The Heart of Worship

We're in a series right now we're calling foundations, and this is gonna be our last week in foundations.

Um we're starting the year off looking at some foundational principles and what I'm truly really trying to do things kind of twofold.

One is I do want to us to think about what we do when we come together and make sure that we are doing the right things for the right reason, that we're getting the most out of our time together in our in our worship services.

But also, um, I don't want it to just stay here.

I want that some of the things we talk about have impact on your life and my life and the things we do after we leave here.

So we're really kind of trying to come to those fundamentals.

We started actually in the first week just talking about Sabbath as a whole.

Um, and if you go to the introduction of the Sabbath, it's all the way, it kind of starts in Genesis 1.

Okay, the book of Genesis was written by Moses to the children of Israel, and he wrote it to them a few months after they came out of 430 years of slavery and bondage.

So they had been in bondage 430 years to the Egyptians, which means sun up to sundown for 430 years, seven days a week, 365 days a year, they made bricks to build the Egyptian Empire.

That's all they did.

If you can't make bricks, you're dead.

And everything you care about is in jeopardy.

And so to come from 430 years of that, to come through the Red Sea, to end up in the wilderness, and then at Mount Sinai, okay, this is a reset for God's people.

And so Moses comes down and says, you know, uh God wants you to take a break.

He wants you to take a break every seven days, and he wants you to take a very specific break.

He wants you to stop working so that you can think about the fact that your value in his eyes has nothing to do with how many bricks you can make.

And even though we weren't in Egypt and uh, you know, we have a little different context, I would say we all still battle the whole brick counting thing.

There is still a part of me that feels like my productivity, it feels like my net worth.

There's part of me that feels like how good I am or uh at my job or whatever that might be, is somehow setting my value.

And so he said, every seven days I want you to stop.

I want you to give your body a break, but I want you to give your emotions and your soul a break.

I want you to think about the fact that no matter how the brickmaking's going, that you're made in my image, that you're the crown jewel of my creation, I want to connect with you.

And so when we when we come to church, we we don't just come out of ritual, we come in a very specific way.

We put these things down and we connect with God.

Um this week I want to talk to you about actually worship, praise and worship.

And we're gonna go to Psalm 150.

Uh, but you can turn there if you have your Bible, go to Psalm 150.

But before I start reading, I'm I'm just gonna give you a little context.

Psalm 150 is the last psalm in Psalms.

So there's 150 Psalms and Psalms.

And the first 145 Psalms are primarily David, but you know, whoever's writing them is basically writing the totality of the human experience.

So if you read the first 145 Psalms, you would see sorrow, you would see grief, you would see anger, even rage, uh vengeance, okay.

You see the writer sometimes going, God, smoke my enemies.

Punch them in the teeth, Lord, knock all their teeth out.

I'm serious.

You read some of this stuff, man, he's ticked.

He's trying to scorch the earth and he wants Yahweh's help.

Okay.

And then there are other times you see rejoicing, you see celebration, you see gratitude.

So you see, you know, the entire thing.

You see at times he's super confused.

He's like, what in the world?

This doesn't make any sense.

He's asking for healing, he's asking for help, he's asking for clarity, just like you and I.

So that's the first 145 chapters.

The last five chapters are all praise, which I think is no accident that in spite of the totality of the human experience, whether you're dealing with sorrow, grief, joy, celebration, or whatever in between, right?

In this room, we got a bunch of people in all different seasons of life.

Some of you going through some really highs, some really lows, and some have a complicated enough life, I'm winning over here and I'm losing it all over here.

That whatever we show up in, that we praise God in every circumstance.

Psalm 150 says, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

And so we're gonna look at this last Psalm and we're gonna sort of look at the outline of the psalm because it gives us a where and a why and a who and a how and how we praise and worship.

And I want you to think about how this applies not only to our gatherings together, but how this applies to your life when you leave here.

All right, here we go.

Psalm 150, starting in verse 1, says, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heaven, praise him for his mighty works, praise him, praise his unequaled greatness.

