All right, so this morning we will be reading out of Psalm
113. If you don't have a Bible, you
can find one under your seat and we'll be on page 477 if you're
using the Bible from here. Praise the Lord.
Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and
forevermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name
of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is high above all
nations, and His glory above the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks
far down on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash
heap to make them sit with Princess, with the Princess of
his people. He gives the barren woman a
home, making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord, this is the word of the Lord.
What's going on? Port City family and friends,
how are we doing? Good.
Well, I'm glad to be with you. My name is Tanner.
I'm the lead pastor here and I just got back from student camp,
so I have a lot of caffeine in me.
And yeah, I played a lot of sports and games this week.
And I just want to talk to our students for a minute.
Middle schoolers, high schoolers, or if you're new to
our church, like, hey, y'all aren't just the future, you are
the now. Y'all a student full of the
spirit. I heard a story this week of two
young girls who a a preacher has come to their town that had some
fame to him. And the night before his
arrival, they prayed all through the night because their dad was
lost and their grandpa was lost, didn't believe in Jesus.
They prayed all night. And then when the speaker showed
up and talked to him and said, we've been praying for you to
come. So what do you mean?
I've been praying for my dad and my grandfather.
They're lost, they're dying and they're sin and we want them to
get saved through your preaching.
And later that day, that's what happened.
And I need to hear stories like that and be reminded that like
y'all, we're not. Like y'all can lead us, if that
makes sense. Like y'all can lead adults who
get dulled and lulled by not seeing things happen and think
God can't do certain things. And y'all have an ability to
just read God's word, believe it, and go for it in ways that
we need to be challenged by. So just here y'all are awesome.
We love you and we want you to leave.
We want we want we want to see the ways that God wants to grow
us through you. OK.
And we we believe in you. We got your back here at Port
City. OK, well I'm going to pray for
our time in Psalm 113 and then we going to jump in.
Almighty God our Father, we're so grateful for your word.
God, you bring people from death to life at age 567 up to age 77,
age 8219, all over the place. And God, you transform the phase
that we're in. God, college can look totally
different. High school can look totally
different. Young married, singleness, Every
stage of life is radically different when you're at the
center. So God, we just pray you would
transform us from the inside out and God, it would be tangible.
It will be felt, it will be seen, and God, it starts not
because we're more committed and we're good at something, but God
because we see you clearly as awesome as you are.
So God, please show us who you are through Psalm 113 right now.
We pray in Jesus name, Amen. When was the last time you were
stunned? Like wow, like what?
When was the last time you leaned forward to somebody
telling you something and you could not believe what they were
telling you? In our age of just we, we, we
see stories left and right. It's hard to be wowed.
I remember the last time I was wowed, did not believe what I
was told. OK, me and, and some of the guys
around here, we go on old man runs at like 5:00 AM every once
in awhile. And I was with my guy Ron, OK,
Ron's on the box drum and it was about 6 months ago.
And he says to me, T, you're never going to believe this.
I'm like, sure man, tell me he goes bro, Luka Doncic just got
traded from the lake to the Lakers.
I was like, no, like I was like, there's no planet where I
believe that. Like just to put it in context
for you non sports people, OK, this is arguably like just pure
talent, a top 10 to 20 player in the history of the world.
Whether he amounts to that is debatable.
He's got an attitude problem, all that stuff.
But to trade this man at 25 years old, it literally I did
not believe Ron. We go on the whole run, don't
believe him at all. Get back, check my phone and
that text. I'm like what?
This can't be possible? I was stunned.
I was wowed. I was like this information.
I had no category for the possibility of this.
There's something amazing about being wowed like you're you're
blown away it it blows your categories for what you thought
right like it it it really erupts something in you where
you're like you're wowed like that literally is the right
word. It makes no sense.
It blows your mind, y'all. Many people sit under teaching
God's words, sit under Christian household, sit in Christian
spaces and the one thing that really has never happened in
their souls, they've never been wowed by God.
They haven't. And and what God wants to do in
your life is he wants to wow you.
God wants to bring something out of you that is mind blowing.
He wants to elicit a response of genuine mind blown, not because
necessarily he's and it happens once ultimately when you see
Christ and then it but it happens over and over again.
And the reason that's gonna happen is because God's not like
us. So if we keep reading and we
keep seeing him, we're like, oh, this all checks it checks it
checks. It's like we're not reading it
right because he's not like us. He is mind blowing and y'all the
the word the Bible has the word the psalms uses for wow is
praise. The word Hallelujah literally
means praise Yah praise. They would not say his name
Yahweh. So Hallelujah was praise the
Lord. That's what that word means.
