The sermon title as you notice in your bulletin is Praise Him, Praise Him. And there is a sub-title to the sermon. And it’s Are You Ready For Some Really Good News?
Now I know you hear a lot of bad news. There’s no question about that. Most of the news that you hear is bad, if you’re listening to the radio, TV and all those kinds of things. But could you handle a little good news? I know it’s not often that you have it, but can you handle it? I hope you can. So we want to share a little good news with you today, as we praise the Lord.
I want you, if you have your Bible, I’m going to read again the scripture reading in Psalm 67, as it talks about praises to the Lord. Psalm 67, those first five verses. “God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause His face to shine upon us, that Your ways may be known on the earth. Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, oh God. Let all the peoples praise You. Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for You shall judge the people righteously and govern the nations on earth. Let the peoples praise You, oh God. Let all the peoples praise you.”
Now I want you to turn over, since you’re in your Bible and we’re talking about praise to the Lord today. If you have your Bible, turn over to, as you’re coming to the end of the book of Psalms. And we want to look at some of the chapters that are leading up to the last chapter of the book of Psalms. And note something there about how God instructed those writers, impressed them to talk about praise to God. Especially in those last ones.
And so if you look at chapter 146, you notice that it begins with three words. “Praise the Lord!” Now, when you’re reading the Psalms, I don’t know if this was led by the Holy Spirit or not, the punctuation. But if you’ll notice in reading a lot of the Psalms, you’ll notice a lot of exclamation marks. Now if you are an English teacher, you would say when you read it with an exclamation mark, you need to give it a little extra emphasis. That’s what it means. You notice what exclamation mark is after that phrase, “Lord!”? What is it? Exclamation mark? Is that what it has in your Bible? If it has a period you need to get another translation, or something. Should have an exclamation mark. “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Oh my soul! While I live I will praise the Lord! I will sing praises to my God while I have my being!” And if you go down to the end, the last three words in that chapter, it ends with “Praise the Lord!” Exclamation mark.
Then if you move down to the first words in Psalm 147, it says “Praise the Lord!” Exclamation mark. “Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God. For it is pleasant and praise is beautiful.” And you know, praise belongs to the Lord. Now there is one author that kind of made this statement, that said this. There’s a lot of important human beings that lived on the earth. That made terrific contributions to society. But praise does not belong to them. It belongs only to God.
Now there’s a little bit of difference between, just a shade of difference, I suppose, between thanksgiving to the Lord, being thankful to the Lord, and praises to the Lord, that we get. Thanksgiving is kind of, it’s thanking God for what He has done. What He is doing. What He does for us day by day in providing for us, sustaining us, and we thank Him very much for that. But praise is praising Him for just being God. For just who He is. Praise, we praise God for who He is. Just because He’s God we bring praises, we sing praises to God. And so, it says, “For it is pleasant and praise is beautiful”, and God likes to hear that from us. Now if you go down to the end of that chapter, the last verse in Psalm 147, it ends with, “Praise the Lord!” Exclamation mark.
Then if you go to chapter 148, you notice how it starts. “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens! Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him all the angels! Praise Him all His host! Praise Him sun and moon! Praise Him all you stars of light! Praise Him you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord!” You get the picture? Of what these last chapters in Psalms are doing? They’re bringing praises to the Lord. In verse 13 of that chapter it says, “Let them praise the name of the Lord for His name alone is exalted!” Then it ends by, “Praise the Lord!” Then Psalm 149, it does the same thing, and Psalm 150.
Now I know that coming into God’s house like we are today, right here in McDonald Road is a blessing. Just the fact that we got up, and this is the appointment that we made, is a blessing. God will bless us. That is worship. Worship to Him. And so we’re all happy to be worshipping right here today.
Now let me ask you this. Easter weekend two thousand seven, that was about six weeks or so ago. You can probably remember back that far. Easter weekend, do you remember what the weather was like? Anybody remember what the weather was like? Cold! And the trees, a few days after that, showed evidence of it as they turned brown, many of them, because of that cold weather. Now they’re getting their greenery back, and a lot of the brown has dropped off, and everything is kind of green again. But it was cold that Easter weekend.