Praise him with the blast of a ram's horn, praise him with a lyre and a harp.

Praise him with the tambourine and dancing, praise him with strings and flutes, praise him with a crash of cymbals, praise him with loud clanging cymbals.

Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Let's start with that first sentence there, praise the Lord.

And in the original language is actually the word hallelujah.

Probably heard that in church before, right?

Hallelujah, hallelujah.

What does it mean?

What is it?

Well, hallelujah literally means praise the Lord.

That's what it means.

So if you've been yelling hallelujah, you didn't know what it means, you're welcome.

Now you know what it means.

Praise the Lord.

It's written here in Psalm 150, it is a second, uh, it is a uh second person imperative.

Okay, back to grammar school.

Second person imperative, second person means you're saying it to somebody else, and it's an imperative, which means it's a directive or an invitation.

It'd be like saying, Let's go, let's go, you're saying it to somebody else.

So it's interesting that in Psalm 150, when he says praise the Lord, he's not even talking to the Lord.

He's talking to the person next to him.

When we say hallelujah, or we say praise the Lord, we're inviting one another.

Hey, let's feed off each other.

I don't know what you're going through, you don't know exactly what I'm going through, but we can both praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, and we're stirring each other up, right?

We're calling each other out.

Okay, so uh the first part tackles where.

Where do we praise the Lord?

It says, praise him in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heaven.

Essentially, what that's saying is praise him inside and praise him outside.

Praise him in his sanctuary is speaking of the temple.

It's speaking of the holy place, it's indoors.

And then when it says in his mighty heaven, it's talking about outdoors.

It's not talking about the afterlife, it's talking about essentially outdoors.

In fact, if you have the King James Version, it says, praise him in the firmament.

Okay, the firmament, what what they uh what they thought about the sky at that time was that the earth was flat, and you look out, and everything looks like a dome, and the dome is the sky, and then even stars, they didn't really know what those were.

They didn't know they were flaming balls of gas.

They thought they were celestial beings fastened to the to the dome.

And and even though they had bad science at that time, and we've come a long way since then, essentially what they're saying is let every nook and cranny of the universe praise the Lord wherever you go.

And I think what it speaks to is a deeper principle of compartmentalization.

Like, don't compartmentalize your praise.

Don't think of praise as that thing I do when I go to the temple, that thing I do when I go to the church, that thing that I do when I'm in the sanctuary.

When I'm there, I get my praise on, and then when I go out here, I get something else on, and then I take my praise off.

And I go out here and I'm this way at work, and I'm this way at home, and I'm this way.

Okay.

No, it's you you praise him everywhere in everything you do.

A good cross-reference for this is Colossians 3 23 says, Whatever you do, you could probably even add, wherever you go, whatever you do, wherever you go, work at it with your whole being for the Lord and not for men.

Whatever you're doing, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not for people.

In other words, every single thing you're doing, every place you're going, it's an act of praise.

It would be worth taking some time sometimes soon to think about is there any place in your life that isn't like you're you're not thinking of it as an opportunity to praise?

I've I've compartmentalized this out.

Okay, so I got I got I got my faith.

When I'm in my car, I maybe do some worship when I'm okay doing this, when I'm on the treadmill, I'm listening to, you know, still good, still God, or I'm, you know, when I go to church, I do this.

But but when I go over here, I I separate that and and and I'm not serving the Lord there.

So so it's it's the idea that we don't compartmentalize.

It's in the indoors and it's in the outdoors.

Where do we praise God?

Absolutely everywhere.

The next is why?

Why do we praise the Lord?

Well, it says uh verse 2 Praise Him for His mighty works, praise His unequal greatness.

Okay, that's essentially saying praise Him for what He's done and praise Him for who He is.

So we praise Him for His mighty works and we praise Him for His character, His unequal greatness.

Okay, so what's going through our minds when we're in a worship service, when we're singing, or again, when we're taking time even outside of this event to worship and to praise God, I'm thinking about two things.