So psalms 113 to 118 are known as the Hallel psalms.
They're the praise psalms and that word praise, it's deeper
than thank you. It's deeper than thinking a
meal, you know, like thank you for this provision.
It is a wow at who God is. That's praise, and some of us
know we're supposed to praise, but we've never actually praised
because we've not been wowed into praise.
So God doesn't want you to tolerate Him.
God wants to wow you. That's what we're going to see
in Psalm 113 today. We're going to take it in three
terms. We're just going to ask the
question, what does this Psalm teach us about who God is?
What does this Psalm teach us about who we are?
And lastly, what should we do? I got three things for each.
If you are ready, let me hear you say I'm ready.
OK, number one, what does this passage teach us about who God
is? I got three things #1 the Lord
is exalted. The Lord is exalted.
Verses 4 through 6 say this. The Lord is high above all
nations and his glory above the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God? Who is seated on high?
Who looks for down on the heavens and the earth.
We see in this Psalm the essence of who God is is high.
We talk about this a lot at port city.
There's a difference between who somebody is and what they do.
These verses are talking about this is just who God is.
He is that and many of you know anytime you see Lord in all caps
that's that's God's name. It means I am that I am, I will
be that I will be. I am.
God is and in God's isness He does things, but He is something
before He does something. He does what He does because He
is who he is. OK, so who is God?
Verse 4 tells us the Lord is high.
That's who he is. He is high.
His glory is above the heavens. Verse 5 who is like the Lord our
God? Who is seated on high, verse 6,
Who looks far down? He has to look down on the
heavens and earth. I don't know if you notice, but
heaven did not precede God and he lives in it, right?
Like God created the heavens and the earth.
God is uncontainable. God chooses where to dwell, but
He himself is not contained by anything in which he chooses to
dwell. God is uncontainable, He's high.
He made the heavens and the earth.
God has eternally been Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
He's eternally been within himself, relational and
uncontainable. He did not create to add to his
profile. He created because he's creator.
He. He exploded into goodness and
it's just overflowing. And we're still discovering
species of things and we will be until the end of time because
there's no end to God's creativity.
God is high in, in the, the, the older way of thinking and in the
Psalms. Height implies 2 things, safety
and power. The one who is highest is
safest, right? So like if you, if you take the
high ground, anybody who approaches you is vulnerable,
right? So three people could take on 10
coming up at them because I could just throw stuff at you,
right? One of my, again, I'm not a huge
Star Wars guy, but it's a great illustration.
OK, there's a famous scene and anytime you number A Star Wars
movie you're like, is it movie #3 or 300?
I'm not sure. But in the one where Anakin is
about to go full blown Darth Vader mode, he is mean.
His acting is super questionable in this movie.
Amen somebody. And he's super mad at Obi Wan
and fighting him and they're on the lava.
He's like, you underestimate my power.
And he's like, just it's just cringy, right?
It's a little cringy. But he gets in the fight and Obi
Wan is doing his thing and he does a little backflip and then
he goes on this little platform and he says it's over, Anakin.
I have the high ground implication.
I'm safe, I'm strong. Don't do it.
And then he says some cringe line, probably like you
underestimate my power. And he does like a a backflip.
And then Obi Wan sizzles them, you know, but the idea and and
on that scene that the polarizing theologian that is
Kanye West wrote a line about that scene.
He was talking to all the rappers in the game.
And you know what he says? Don't jump Anakin.
I got the higher ground. He's implying all of you rappers
are down low and I am up high. You see how he used it?
Shout out to Kanye, who is super questionable, but the point is
height is safe. Height is power, height is I'm
on another level. You look up to me, I look down
to you. God is beyond us.
He's above us. He's transcendent.
The Lord is exalted. The second thing we learned
though about this God who is exalted and safe and powerful is
that the Lord exalts. Look with me.
In verses 7 through 9, he raises the poor from the dust and lifts
the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with Princess.
With the Princess of his people. He gives the barren woman a
home, making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord. So the God who is exalted, the
God who is high, the God who is seated, what does he do with his
safety and power? He exalts, he lifts, he raises,
he gives. Do we see that the Lord is
exalted? And what he chooses to do is
exalt, right. And quick note there where it
says he, he makes the barren woman a joyful mother.
And y'all this, this Psalm is not a prescriptive promise that
every person ever who is barren and trusts in Yahweh is going to
have their dream come true of having a child.
There are many who have sang Psalm 113 in pain, right?
It's not talking about what God will always do.
It is talking about who God is. This is who God is, the type of
God he is. And barrenness is deeply rooted
in the the story of Scripture, starting with the call of
Abraham and his barren wife Sarah, right.
