Andrew Fountain - Testimonies of Praise

Sermon notes - What Praise is

• I recently read about how to approach English royalty—the “neck bow”
  • That wounldn’t of cut it with Henry VII (what would have been cut would’ve been your head)
• What about God?
  • Today you’re going to learn more about how God wants us to approach him

1. Worship

• What is the difference between “praise” and “worship”
  • We tend to use the terms interchangbly nowadays
    • That’s fine. Words are fluid and change meaning over time
  • The Bible uses them much more specifically
    • We’re going to see how the Bible uses them

• It has the idea of going down, in recognition of their greatness
  • to throw yourself down on the ground in front of them
    • like an extreme form of bowing down before someone (neck bow)
  • It is an acknowledgement of lordship That everything belongs to our king!
• But this extends to the whole of our lives
  • It does not involve singing or dancing, but it may involve offering gifts, and our own selves
• Please understand: I’m not trying to tell us we’re to stop calling our singing “worship”
  • Nowadays we don’t make a distinction between praise and worship
  • But the Bible does, and it’s useful to understand it
• So worship means literally to “lie on your face before God”
  • But sometimes the Bible uses it of actions that carry the same message
  • e.g. Giving gifts
  • in fact our whole lives act this out
• Two examples of worship that was pure action
  • e.g. The Elder’s threw their crowns down before the Lord in Revelation
  • The woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with oil
• Definition:

2. Praise, the other side of the Coin

• This is what I want to focus on today
• There are a number of Hebrew words for praise

• The physical actions are completely opposite
• Exactly the same but in reverse order:

• Ronald B. Allen makes the following statement (quoting Westermann):

• You may say “that’s not true at all, I can do that…”.
  • That’s not what he’s saying—he’s speaking of the O.T.
• Before we go any further, I’ll give you a couple of examples
  • notice what David says here about praise (parallelism)
  • just show v.1

• Praising God, is telling of his works. It is telling forth, declaring, proclaiming God’s works.
• In verse 11 the Psalmist encourages other people to join in…

• Same idea
• 1 Peter 2:9 —a very clear verse

• This is our

3. Examples

• Allen —apples in car (p.61.63)
• Read v.1–8
  v.19–21
  • and then God answers! v.22–25

• My example: keys lost
  • Anyone here have some stories?

4. Praise is Public and vocal

• Summary: Praise is generally addressed to God, but it for others to hear
  • I went through all 150 Psalms to see how many actually addressed God
  • 99/150 (was hoping for 100)
  • The others tell of what he has done—addressed to other people, but about God
• For the first half hour or so or our meetings we are singing to God
  • Please don’t misunderstand—a difficult point to make without being taken the wrong way
  • We often call it worship time, but technically it is praise
  • You can do anything you want during this time—you can stand or sit or lie on the floow
    • You can pray, or dance, or repent or kneel in worship, it is between you and God
  • But if you want to praise God, understand you can’t praise him without moving your lips
  • Also the idea is that it is public, so people should be able see you are praising God by looking at you

But am I making too much of a distinction?

• Isn’t there really a big overlap between praise and worship so that they amount to the same thing?
  • It is true that when we are praising God, in some senses it is an act of worship
  • But if we muddy them together, we will lose the intensity of each one
    • Eating a meal—nothing to stop us mixing main dish and desert together
• e.g. David dance before the Lord in 2 Sam 6
  • Half dance/half prostrate... Sit? Flop?
  • dance with one leg and arm lying down?
  • Lie down with a leg twitching
    • God understands, we don’t want to be legalistic here
    • But God likes intensity, not lukewarm-ness

Why sing? Why not just talk?

• The N.T, word “Psalm” literally means to “pluck a string”
  • very strong idea in the Bible of singing to praise God
• Part of the way we are made is to express joy with singing
  • English soccer match—no singing, just state your praise for your team
• We are going to do it now... (Possible songs:)
  • God, You have Done Great Things (Let your Mercy Rain)
  • From the Highest of Heights (Indescribable)
  • I see your face (beautiful)

Updated on 2016-12-17 by Andrew Fountain