One, I'm thanking Him, I'm praising Him for His mighty works, I'm praising Him for what He's done.

You see something in nature that reflects the character of God.

You you get some clarity in your mind about yourself.

You learn something, you feel the joy of uh of your purpose.

Uh okay, you you look at the people, not just the ones that left, but the ones that stayed.

You think about the opportunities that you got, you think about the body that you got.

I start to go, thank you, Lord, for your mighty works.

Thank you for what you've done.

Thank you for your provision, for your protection.

Thank you that you're an ever-present help in time of need.

Thank you that you never left me alone.

Thank you, God, that you're with me, that you brought me through that thing.

Thank just thank him.

We just praise him for what he's done.

And then we praise him for who he is.

You know, we just sang a throwback song, shout to the Lord.

You remember you such a good name.

Some of you remember that one, right?

He's saying, Mountains bowed down, you know, at the at the sound of your name.

You know, we we think about that he's omnipotent, he knows every he's all powerful, he's omniscient, he knows everything.

He I've never had a thought he didn't know about, and he is a he's full of grace, and his mercies are new every morning.

So we start to think about what he's done and who he is.

That's that's why we worship him.

Gotta keep going.

The third is how?

How do we worship him?

Okay, I really like this.

So Psalm 150, starting in verse 3 through 5, he starts to list a bunch of modern contemporary instruments to his day.

So he's like, praise him with the blast of the ram's horn and praise him with the lyre and the harp.

Praise him with the tambourine and dancing, praise him with strings and flutes, praise him with the clash of cymbals, and praise him with the clanging, loud clanging cymbals.

Oh, what's he doing here?

Well, it's really not about those specific instruments.

He's picking relevant, okay, contemporary instruments to his day.

But he's doing a few things here.

One of them is he's introducing diverse instruments.

So he's painting the picture of an orchestra or a band where you have different kinds of instruments.

Some of them you strum, some of them you strike, all right.

You've got strings and you've got percussion, and the instruments look different and you play them different, and they have different tones and sounds, but they all come together in unity and they're all they all matter.

And if you took one of them out, there'd be something missing.

And so you get all of them working together.

I think it's worth noting that when we think about praise and worship, okay, so if somebody asks you, hey, what's the praise and worship like over at you know this church or that church?

Usually they're talking about music.

And I think that it is reductive to simply think of praise and worship as music.

I think that's reductive.

I I think whatever your gift is that God's given you, that's your instrument and you need to play it.

That's what uh that's what we just read in Colossians.

Play it like crazy, whatever God's given you to play.

Not everybody's musical.

But with when he introduces music here in worship and praise, I think even you know, there's the diversity of the instruments and there's the unity of the sound.

But it's also it's introducing emotion.

Emotion.

I'm not sure how you feel about emotion, but but emotion is important.

Emotion is part of the flavor of life, it's it's the flavor of relationships.

At some point you come to places where words just fall short.

Have you ever been trying to communicate something and you're just like, oh, it doesn't matter how I say it.

It just I can't, it doesn't like if you take your favorite song or a song that moves you deeply and you just read the lyrics, it would do something to you, but it's not the same as when the musicality comes out and and and the melody comes out and the harmony and all the sounds, and it it takes you.

It's it's a deep emotional experience that's a language.

And there are often times that words fall short, and even as we express ourselves to God, whether it's sorrow or it's joy, music helps us to engage our emotions.

Um I I was uh this last Christmas, uh, you know, a few weeks ago, was the best Christmas the Ford family's ever had.

Um I'll tell you why.

Okay, my my boys, some of you guys know this, but our boys have autism, and part of their experience with autism is they never really got into Christmas.

It's kind of a bummer because you know, as a parent, when you know, Christmas is a fun way to bond with your kids, you know.

You get get excited about the traditions and the you know, all this and opening the presents.

There, you're teasing them all month, you know, for that one day, and they wake you up super early and you come in there opening their presents, and it's just wide eyes, and you just can't even describe it.