And barrenness through Hannah and others all throughout the
Scriptures is are the types of people that God worked through.
And then famously, not a, a barren woman one day would give
birth to the Messiah, but a virgin like God is in the the
the business of choosing those on the bottom and exalting them.
That's who God is already alluded to you that psalms 113
to 118 are kind of special in scripture.
For thousands of years they've been saying during the Passover,
OK so this is how it would work is before the Passover festival
they would read 113 and 114, they would do Passover then they
would read 115 through 118. So y'all, what that literally
means is that when we what they think, what scholars tell us,
it'll say sometimes in the gospels, it'll say that Jesus
and his disciples saying to him, those hymns are Psalms.
So before Jesus instituted the Passover new supper, Last
Supper, like breaking of the bread that we're going to do
here in a little bit that we call communion, he read this
song and sang it with his guys. Like just think about that.
The Lamb of God with his people, who is the son of a virgin
woman, is singing about what God is like before he institutes the
new Passover, which is not through the blood of some lamb,
but through him. Isn't that pretty cool?
That's what God is like. That's who God is.
He is the type of God that leaves people out of slavery to
send to themselves to bad situations, and he does it not
because they earn their way out, but he purchases their way out
through his own blood. That's what God does.
The Lord exalts y'all. I don't know if you noticed.
God wants to exalt you first. Peter 5 like humble yourself
under the mighty hand of the Lord.
He opposed the proud. He gives grace to the humble.
He wants to exalt you at the proper time.
I heard one man say God wants to exalt you more than a
grandparent wants to exalt their grandkid.
And I was like, that is an image right there.
Because to a grandparent, that kid can't do no wrong.
Sometimes as the parent, I'm like, can you hang out with him
for another like month? Like, can you just dial it back
like 2%? Can you see some of what I see?
But they can't. That's kind of the point.
They want to exalt that kid. And the preacher said God wants
to exalt you more than a grandparent wants to exalt their
grandkid. We struggle to believe that
because we think about what's wrong with us, but we're not
focused on who God is. God is exalter.
He exalts. He is the exalted One who
chooses to exalt us. It's amazing.
Which leads us to the third thing that teaches us about God.
The Lord is one of one. Verse 5, who is like the Lord
our God who is seated on high? That is a rhetorical question
and the answer is nobody. I don't know if you've heard
this phrase. I'm one of them once.
I don't know if you heard that one.
That one irritates me a lot because of this verse.
It's one that how do you say people will use in context where
they're trying to imply I'm on another level than you?
I am one of them once I am a great one.
I am self-made. I am whatever and it's like,
think about the phrase one of them once, like I'm in another
category. Y'all, there's only one who is
one of them once. There's only one of one and it
is God. He is the 1, He is the great 1.
He has all power, He is the highest, He is the safest and
with all of his power and goodness and greatness and he
created, He uses it to exalt. Y'all, that is amazing.
We don't do that. We get some power and we are so
petty so quickly. I told you I was at student camp
this week. Shout out to my students.
We were playing the game sorry every night and in sorry you get
some power when you pull the sorry card because basically you
could switch pieces. You can knock anybody back to
jail on the board and you could do the most logical thing to
help you get home closest. Or you can get back the person
who got you when they got the sorry card and you're like, I'll
do the right thing, I'll do the right thing.
You get that sorry card, which is like 1% of power.
You become the pettiest. Like you pick up the piece and
you're like, you want it, you want it and you just launch it
across the road. That's what we do with power.
We get just a little bit exalted and we're like, I'm like .1
centimeters higher than you guys.
It's, it's just unbelievable. That's what we do.
We get power and we use it to elevate ourselves further.
Whatever lead we get, we use to build a bigger lead.
We, we, we whisper or imply ways that you should notice something
about us. Like we want every conversation
to turn back to us. Yo, we and we are so obsessed
our culture with GOAT, the concept of GOAT.
How stupid is that? The greatest of all time.
How would we know who is the greatest of all time?
How arrogant is it to even imply you know what of all time is?
You weren't there. You don't know, you don't know
nothing. But it's just so funny.
We we think we are so awesome. We want to be the GOAT.
We want to now The thing is to last, not just be really good
for one season. You got to be able to be the
best player ever until you're 80 like you need to.
I made, I was really good till I was 32.
That used to be amazing. Now you have to be good till
you're like 57, OK? And if you don't, you'll never
be the GOAT. So just hilarious man.
But it shows just how secure God is, doesn't it?
We do that because we're insecure.
We do that, we get our power and we got to get back, right?
