in Jerusalem, right

outside not too far from that tunnel.

They discovered it in another potato patch in an old garbage

dump. They were looking for the

David's palace and what was known as Mount Zion, and they

discovered it literally outside the city wall.

And I remember seeing that we went, we went through David's

palace. And there's reasons they know

it's David's palace because some of the carvings that were talked

about in Second Chronicle or First Chronicles and so forth.

And I remember looking at that and reading about Mount Zion.

As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.

Mount Zion is the, the, the envy of all the other mountains.

There's no greater mountain and I'm looking at things go, wow,

that's pretty generous, Lord, that's almost borders on forgive

me, Lord, dishonest. You know what's calling that

great? It's just a little Knoll.

Well, obviously the conclusion is God has a different metric by

which he measures things. Wasn't the size of the mountain,

it was the impact. And it was a place where David,

God said, I've set my king on Zion, my holy hill.

And now that Zion has become a metaphor for the Kingdom of God

in the governmental mountain. And it's what you and I are to

ascend the hill of the Lord in praise.

And once we get to those places where we catch the word of the

Lord and we begin to release them into the earth over our

families, over our situations in government, over the nations.

And that is the purpose of high praise.

So we don't have to get we don't have time to get into the rest

of this passage. We will next week.

Roger will be here and then we'll jump back into this.

But suffice it to say, listen this thing of high praise is

crucial. And if we get a grid work for

what's going on realize when we gather there's a reason it says

verse one sing to the Lord a new song.

His praise where in the assembly of the godly, you know, the

Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.

You know what that word assembly is?

Ecclesia. It's the New Testament word that

we translate church. It's a governmental ruling body

that exerts legislative rule in a region.

And so where do we do the high praise?

You see, there's, there's authority given to the body of

Christ that's not given to the individual.

And there's something about when we gather, when, when the the

ecclesia is in session and we begin to declare the goodness of

God. We come in in intimacy and we're

beginning to talk to him. And then we begin to that.

We begin to mount, you know, begin to ascend the hill of Lord

and we begin to declare his goodness over our circumstances.

And we begin to declare his, his character and his nature,

contrary to everything that's pressing in upon us, contrary to

what culture saying, contrary to to even what our present

experience may be, and contrary to what the enemy wants to how

he wants to interpret our circumstance.

And we take that stand and we press it back.

And we hit those spots of authority and it's where we

catch the word of the Lord. And I want to encourage you,

there are times on Sunday mornings where we're in worship

and God wants to drop a word in your heart.

And you begin to declare that over your family.

You begin to declare that over your situation.

Over your job, your circumstance, or even the

nations of the earth. There are times we'll do that

corporately when we get up and we begin to do business.

I remember one Sunday morning we were in worship and also my wife

leaned over. She said we need to pray for the

president right now. This is a number of years ago

and I knew it, man. We began to go into that praying

for the president and man, something shifted in the air.

You see, God wants to release those things.

He wants to bend kings and rulers into his will.

There are times where we're to pray over China and move the

ruler of China and make him bow to God's will.

Not, not something that we just, you know, we're, we're slinging

hash and saying anything we want.

We're catching the word of the Lord.

And through his ekklesia, he begins to turn human affairs.

Amen. Let's go ahead and stand.

Thanks for listening to our podcast.

If you'd like to help more people hear this message, you

can get the word out by subscribing and sharing it on

social media. If you'd like to support the

ministries of Heartland Church, you can do so at Heartland

Church online.com/give.