Well, my daughter uh did that, but both of our boys they didn't even care about Christmas.

So we we woke them up on Christmas.

That's true.

We'd wake them up at Christmas and you know, give them their gift, and they didn't even want to open it, you know, and we try to get them excited to open it, and maybe we could finally get them to open it and then they'd be done and go upstairs, or they they we couldn't hardly get them to stay around the tree.

I don't know what happened, but this year it all changed for whatever reason.

My one son is 12, my other son's eight, they just it clicked.

This year they're just they were fired up about Christmas.

They woke us up at like 5 a.m.

You know, and I was like, you know, the old way wasn't too bad, you know.

I'm like wiping the you know, sleepers out of my eyes, and my sons are like pawing at the gifts, you know.

And I'm like, hold on, you know, I get my coffee, I sit there, and man, these guys tore into their gifts, and they're taking them out, you know.

They're like, oh I mean, they're having so much fun.

And honestly, I didn't see it coming.

I didn't know that this was gonna be the year, it just was out of the blue.

And so my wife and I are like looking at each other like, and so like my sons are like having this moment, we're having this moment.

I can't even describe how it felt in my heart.

My heart was exploding, okay?

And I'm looking at my wife and I'm like, what words fall short?

What do you say?

You know, I'm like, this is awesome.

You know, I'm trying to do things physically, you know, I'm like.

Like, what do you do?

Like, there was no words.

And there come some times in our lives, I don't have words.

I don't have words to describe the thing I'm walking through.

I don't have words to describe the fear I'm dealing with, I don't have words to describe the joy that I have, the gratitude that I have.

I don't have words to describe how I feel.

And so music inner being introduced.

You bring music into your faith.

And so David is saying, bring music into your expressions with God.

I understand, by the way, why people are leery of emotion.

I get it.

Because emotion makes you vulnerable to manipulation.

It's why we would withhold emotion in a human relationship.

Right?

If you've ever been hurt by somebody, you know, part of how you protect yourself is to withhold your emotion.

If you went all in emotionally with somebody and they were taken out of your life, or they they walked out of your life, they hurt you deeply, there is somewhere in that valley of despair you go, you know what?

I am not giving my heart away ever again.

You you're protecting yourself.

But think about this now.

Imagine a marriage where you had people who were deeply committed till death do us part, but they had no emotional connection.

You'd be lacking some flavor, there'd be something missing.

And even if you stayed together forever, that lack of emotional availability would take some of the taste off the taste bud of your marriage.

You're supposed to have that.

But I understand, and when it comes to religion and when it comes to faith and Christianity, there are people that have there's no shortage of stories of people being manipulated because of their because of their emotions, being emotionally manipulated, and we're we're leery of that.

By the way, this is why this is why we we don't make big purchases emotionally.

Smart people don't do that, right?

You go in, you go in to make a big purchase and you're feeling emotion, you're like, I'm gonna sleep on it.

That's right.

That's right.

See how I feel tomorrow morning.

I'm gonna sleep on it three times.

I want to see how I'm feeling on Friday because right now, man, all I can see is the upside.

Right now, all I can smell is the new car smell.

Right now, I can just imagine myself behind that.

I'll I I I'm wondering what they're gonna say at work.

I already know.

I'm I'm excited, I got my emotions up, and so you've learned to be a disciplined decision maker to not make emotional decisions because when your emotions are up, you're prone to manipulation.

And let me say this.

I know I'm talking to somebody today that somewhere along the line in your faith, you trusted emotionally and something you were manipulated, something bad happened, something didn't live up to what you said, or you got in that spot.

And so now you've withdrawn your emotion from your faith.

And we've got to get to a place where our life experiences build wisdom, not walls.

Build wisdom, not walls.

I've got to be wise, Bible says guard your heart.

So you gotta, I gotta be careful that I don't get so emotional that I'm manipulated and my judgment goes out the window.