We got to get our vengeance. We got to launch your peace.
We got to do it. God is not insecure.
God is not petty. Isn't that amazing?
He's stable, He's confident, He's full, he's overflowing.
He doesn't do what he does because he's feeling a little
down. Need to remind everybody, which
is why our test prayers and our ways of messing with him.
He is going to operate within who he is.
That's why Jesus could disappoint people constantly.
He didn't give in to test. He didn't give in to getting
cornered. And if you're this, then do
this. He'd go to sleep just fine.
Sleeping great. You can write a book about me,
be a best seller talking trash about me.
He ain't going to respond. God is truly one of one.
So I just want to appeal to some of y'all who don't follow him.
I just want you to think about the concept as we'll talk about
more a little bit like we choose who we follow.
I want to follow somebody secure.
I want to follow somebody who uses their power like that.
I don't even want to follow myself because I'm not like
that. I want to follow somebody that
good who uses power like that. We're going to talk about how we
should use power in a similar way, but we pattern everything
we do after him. He is the standard.
He is the source. He is 1 of 1.
So I just want you to be thinking through who do you
follow? Can you trust them the way that
the psalmist trust the Lord our God #2 what does this passage
teach us about humanity, about us?
First thing, we are praise ERS. We praise.
That's what we do. We praise verse one, praise the
Lord, praise those servants of the Lord, praise the name of the
Lord. Verse 9 ends with praise the
Lord. You know, the word praise means
like boast or shine or like basically like the the way my,
my mind just kind of thought about it was like burst, like
explode with joy at like rejoice is a similar type word.
It's it's this idea of just like exploding, boasting, shining.
It's yes, like it's yes, y'all. To be human is to praise.
At some level. You were created to praise.
So you get to choose what you praise, but not if you praise
you with me because you were made to praise.
So the question you might ask yourself is what am I praising?
Who am I praising? And he's like, well I'm not
religious so I don't praise. Wrong answer.
OK, you could be praising yourself as a self sovereign.
Look at how well I run my life and I came from nothing or
whatever it is. Or look at my political party or
whatever. You can praise all kinds of
stuff but you can't opt out of the praise category.
Does that make sense? Praise is to say, yes, you are
boasting over something. You are shining you when you eat
food, you're like, yeah, like this junk is incredible.
Like we're all the time in little ways and in big ways we
are praising because we are praisers.
And to continue to help you think what's the what is praise?
Y'all Praise is a little deeper than Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is really important.
Thanksgiving is gratitude for something that happened.
You're saying thank you to somebody for something.
Praise is like a deeper yes just based on the essence of a thing,
not the activity of the thing. Does that make sense?
Thanksgiving is yes for what you did.
Praise is yes for who you are. Does that make sense?
So we see this in in things like marriages and and relationships
that are covenantal, like a a child or siblings.
There comes a point where you're grateful for that person, but
trust is built. Praise is a part of that process
because you trust their essence, not just their actions.
So y'all in our sin, our praise has been twisted.
Does that make sense? So we are praisers.
I praise. Let me hear somebody say I
praise. That is a fact.
I agree with you. And in our sin we don't remove
the praise category, we just fill it with things unworthy of
that praise. Does that make sense?
So our praise has been twisted, I've heard it said, made to be a
river through which things flow back to God, the source to the
ocean. Like praise God and praise God
from whom all blessings flow, right?
But we become in our sin, we become pawns.
The basic idea is we want all things to kind of flow downhill
to us and just stay like just just accumulate right here,
right? And the image of a pond is that
glossy mossy stuff on top of it, right?
Where when the water ain't moving, it just gross, man.
You know, that's that's kind of what sin does to this concept of
praise is it makes us those who hog glory, who hog praise.
We think we were created to be praised instead of to give it.
Does that make sense? So we live to be exalted instead
of to exalt others. We begin to think we are the end
of all things. We think we are God.
That's really what it comes down to in our sin, is we want to
receive praise, not give it. And when we do give it, in some
kind of way we're using it to get it.
So for some of y'all, this is the invitation process, your
praise at a base level. Are you OK with your existence
as a pond because you were made to be a river?
And there is more joy in finding yourself in the flow of all
things that flow from a personal God, not an energy, A person
that you can know and love and be in relationship with.
You are not made to be upon receiving praise like people can
appreciate you and thank you and you don't cease to exist but
yourself. Hood gets enveloped into this
God who is much greater than you and has displaced your need to
be praised and you find so much more joy in giving it than you
once did in craving it from others.
That makes sense. Some of us are so addicted to
praise. I just want you to hear it's
possible to not be. You can get to where you don't
need it, you just busting with giving it to others.