Now, the first Easter weekend, as we look back into Bible history, a lot of things happened. Very important things. Key things. Cruel things. In the Christian world, Easter weekend, Friday is referred to as Good what? Good Friday. And because it’s Good Friday, and I suppose because a lot of people may get the day off and not have to work, I suppose that would be one tinge of being a good thing. But on Good Friday, normally the Post Office closed, the bank’s closed, the court house, government buildings close, stock exchange closes during that time. And in a certain sense as we look at that weekend, Good Friday, Good Friday is kind of, kind of paradoxical. It doesn’t kind of fit in. It’s opposite of what happened. Because if we look in the Bible, the Bible record of what happened, here’s what happened.
Jesus was betrayed by a friend. Beaten. Spat upon. Falsely accused. Went through a mockery of a trial. Nailed to a cruel cross. Suffered there. Denied a drink of water. And died on that old rugged cross. That was Friday afternoon. Does that sound like a “good Friday” to you? Not very much. Except. Except, when we look at the results of the death of Jesus, the Holy One, the Sinless One, the Son of God, Who died for the sins of the whole human race. Your sins and mine. And that is, in that sense, very good news! That is good news, indeed. What happened because of Christ’s death. Our salvation was guaranteed. When Jesus died that Friday afternoon on the cross, He came forward on Sunday, our salvation was guaranteed. No question about it.
For the last few years I’ve spent a lot of time in motels. A lot of evenings in motels. And some of the motels that I stay in from time to time, is the Hampton Inn. Now the Hampton Inn, when you check in there, you will notice the sign that says, “One hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed”. And when they put your key in this little thing right here, this little packet, on the little packet it says, “One hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed, that’s Hampton’s pledge to you”.
Some time ago I checked into a Hampton Inn about 12 thirty at night. And I was getting ready to go to bed. I flipped on the air conditioner and I noticed after a few minutes that it didn’t seem to be getting any cooler and I went over and it was blowing just air. Not cold air. Just blowing air. And so I picked up the telephone, and I rang the desk, and I said this is the room that you might want to add to your to-do-list tomorrow for your maintenance person. Because the air conditioning isn’t working here. No, I don’t want to change rooms, it’s too late to change rooms. But the next morning when I checked out, when I got the bill, it said zero balance. And it had a note there. That room was not up to the level that Hampton wants their hotels to be. Therefore, you don’t pay. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Free night in a Hampton Inn. Or a half a night.
But that guarantee is nothing to what the guarantee is like that happened on that Easter weekend. And that is indeed good news. That is the very best news we could ever have.
Now I want you to turn in your Bible and let’s look at a little bit of that weekend and the good news that was presented. Now we’re going to turn to the gospel of Mark. Now this is worth turning to if you have your Bible. You’ll want to read it. You’ll want to follow along. Mark the sixteenth chapter. Mark chapter 16, we’ll look at a few verses there. Don’t worry about the clock. I’m as hungry as you are. We’ll be alright. The sixteenth chapter of Mark. Now you notice in that, if you start reading at the beginning. If you start reading at the beginning, you’ll notice that the women, you remember that rested during the Sabbath, then early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the other women, they made their way down, down to the tomb. And they were wondering about, who’s going to roll the stone away? Who’s going to roll the stone away so we can get to the body? And so, but as they approached, they noticed that the stone was already rolled away. And they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe, the Bible says, sitting on either side, and they were alarmed. But they said, “Don’t be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified.” Look what it says. “He is risen!” In your Bible what kind of punctuation is at the end of “risen”? Exclamation mark? Hey, you need to look at the punctuation there. Sometimes that’s the key. “He is risen!” That good news? “He is risen! He is not here. See the place where He lay. But go and tell His disciples and Peter.” And so we go down to verse nine. Go down to verse nine. “Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene” verse 10. She went and told those disciples, she went and told those who had been with Him, and they were mourning and weeping. She found them mourning and weeping when she went and told them. And then it says, “And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.” “They did not believe.” Now if you go on down, you remember the walk on the Emmaus road with the disciples there? And they had a story to tell to the other disciples. And verse 13 says, “And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either.” What is wrong with those disciples?