But if we say, you know what, because of that makes me prone to manipulation, in my relationships with others, my relationship with God, I'm gonna withdraw emotion.

You're missing the flavor.

And this is where we see David says, fire up the band, play the music, sing the songs.

You know, I love that he uses these uh contemporary instruments, and I kind of tend to wonder what would the, you know, what would he say if Psalm 150 was being written right now?

You know, because he's talking about the harp and, you know, let me go, tambourine and dancing, and he says the strings and the flute and the lyre and the harp.

I I don't think it's really about the specific instruments he mentions as much as he's saying, take your instrument and and you know, worship God with it.

You know, I was thinking like if it was now, it would probably be praise God with the keyboard and praise God with the bass guitar and praise God with the acoustic guitar and praise God with the drum set, you know.

But it'd probably be more.

Probably be praise God with the lights, praise God with the light board, praise God with the mixing board, praise God with the cameras.

You know, I was uh this last week I was out uh out of town, I was supporting my wife in one of her endeavors, and um, I met somebody from Canada who joins us every week from Canada online, and they said they had very different uh religious backgrounds, but they're like, Man, we just this has been the first thing we've been able to connect together.

They're like, so essentially they were thanking our production team through me for the work that you guys do.

Because they're like, you know, we're not there because we're in Canada, but we're with you every week, and thank you for the way you guys do this and you put it in our our living room, right?

And so, and that's pretty awesome that you know we're able to cross those boundaries.

All of a sudden, somebody's living.

Turns into a sanctuary, right?

Praise them in the sanctuary of their living room became a sanctuary, you know.

Your phone becomes a sanctuary wherever you are.

And so I was thinking about that, you know, and I was thinking about how when we talk to our production team and our camera people, especially, we're like, listen, you guys have a big responsibility.

You know, the camera is your instrument.

And you're you're you're helping folks wherever they are, you know, to be able to enter in.

And so get the shots you need to get, but try to be as discreet as possible because there's folks in the room and we don't want to be a distraction.

There's people that are in the room, and so you know, they usually dress, you know, dark and they're they're trying to, you know, get around.

But I love it every once in a while.

You know, I look up and one of our camera people, you know, they're they're getting the shot and they're like, I'm like, is that the Tootsie roll?

I think our cameraman just did the Tootsie roll, you know.

And you know, I don't I don't mind it.

I don't mind it because if if they were playing an instrument, they'd be doing, you know, this is their instrument, they're playing it.

And and I and I understand we got to be careful because what we don't want to do in our acts of worship and praise is draw attention to ourselves because that's counterproductive.

I've seen people try to show out and steal God's glory.

We're not after that.

In fact, last week Chris Rayleigh talked about blessed.

The word blessed comes from the word barak, which means to kneel.

Right?

Bless the Lord, oh my soul.

And all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Kneel to the Lord, oh my soul.

What is my soul?

My mind, will, and emotion.

So it's using a physical description of kneeling to describe the posture of my heart, my mind, my attitude, my will.

I bow myself humbly to you, kneel before God.

So when we're worshiping God, whether it's with our voice, whether it's with our body, you know, he says, praise him with dancing, praise him with the instruments, praise him, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord, we do it from a posture of humility.

We're not trying to draw attention to ourselves, that would be defeating the purpose.

But at the same time, we bring whatever our instrument is.

I'll tell you, you know, I'm not a good singer.

Um, I wish I was, but I'm not.

And so in worship, you know, I want to be careful I don't distract the people next to me.

Uh, but but often, like, you know, I'm a physical person, you know, and so often I will I'll lift my hands to God.

I'll lift them up.

And when I'm doing it, I I have different things, honestly, in my head that I do that's connecting me with God.

It's me worshiping him.

Sometimes I I put my hands up like I'm like surrendering to God.

Because maybe there's something I'm holding back.

I'm having a hard time.

Like, Lord, I'm all yours.

I'm all yours.

There's other times I'll I'll literally I'll just do this with my hands, you know, in my worship.