You can become one who blesses others because you're praising
the Lord. But the more you crave others
praise, the more your soul shrinks.
Second thing we learned about us, we are needy, says in verses
7 to 9. He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with
Princess, with the Princess of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous
mother of children. It's a very natural experience
to read that Psalm and be like, what?
I guess I'm not poor, I'm not barren.
So like, does this apply to me? Right.
It's similar to maybe the experience you felt if you read
the Beatitudes, Matthew 5 one through 11.
They're either increasing and making sense to you or
decreasing and you avoid them. And every few years when
somebody preaches how you listen to it.
But the concept is y'all those, those demographics, if you will,
are not what it means in and of itself to be blessed.
It's like what Jesus says blessed are the poor.
He's not literally meaning apart from me.
Those people haven't made 'cause then people would just be
throwing their stuff like left and right, get rid of it.
Like, you know, it would be kind of like a martyrdom complex
would become what Jesus is cosigning, if that makes sense.
Yo what what the scriptures are saying is that in the Lord these
things become blessed in the recognition of the need those
positions bring about and how the Lord meets them.
There is blessing. This is why those with nothing
flocked to Jesus. This is why those on the bottom
were coming to him and he was saying you're blessed, they're
not going home. Well, I don't need you.
I guess I'm blessed. The point is in me you're
blessed. That was the point of Jesus's
ministry, is that your need finds its solution in me.
So y'all, to be blessed is to know your need and go to God to
have it met. That's the blessed life.
That's when you have it made. It's when you recognize your
need and you know where to go to find it met and it's in the
Lord. You're not blessed if you have
no needs or if you don't think the Lord will give them to you.
You are blind. You are not blessed.
So y'all, we are needy, y'all, That's good news.
Let me hear you say I need. So the two phrases I've had you
said are I praise and I need. If you can connect those, you're
on your way. But if you're allergic to need,
praise will feel like something you have to do.
And we are allergic to need, are we not?
You know what I mean? Like, I don't think we're
feeling pressure from our culture to be needy.
I think we're feeling pressure to show that we are the most
independent, autonomous, awesome person ever.
And if you make your brand need, maybe it's for the purposes of
growing a platform around your need.
We could do that. We could find a way to do that.
I could brand need doesn't mean I want to need.
We are allergic to need. Y'all got a confession to make
when I was 18 years old? They didn't have Spotify wrapped
yet where it told you the most listened to songs of the year.
But if they did y'all one of the songs that was the most listened
to. This is so embarrassing what I'm
about to tell you. I was not in Christ yet.
I'm sure I still listened to it some after.
There was a song by TI featuring Drake called Pledge Allegiance
to the Swag and I am not kidding that I would walk around listen
that song, Pledge Allegiance to the Swag.
What a loser, right? But here's what's crazy.
Maybe every song is not as explicit as that, but basically
the whole industry of that type of music I was listening to was
to elevate you and show you you are awesome.
You know, you are the man, you are great.
So then we get around Jesus stuff and we hear about need.
Need. Oh, man, I don't need enough to
pledge allegiance to the swag, man.
You know, So even in a culture where therapy is cooler than it
once was and something like need is cooler than it once was,
we're still allergic to it. And at the end of the day, we'll
need it for a little bit. So then we could tell the story
about how we once needed stuff, but now I don't once did.
Now I don't figured it out. And it's like, guys, that ain't
it. OK, Then I heard this other song
right when I was coming to faith.
It was called Angels. And he says got a lot of money,
got a got a lot of clothes. Everybody praise you everywhere
you go. The idea was like it was talking
about a big headed person that I was.
And it says but you ain't got no angels praising you, You're not
the man. Then he says you ain't never
healed the sick, you ain't never raised the dead, you ain't never
had 5000 with two fish, 5 loaves of bread.
The point was you are not the guy.
He's the guy. He's the exalted 1.
He is one of one. You are not the one of ones.
Stuff is just so toxic to what the Bible wants us to do.
And I just got to be honest, it's still in me.
Y'all. It didn't die when I was 18 and
stopped listening to that song that I'm one of them ones and
pledge allegiance to the swag is in US.
It's in the songs we listen to. It's in the movies we watch.
It's in our souls somewhat that we want people to worship us.
We want people to see us for the greatness we are and the the
rags to riches and we make our stories seem so much worse than
they are. We want so badly people to pity
us, worship us, need us, and all of that communicates we're going
to really struggle with being the needy one.
I just want you to hear we aren't high, we are low, He is
high. We are needy.
And some of what enjoying God comes down to is are you glad at
that? It comes down to falling on our
face and just saying God, you're a God and I'm not.
