Sermon Cloud

Life Is A Party! Have you ever noticed that all of life revolves around a calendar of celebrating special days, events and people? No sooner do we wrap up Christmas then we look to ushering the New Year. No one wants to stay home on New Years Eve. In fact, we are a holiday society. Anymore there’s a holiday for just about every day. Here’s some that maybe you weren’t family with: Like next month. Did you know that January 21st (Becky’s birthday) is “National Hugging Day?” or February 6th is “Compliment Day?” Ladies I think you’ll want to celebrate this one: April 7th is “No Housework Today Day.” And in May, there’s even a holiday on my birthday: May 6th is “Dieter’s Day Off Day” And my personal favorite, July 15th! It’s “Cow Appreciation Day!”

But it’s not just holidays that we celebrate. We stop everything to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations; you name it - we celebrate it. All of life seems to revolve around special occasions. We work and recreate, we volunteer and serve - but when a special occasion roles up on our calendar, regular life goes on hold and we buy a gift, pick out the right card, perhaps even purchase some new clothes, cook our favorite food and then bring it all to honor and celebrate the person of the day. If you think about it, we really are a people programmed to party! Life is a party! But have you ever wondered why that is?

Why do we like to party? Why do we enjoy honoring and celebrating the special occasions of life? Are we just suckers for Hallmark adds? Are we the target of retailers who try to commercialize every special event, or is there something more at stake? My answer to these questions is simple: I believe that because God is the source of all joy and delight, and the fact that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God - honoring our family and friends, celebrating the great occasions of life, all these tells us is that He created us to party! He put it in us to honor achievement, to give applause to whom applause is due, to celebrate life! So I would submit this today: that if we were made to party – then a biggest part of our party life would include Him.

To say it another way: God Is The Life of the Party!
If God made us to be a celebrating people then He deserves our best preparation, our loudest applause, and our highest praise! So today, let me invite you to open your Bibles to find Psalm 111. Today we’re going to unpack God’s party planner and try to get some insight into this whole concept of praise. And then actually do it. At the end of this talk you will have the opportunity to Praise Him. So let’s get the party started!

The first thing we read in this text is the command: “Praise the Lord.” Well what does that mean? Is it just something we say when something goes right? Or is it what we say when the Beaver’s win or when we’ve been searching for a lost wedding ring? This past Fall, Becky lost her wedding ring. It was a Monday. We had washed my car, so we thought maybe it fell off in one of those washing mits. That day she was also doing laundry. And that afternoon she was packing away all of Courtney’s summer clothes. She went through all the laundry, all the boxes of cloths, we looked all over the driveway. It was nowhere to be found. A month went by and then another, so I figured I needed to start thinking about buying her a new ring, when one morning got a phone call in my office from Becky – she’d found it. It was in my sock drawer. And what was the first thing I said? “Praise the Lord!” When we look at this text, there’s quite a bit more to it than that.

At it’s core Praise is a God honoring celebration Praise is acknowledging and celebrating the person and work of God. We celebrate Who He is and we can praise Him for what He has done. The primary Hebrew word for praise is Halal, the word which is the root of hallelujah, which essentially means to boast, to shine, to be clamorous, to rave, to make a show, to celebrate. Praise is an extemporaneous, unsolicited response to a favorable and joyful situation.

Basically, praise comes from the heart. Praise happens when we can’t help but celebrate God for what He has done for us. Perhaps the greatest time of praise for anyone is when God delivers you from sin and makes you His child. When God changes your heart and removes your shame. If you’ve ever listened to a new Christian, to someone who has new beginning – praise to God comes pretty naturally!

Another time praise comes pretty naturally is when God is at work in your life. When you see Him change a bad circumstance or when someone close to you comes back to God. Other times, we are just reminded of God’s goodness because all our children are walking with God. And sometimes, we can’t help but praise Him simply because we’re thankful for the simple things of life: like a warm meal and a roof over our heads; like the warmth of the sunshine or the smile on my little girl's face. When we see God's work it’s easy to praise Him.

But sometimes God seems pretty silent. We don’t see Him at work, but that doesn’t mean you and I should not praise Him. In fact, to Praise Him is a command. And sometimes just praising God for who He is, in the company of others is the best thing you can do.

Because another truth about Praising God is this: Praise is a God enjoying environment Psalm 22:3 says: “God inhabits the praises of His people.” In other words, when we praise God together, our praise creates an environment where God makes His presence known. In the New Living Translation, this verse is translated, Yet, You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. When we exalt God in praise, our praise establishes a throne from which He can rule. I don’t know about You, but that makes me want to praise Him with You as much as we can. I want God to rule. I want His glory to be seen. But I can’t do that alone. We need to do this together. When we praise Him, even if we haven’t seen Him do anything for a while, even if we are feeling like God isn’t there, our praise is one way to make sure He is there – and God is pleased to make His presence with us. He manifests Himself in the midst of praise. He delights to be with us and do what He wants to do in the atmosphere of praise. It is His normal habitat in heaven, and it is His home away from home on earth… So when we open our hearts and open our mouths to praise Him, our praise creates an environment for Him to enjoy. When we praise Him, He comes near. Pretty cool.