And I'm saying, God, whatever you want to give me, I'll take it.

I'll take it, Lord.

I'm I'm receptive.

God, if you want to tell me something I don't want to hear, I'm listening.

God, if you want to give me something I don't feel like taking, I'll take it, Lord.

I'll take, I'll be obedient.

You can count on me, God.

I'll be obedient to what you say.

There are times actually I clench my fist.

Okay, so if you I'm not angry, what I'm doing is actually I'm I'm clenching my fist and I'm saying, God, I give you all the power that I have.

I know I'm just a human being.

I know that I'm just I'm just a vessel of clay, but God, here's my my power.

Whatever I have, you can have my voice, you can have my mind, you can have my body, my strength, Lord, everything.

I have my focus.

God, I give, and there are times in worship, I'll literally just clench my fist, and what I'm doing is I'm saying, God, I give you all of me, myself, every bit of power.

If there's anything in me you can use, God, it's yours.

And I'm connecting with God in that way.

So when we think about the totality of the instruments, okay, what is it doing?

It's bringing unity.

I was I was thinking about this, by the way, and I'm almost done.

I'm almost done.

But I was thinking about I was thinking about what happens when every everything that has breath, all the voices sing together.

Like, let's do just a quick survey, and I'm gonna ask you to participate and be honest.

How many of you by a show of hands would say you're a good singer?

Lift up your hands.

Okay.

Choir, choir, choir, choir.

You got it?

You see them?

You writing them down?

Write it down?

Okay.

Okay.

How many of you would say, being straight up, you're not a good singer.

You don't sing well.

Okay.

Look at look around.

I don't know if you looked around the room.

By the way, there was some, when I said a good singer, lift their hand, the person next to them was like, now, now, this is I I I honestly think these ratios are probably correct.

Okay, I would say, I would be guessing, Isaac, how many do you think what percentage do you think would be self-identify as good singers?

Uh, like 10.

Okay, we'll say 10%.

So if 90% of this room can't sing good, have you ever noticed every time a crowd collectively sings together, it always sounds good?

Truly, truly.

Have you ever noticed that?

I mean, it could be it could be a hundred thousand people in a stadium singing, you know, Carmen, Ohio.

And and and 90% of our bat, somehow it all sounds good.

There's something I don't know how that happens.

I really don't.

I don't know if like the other, you know, the 90% somehow hears and tunes into the 10% and we end up.

But but if you've ever been in a place where the singers go, and I lift up your voice, and if the crowd and the group wholeheartedly lift up their voice, it's beautiful.

Every time.

It's like God did this magic trick that if we'll lift up our voices together, it's beautiful.

Whether we would identify as a good singer or not, there's something beautiful about it.

And this is where you see David say, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.

Even if you're not a good singer, lift up your voice and join in the chorus.

Last thing.

So we've got we've got the the where, we praise them indoors and outdoors, we praise them everywhere.

We have the why, we praise them for what he's done, and we praise him for who he is.

We have the how, you praise him with whatever instrument God's given you.

And we have the who, let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

The last thing is we have when.

When do we praise the Lord?

We cross-reference to Psalm 34, 1 through 3.

It says, I will praise the Lord at all times.

I will praise the Lord at all times, I will constantly speak of his praises, I will boast only in the Lord.

Let all who are helpless take heart.

Come, let us tell of the Lord's greatness, let us exalt his name together.

I'm gonna invite you to stand up on your feet.

Invite the choir to come back out.

You know, it's not often that we have an opportunity right after a message to apply what we've talked about.

Usually it takes a little bit of time.

But today, what I want to do is I want to start with this hallelujah.

Praise the Lord.

Second person imperative.

Let's go, let's sing together.

I want to invite you to praise the Lord with me.

And why are we praising him?

We're praising him for who he is, we're praising him for what he's done.

We're using our instruments, our voices, our bodies, our hearts.

We're blessing the Lord by kneeling and submission and our our mind, will, and emotions to him.

And let's do this, let's celebrate his name together.