And I'm so glad at that. And please make me glad at that
because there's still this pledge allegiance to the swag
Tanner driving the car down the road.
And when you cut me off, I could have cut you off, you know, like
we want to self justify so quick.
And if I could the Lord love the Lord loves me man, think about
that y'all. I was bumping that song like
crazy. So this is my this is my
statement. You are needy.
Do you agree with that? Do you agree with God that he is
high and you are low? Do you agree with God that he is
God and you are not? Do you agree with God that you
are needy? Third thing we learn about us,
we can be united to God. We can be.
Verse 5 is my blowing. Read it.
Just read the first phrase with me, who is like the Lord our
God? All right, if I had to ask you,
what's the most staggering word in that phrase, I'll give you
like 3 seconds. You don't have to answer it out
loud. It's not about being right or
wrong. But what is staggering about
that statement? Who is like the Lord our God?
I'm a read it and give you the answer.
You ready? Who is like the Lord our God?
This God who exalts, this God who's high?
We can say we own him, we could say we belong to Him, we could
say He's ours, we possess him. That is mind blowing.
The pomp listening to pledge allegiance to the swag can lay
claim to the Lord who is. How can this be?
That is so presumptive isn't it? Or is it y'all?
Jesus says in Luke 1910 the Son of Man came to seek and to save
the lost. Y'all the idea is who God is, is
the God who seeks people out. He exalts, he looks for us.
He doesn't recruit people looking for him.
Y'all nobody is. People are are not looking for
God, but they should be. God is looking for people y'all.
That's our hope in life and death is that we are not our own
but belong to God. That God is looking for us, that
he came to seek and to save the lost.
We are in darkness and he shines the spotlight and he's searching
for us y'all. The story of scripture is that a
people can say the Lord is ours. How can that be?
Because God came and bought them out of slavery, that's how.
Not because we found him, not because we earned our way to
him, but because we heard a message about a God who came to
exalt us. We heard a message about a God
who took our place, who looked at that punk and the punk that
all of us are or were, and says I'll take them.
Not because of their potential, but because of my character.
I choose them. I choose them.
I will die in their place. I will die of their death.
You can say God is yours, it's true, but first you must admit
you're not his. You do.
You could say God is yours, it's true, but first you must admit
you're not his. You do if you've defaulted into
thinking you're just in with him.
But I hear this phrase all the time.
I'm spiritual, I hear that constantly.
Not religious, but I'm spiritual.
I think by that people mean I just know God automatically.
So I kind of interact with him how I feel like, not what the
Bible teaches. God buys you.
God purchases you. You were a slave to sin.
You have to agree with Him about where you were before.
You could say where you are. You don't get to dictate those
terms. That's not how it works.
God wants to purchase you. That's what the cross is about.
But before you can be bought, you have to acknowledge you did
and you, you need to be purchased by his blood.
That's the gospel. OK #3 what should we do in light
of this passage #1 Live to exalt, not be exalted.
Live to exalt, not be exalted. Y'all we've read who the Lord
is. He's the raiser, the lifter, the
giver, y'all. That's, that's who.
Those who are in Christ, the anointed ones, the little
Christ. That's literally what Christian
means is a little Christ. Not because we are in our
strength becoming like Him, but He indwells us.
That's the people of God. We aren't just following a model
exemplar. We have been filled with the
Spirit of God and He is one who uses his exalted status to
exalt. God gives grace to the humble.
He opposes the proud y'all in the the all throughout the
scriptures we see Jesus just saying, hey, humble yourself,
you'll be exalted. Exalt yourself, you'll be
humbled. You know, that's kind of the
pattern. And here's the point.
You don't be humble to get God to love you.
You don't exalt so that God will put you on the good list.
You don't use your power for good so that God will love you.
If you exalt, it's because you recognize the Exalted One has
exalted you. The order matters.
We don't humble ourselves to get God to love us because God has
loved us so freely when we were the punk listening to pledge
allegiance to the swag. We then use our power to exalt
others as evidence of that transformation, not to somehow
get it on the back end. Does that make sense?
It's not a back end reward, it's an outworking of the
transformation we freely received.
So yes, we should exalt those who have nothing.
We should use whatever semblances of power we got,
whether you're a sibling to your younger sibling.
You got power man. It's facts.
How are you using it in our streets, in our schools, in our
neighborhoods, in our workplace? Whatever influence you got,
whatever money you got, use it to exalt those who cannot exalt
themselves. That's what the Lord has done
for you, and in the power He provides, we get to do that for
others. We don't have to live to be
exalted anymore because He handles that for us.