Well here it is. Here it is. I know I’m right in my conclusion because The Desire of Ages supported it.
Have you ever had someone come up and tell you something? They say, “This thing happened”, and they’re excited. And you say, “No! No! I don’t believe that. That news is too good to be true. I just can’t believe that.” That’s what happened to the disciples. You know what Desire of Ages says? “The news of Christ’s resurrection was so different from what they had anticipated, that they could not believe it.” It was too good to be true, they thought. Now that, that, is good news! That’s good news for us. Jesus is not in the tomb. On the Ooltewah-Ringgold road there’s a church there, and for about a month, a little before Easter, and they left it up for quite awhile after Easter weekend. It said, “Jesus is not in the tomb. He is risen.” Can’t remember if they had an exclamation mark. They should have. That is good news indeed. Jesus is not in the tomb. He is risen. He is on the throne. He is our Saviour. He is there for us all the time. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ministering in our behalf. Caring for us. We are His. We are of tremendous value in His sight. That is good news. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. Can you say amen? Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. What a tremendous thing.
Now in two thousand seven, that’s the year we’re living in now, I don’t have to tell you that this world is not a safe place to live in. It’s just not a safe place, and will probably, according to God’s prophecies, continue to worsen. Now that’s not good news, is it? But it’s the truth. Will continue to worsen. Do you know anywhere in the Bible where it says, before Jesus comes, the world is going to get a little better and a little better and a little better? And then it’s going to get real good and then Jesus is coming. And then it’ll be real good. You don’t read that in the Bible, do you? The Bible tells us what the days before Christ comes is going to be like. And it’s going to be just about like what it is right now. We are living in difficult times.
There’s a great controversy going on. The enemy of God does not like God. He does not like God’s people, nor God’s creation. And he’s attacking God’s people and he’s attacking God’s creation.
This world, this world, is not the permanent home for Christians. Now did you catch that? This world is not the permanent home for Christians. It is temporary, at the very best. And can be miserable much of the time that we live in this temporary place.
I have more aches and pains than I did at 21. I can’t play soccer the same way that I did when I was running around with Tim Cook on the soccer field. Things begin to go wrong. And, unless Christ comes, and takes me to heaven while I’m living, I’m going to die and then he’s going to come and I’m going then. That’s what happens. That’s the fact of what it is. But the good news is, Jesus has paid the price. Our salvation is guaranteed. And that is real. And heaven is real. And what’s on this earth is really not real, even though you touch it.
You know, sometimes we get confused again, in thinking this temporary place is permanent. You ever hear of people say, “Well, I just can’t understand why that happened. I can’t understand why my gall bladder went bad.” Mine has. Can’t understand it. Well! We don’t need to understand it, except we are living in a sinful world. That’s what we need to understand. And the days that God gives us, that we feel good, praise His Holy Name. And there’s a lot of good things. Because I enjoy a lot of good things. We do. And those are all blessings from the Lord. Praise be to God. You know, in Psalm one hundred 18, in chapter one hundred 18, it starts off by saying, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. Because His mercies endure forever.” It ends, that chapter ends, the last verse says, “Oh give thanks to God, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.” And then there is another verse up there that says, “This is the day which the Lord has made. We will” what? “Rejoice and be” what? “Glad in it.” “We will rejoice and be glad in it.” And we ought to rejoice every day that God gives us another day, amen? It doesn’t say, “this is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be sad in it.”
You know, Christians ought to be happy ambassadors for God. We ought to be the happiest people on the whole planet. And if we go around sad all the time, and that’s what people have a chance to see, and they say, “that person is a sad Christian”, the fact is, I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a sad Christian. Christian's have good news. Now we have to deal with some difficult things. Things that hurt. But down in the heart, Jesus wants us to be happy. He wants us to be happy as we consider what He has done for us.