Now, we’ve barely unpacked this text. So let’s look at the first thing the psalmist says: He says, “I will thank the Lord with all my heart.” So another thing we learn here about praise is that: Praise is an emotional investment. Praise flows from a thankful heart. What this tells me is that it’s good for us to praise. You might even say that praising God promotes mental health.

Paul Billheimer says this about praise and mental health:
“The essence of all our mental and nervous disorders is over occupation with self. Out of extreme self-centeredness arises defensiveness, hostility and aggressive antisocial behavior. To make one’s self his center is self-destructive. Here is one of the greatest values of praise: It decentralizes self. The worship of God demands a shift of center from self to God. One cannot praise without giving up occupation with self. When praise becomes a way of life, the infinitely lovely God becomes the center of worship rather than the bankrupt self. Thus the personality becomes properly integrated and destructive stresses and strains disappear. This results in mental wholeness. Praise produces forgetfulness of self and forgetfulness of self is health.”

Sometimes it’s just good to come to a worship celebration, simply so you can forget about yourself and Praise Him. Praising Him is good for the heart.  Not only that, but another aspect of praise we see from this text is that…

Praise is a community engagement
“I will thank the Lord with all my heart as I meet with His godly people” Notice here, that praise happens in the context of community. You can praise God in your personal prayer life, you can praise God in your conversations with friends if you want. But where praise is meant to flourish is with a group of people who share a common connection. The connection we see here is that these people are godly people. Literally, “righteous” people. People who have experienced the mercy and grace of God and now live a different kind of life – a life of righteousness. So a worship gathering like this is really the normal environment for expressing praise. We gather to praise Him together.

Now, even though God meets with us when we Praise Him, even though it’s good for us to Praise Him and to Praise Him together - ultimately we Praise Him because:

God is worthy to be praised! Listen now to the praise of the psalmist:
“How amazing are the deeds of the Lord!
All who delight in him should ponder them.
Everything He does reveals His glory and majesty.
His righteousness never fails.”

God is not second rate. He has done amazing things. And all He has done reveals alot about who HE is. All He does reveal His glory and majesty. And so the Psalmist encourages us to think about those things, to study out the amazing works of God. It’s one thing to experience God’s work in your life, but it’s another to become a student of God. Sometimes we just need to study out what God has already done and take it by faith that He is worthy to be praised.

Otherwise, we become a people who are selfish – we can become a “what have you done for me lately kind of people.” It should be enough to praise Him for what He has already done for us. At the conclusion of our celebration today we are going to do that. We are going to celebrate the Lord’s Table. Is there nothing more amazing than that. God sent His Son to live a sinless life so He could become sin for us and take our place on the cross and die for us. He came to change places with us. He came to die for us so we could be forgiven, so we could be reconciled, so we could be set free, so we could have life.

When was the last time you stopped to ponder those things? How often do you study the life of Jesus? I guarantee you this: You make Jesus the object of your study, and you will become a person of praise. Because Jesus is worthy to be praised. “All who delight in Him should ponder His works.” This is how we are to fuel our praise of Him. This is how we’re to make God the life of the party. Because at the end of the day:

God Invites us to the Party Verse four says:
“He causes us to remember His wonderful works.
How gracious and merciful is our Lord!”
God is our God. Because of His grace and mercy to us, He has made us His children. But the beauty of this verse is that He has ordained it that we publicly remember what He has done. This is not a command to think about what God has done, or reflect on His works. No, this is the culmination of our studying and reflection. Here the idea of remembering is “proclaiming” what God has done, to declare His goodness to us, to testify to His mercy, to broadcast His grace: And so that’s what we’re going to do today. You, me, all of us here who delight in God, who’ve been made right with God, get to be the announcers of His mercy and grace. We get to praise Him. We get to celebrate Him. We get to make Him the life of the party.

So let me share with you how this is going to work. We’ve set up some microphones for you to Praise Him. You can praise Him one of two ways. First, you can praise him where He has revealed Himself to you as your gracious and merciful Lord: We’ve given you a number of pictures of God from the Scriptures on your worship notes. You can come to the microphone and praise Him:
• As your strong Creator (Genesis 1:1)
• As my support (2 Samuel 22:19)
• As my rock (Psalm 18:2)
• As my joy (Psalm 43:4)
• As my help (Psalm 63:7)
As you come to praise Him as He has revealed Himself to you, perhaps you could give us a brief example of how He has been your rock or joy or help.

Secondly, let me encourage us to Praise Him where we have seen His works in our lives:
• Where He has provided something for me
• Where He has rescued me from a tight spot
• Where He has changed my life
• Where He has changed my heart
• Where He has been there for me

Let this be a concert of praise. Let this be a time where we exalt our God. Let this be our invitation to Him to be the life of the party. And let us praise Him together. And after a good time of praise, let us remember what He has done by celebrating the Lord’s Table together. Allow me now to usher us into a time of praise by inviting God to inhabit our praises of Him.