Y'all. The Lord exalts us in Christ,
and He will choose the times and the places where we get exalted
in other ways. But we can let go of living to
be exalted. We can leverage our energy to
exalt. But we get that backwards
sometimes from fear, like, hey, if I don't live to exalt myself,
nobody will notice me and I'll get passed up for things left
and right, right? So it's in good fearful kind of
paradigm. We seek to be exalted, be all.
We can trust the Lord. He is the exalter of those who
have nothing. We can trust Him, we can exalt.
The Lord will exalt us in His way in his time #2 praise the
Lord. I don't think we can read this
Psalm and say one of the applications is not just
straight up praise the Lord. Praise and y'all, this is deeper
than Thanksgiving. It's deeper than thank you for
what you've done. It's looking at who God is and
just saying yes and shouting about that.
For many of us, we've so normalized the feelings of guilt
and dread and toleration. We think that's the extent of
what we can hope for in our walk with God.
I'm supposed to I should and it's that's not what God's
after. Sometimes we get there, but what
God's after is wowing you. What God's after is just a
spontaneous reaction that we have all the time.
You see an awesome sunset. You're like, whoa, get get a
camera out. You eat a new candy.
You're like you're tasting. You're like, give me some more
of those. You ask for one and you're like,
come here. You see a movie with a really
cool ending. You cry, you hear a funny joke,
you laugh. Those are immediate.
You're not like, maybe I'll left to this joke.
Ha ha ha. It is just automatic.
It made you laugh, it tasted amazing, you went, there's no
calculation. Does that make sense?
That's what praises to your soul.
It is an uncalculated response to being wowed by who God is and
what He's done for you. It's bursting and y'all,
hopefully you've had a time where the cross where what
Christ has done for you while you're a Sinner bursted you with
joy. It amazed you, but maybe it
hasn't. I just want to say like, that's
I, I, I pray that over you. And if you, you have always just
lived in toleration of how you're supposed to always feel,
If you've never experienced joy at who God is, we should talk.
If it's never impressed you, amazed you, wowed you, or filled
you with joy, we need to talk. Because God is not after an army
of tolerators. He's after a family of
celebrators. He's after a group of people who
just that was amazing. That's awesome.
I love it. And for disciples in Christ, I
want us to want the one thing I want you to hear from followers
of Jesus. Y'all praise is a posture.
It's not always it can feel like it's supposed to be hype.
I just want, I just want us to hear it.
You don't have to be hype to be praising.
That makes sense. Like I love the song Praise by
Elevation. I think it's dope.
If you go listen to lyrics, they're actually really good.
Praise you when I feel it, praise you when I don't pray,
you know, like they're good lyrics, but it's a hype song.
You're like, you know, like you're dancing, like you're a
hype. You like it, right?
This is the Lord. But y'all, you can praise the
Lord and be weeping. You can praise the Lord and be
suffering. You can praise the Lord and be
down and out. So let's not get twisted with
the radio's always going to put that on.
And they should. It's a bop.
Listen to it on your way to give that test to your kids.
OK, that's great. But don't confuse that mood with
what praise means. Does that make sense?
Don't conflate mood with posture.
OK, I want you to hear praise is about becoming the type of
person who's wowed by God spontaneously and rhythmically.
You're just wowed. You're amazed, you're in no
matter what comes. And then what happens is your
praise shapes how you interpret what happens to you instead of
letting what happens to you shape your mood and your praise
once you get to where they're in the right order because it's
genuinely who you are and you've become that type of person.
Now I interpret my suffering through my praise instead of
letting my suffering dictate whether or not I praise.
Are you tracking with me? Because suffering is going to
come in little ways and in big ways.
That's life in a broken world. So if we can become these type
of people, I think our joy will increase.
Third thing, pass the praise. Praise the Lord and then pass
the praise. I want to read verses 2 and
three over you. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
From this time forth and forevermore, from the rising of
the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.
OK, from this time forth and forevermore, and then from the
rising of the sun to its setting.
Y'all. If I'm honest, I thought both of
those phrases were time based phrases about praising the Lord.
The first one says from this time forth and forevermore and
the second one says from the rising the sun to its setting I
hear all day long praising. Maybe you hear that that is
true. It also means to a Hebraic kind
of mind y'all where the sun is rising and setting.
It's rising and setting all over the world all the time.
The idea is let God's praise be coast to coast.
It's not just time, it's geography.
Does that make sense? So let God's praise be eternally
filling everywhere. That's the idea from the rising
of the sun, which is always doing somewhere and it's always
setting. The rising of the sun, not just
where you stand, but where it's rising and setting.
