Praise Ye the Lord

 

Praise 1

 

Many years ago, I heard Clarence Sexton say, "We should place the emphasis where God places the emphasis." That resonated with me. The results were substantial shifts in my study, teaching, preaching, and writing. I have tried to major in what God majors on. One of those areas that God majors in that may perhaps be the most neglected in our generation is praise. As with the Holy Spirit, we have ceded that ground to the charismatics. As with worship, we have surrendered it to contemporary evangelicals. But just because those two groups are wrong about so much does not mean we ought to ignore what they are right about. And they are right to emphasize praising God, while we are wrong to practically ignore it.

I first heard direct praise of God emphasized by Jack Hyles. He routinely spoke of getting alone in a pea patch and having a fit (his words) praising God. He would commend men of the previous generation, such as Charles Weigel, who he found jumping up and down on his bed one day praising God. He would preach entire messages imploring his people to praise God. He spoke of spending hours alone every week with the Lord and going to specific locations to confess his sin, pray, and praise the Lord.

I first began to praise the Lord as a teenager. Shortly after I surrendered to preach, I asked my high school principal if I could use empty rooms in the church building to pray during my lunch hour. He readily consented. At first, I just walked around the room and prayed whatever was on my heart at the moment. Later, after I had grasped the idea of using an outline to pray in a similar manner to how one would use an outline to preach, I began to prepare my prayer times, including praise times. Through the years, I have added/subtracted them as necessary, but I currently maintain seven different, specific praise lists. Indeed, a substantial percentage of the total time I spend with the Lord in prayer is spent praising Him.

I want you to know the sweetness of it. I want you to see the joy of it. I want you to experience the power of it. I want you to gather faith through it. I want you and I to stop ignoring it, to stop ceding praise to the charismatics and the contemporaries, to become people who let the high praises of God be in our mouths. (Psalm 149.6)

 The simple truth is Scripture places a high emphasis on praising the Lord. The phrase praise ye the Lord is found twenty-four times, praise two hundred sixteen times, praises twenty-six times, praising ten times, glorify twenty-two times, and glorified twenty-nine times. Eighty-six times glory and God appear in the same verse; one hundred twenty-two times glory and Lord do. And this does not even take into account closely connected words such as worship, thanks, and honour.

Not only is the concept mentioned hundreds of times in Scripture, but it is also widely scattered. Indeed, it is found most prominently in Psalms, but there are specific and repeated admonitions concerning it from one end of Scripture to the other.

          In Genesis, Leah named her son Judah for precisely this reason. And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing. (Genesis 29.35)

          Leviticus 19 explicitly links holiness with praise.

          In Deuteronomy 10, Moses tells the people, He is thy praise.

          In Judges 5, Deborah begins her song with, Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel.

          In I Chronicles 16, David appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, and to record, and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel. Their entire job was to serve God by praising Him. II Chronicles 8 tells us Solomon continued this. II Chronicles 20 shows us they still did it in Jehoshaphat's day. II Chronicles 29 informs us this carried forward to Hezekiah’s reign. Ezra 3 shows us this was picked up upon their return from captivity. And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David king of Israel.

          Psalms speaks of its importance hundreds of times, indeed, on some occasions, entire psalms are dedicated to it. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and Habakkuk speak to it dozens of times. Daniel 4 shows us that praise was the initial and complete reaction of a humbled Nebuchadnezzar: And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto Heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.

          Moving into the New Testament, Luke 2 tells us that the heavenly host praising God accompanied Christ's birth. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord called us to do good works precisely so that people would glorify the Father. John 21 tells us that Jesus died the death He did specifically so it would glorify God. Luke tells us that praise for God was one of the purposes of the miracles Jesus did. Acts 2 tells us that one of the primary occupations of the early church was praising God. Acts 16 shows us Paul and Silas in jail at midnight, singing praises to God. Praising God is even mentioned in that tremendous doctrinal treatise, the book of Romans. And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people.

          I Corinthians 6 exhorts us to glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Ephesians 1 tells us we were saved to the praise of His glory three times in an eight-verse span. Philippians 1 says the same thing. Hebrews 13 calls on us to offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. I Peter 2 exhorts us to be separate from the world so that ye should show forth the praises of Him. Revelation repeatedly reveals that in Heaven, praising God is one of the great pursuits of those gathered around the throne. 

          It is not out of place to say we see hundreds of exhortations in Scripture calling for God’s people to praise Him, that we see dozens of examples of God’s people doing it, and that we see entire chapters of the Word of God dedicated to it. Yet how much of it is present in your life and mine? Is His praise an occasional exclamation thrown into the odd conversation, or is it a central feature of your intimate relationship with Him?

          For the next three months, I am going to place the emphasis where God places the emphasis, on His own praise. I invite you to join me. Mayhap it will both strengthen you and glorify Him.