Now we think about this old world. We don’t want, we know it’s temporary, because of all the problems here. With all the problems here, we wouldn’t it to be permanent. We hear of the Iraq war. People are getting wounded and killed in the war, and we hear it on the news every day. I know two, I have kind of a nephew that was killed six weeks or so ago in Iraq. Superintendent of education in the New York conference, about six or eight weeks ago, his son was killed in Iraq. Pain. Pain, in this old world.
When I log on to the internet to look at email or whatever, the screen pops up on compuserve and it’s got a few news items of the day. Top news items of the day. And I tell you, you can only read just for a little while before you start getting depressed. You can only handle so much of the news that we are faced with today.
Enterprise, Alabama, just a little ways from Montgomery, where we live. A couple of months ago, they had a tornado came through, destroyed a high school, killed eight high school students, a couple of teachers. Others hurt. It was just on the news a couple of days ago, they were trying to figure out how to redo the thing. Tornado, week or so ago, in Springfield, Kansas; the town was destroyed, gone. Virginia Tech, college student went berserk, killed 32 people, injured others, and it was top news for about a week. And then it kind of faded away, and you know why? Because other, bad news rose to the top. Policeman shot in Montgomery, Alabama. 32 years old. He pulled over a car for speeding, he walked up to the car, the person got out, shot him, killed him. We stood outside on the highway, right outside the conference office in Montgomery, all the office staff and put our hands over our hearts while the procession went by of couple of hundred emergency, fire and police vehicles in respect for that. That’s the world we live in. The principle of Jefferson Academy in Texas was killed in April trying to do a good deed by the side of the road, and a car went off the road and killed him. And the stories could go on and on with the aches and pains of everything that people have.
But, the really good news is that Jesus is alive and well. He loves us and He works for our good all day long, every day. Amen? Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for that.
Paul, under inspiration, in Phillipians, the third chapter, he had it right. He had it right. He had it clear in his mind when he said there in the twentieth verse of Phillipians, chapter three, verse 20, he said, “Our”, you get it? Christian. “Our citizenship is in heaven. From which we also eagerly await for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” Jesus, praise His holy name, is our hope. And our encouragement, day by day. We need to praise Him more. Praise Him every day, just for who He is. And be thankful to Him for what He does for us.
This church… You know, sometimes we wonder about the church and what we do, just being here and whatever means a lot. This church is a place where people created in God’s image can come to worship their Creator and Redeemer, to seek spiritual encouragement and spiritual strength and renewal. A place where people come to be recharged and re-energized to face another day and another week in a world filled with trouble. And that’s the world we live in.
In Psalm one hundred 22 David said, first verse, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord’”. Are you happy to be here today? Happy to be in God’s house right here? On His Sabbath? Worshipping Him? Couldn’t be in a better place. Praise His holy name.
When we think of salvation, our salvation, what Jesus has done, it is all about people. It’s all about people. And don’t miss that point, because that’s very important. Jesus died for the human race, you and me. For people. There is a song that says “people need the Lord”. Arlene Howard sang that in Sabbath School two weeks ago, right here. People need the Lord. People, all people, need the Lord. Whether they know it or whether they don’t know it, they need the Lord. Is that true? Just because they don’t know it doesn’t mean they don’t need the Lord. And when the Lord comes into the life of a person, the person is changed for the better and everybody benefits. Heaven rejoices, all the angels, and the community and the family benefit from the principles that God has given us to live by until He comes again. Makes a person a better person. Praise the Lord. That’s what the gospel does.
And so we need to praise God’s name for what He has done for us. And remember, one day He’s coming back. And we’ll be able to collect on the salvation that was guaranteed on that Easter weekend.
Let us turn in our hymnals to 249. Praise Him, Praise Him.
Hymn of Praise: #17, Lord of All Being, Throned Afar Scripture: Psalms 67:1-5 Hymn of Response: #249, Praise Him, Praise Him
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Sermon at McDonald Road transcribed by Steve Foster 6/4/07