Let the praise of the Lord be known.
Does that make sense? The idea is God's praise is to
be everywhere. Hey y'all, the reality is right
now I don't know if you know these just pure facts.
There are 8.2 billion people on this earth.
OK to the best we know right now a billion people are hearing the
gospel and believing it, believe it, trust it, love it.
Praise another 2 1/2 billion as best we could tell are hearing
it and not trusting it, not believing it.
Which leaves around 4.3 billion people are not even hearing it,
inadequately hearing it. Does that make sense?
So you got hearing it, believing it, hearing it, not believing it
and then another large over half the world is not hearing it.
Why do I tell you that y'all? Some of it is.
It starts right where you are. Are you owning what it means to
praise the Lord in your spheres of influence?
Have you just said God put me here?
You might have sought out that opportunity, but God put you
there. You might live on that street,
but God put you there. You might be in that class, but
God put you there, might be on that team.
God put you there. One of the ways that the praise
passes. You just have to become
self-conscious of the fact that God put you there.
You have to become self-conscious of the fact that
God put me here and I have some responsibility in this.
I can't save nobody, but I can praise the Lord and live.
So if you are bursting the way you laugh at a joke, if God's
goodness is bursting out of you, your spheres of influence will
be impacted by your praise of the Lord, right?
And then it goes viral. It goes to other geographic
context as an overflow of that. But when we send people to other
places, it's not like they're doing something radically
different. They're still the types of
people that have become praisers of the Lord, and they've chosen
to go live in a different context to give other people
access that wouldn't have it unless they moved there.
OK, some people don't know nobody don't know nobody who
knows nobody who knows nobody. Nobody knows, nobody who knows
who Jesus even is. There are many places on this
earth like that. So I just want you to hear that
God intends for his name to be praised from sea to shining sea,
from coast to coast, land to land, everywhere.
So part of what we get the opportunity to do is sing Psalm
113. And part of what you're singing
is God spread your praise. God, please spread your praise.
Does your prayer closet look like that?
The mine looks like bless this, bless that, help this, help
that. Help me do this and it's
Christianized, but it still smells a little exalt me ish at
times. But what this Psalm is filled
with is Lord, let your praise be heard everywhere.
People are singing. So I don't know the last time
you were wowed, y'all? I was wowed this week, Speaker
pointed out in John 18 the night when Jesus is getting arrested.
OK, Judas is rolling up. They got a squad torches.
They're rolling up on them and they come to Jesus and he's
like, who y'all here to see? He knows.
I love how he asks questions because he wants to hear you say
it. Who are you here for?
Jesus of Nazareth? I'm he Jokers just fall down,
start worshiping. They just fall on their faces
when he says I'm he. Then they get up.
He said, who are you here for? They say Jesus and Azarus.
He said, I already told you I am E Then he says this phrase,
which I hadn't really caught before.
He says if you came to get me, let these men go.
So he says, if you came for me, then let these men go.
He steps out in front of the Pledge of Allegiance to the swag
crew and says, take me. And man, that just blew my mind.
Like, have you had the image yet that Jesus of Nazareth imagine a
group of soldiers coming for you, coming for me, as they
should be. Are you the one who's listened
to pledge allegiance to the twag 8,000,000 times and uses all of
your time, energy and talent to get people to like you?
Why yes, I am. Thank you.
I'm really good at it. I have extreme victim of the
complex and I am totally into myself.
What's your name? Follow me on Instagram.
And Jesus in that moment steps out in front.
Isn't that amazing? He doesn't step out in front for
the version of you that is awesome for the version of you
that is Psalm 113, He steps out to buy you.
He steps out to say I claim these guys.
These are my guys. They're about to desert me in
about 30 seconds, but they're my guys.
Just that image of Jesus stepping out.
I wonder if that might wow you that he would claim you.
It amazes me that he would claim me.
I'm like you, sure, but He did, and He went to the cross for
you. If you think you're the goat, I
feel bad for you, son. Who is like the Lord our God?
Nobody, not one. I sense many of us have never
fallen down in reverence. Maybe it's time we consider the
depths of God's relevance. Once His beauty is seen, once we
are acquainted with His ways, there's only one response, never
ceasing and always expanding Praise.
Let's pray together. Our Father, we love you.
Thank you so much for your word. Thank you so much for our time
and your Word. God, would your praise spread to
the ends of the earth where people don't know, they don't
know that they don't know. And God, would you wow us with
your grace? God, would you wow us?
Would you just have us bursting with joy at seeing you for who
you are? God, help us get our eyes off
ourself for one second and just see you clearly as the exalting
and exalted God that you are. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.