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CHURCH IMPROVEMENT: BUILDING A CHURCH THAT HONORS GOD AND LOVES PEOPLE BY PASSIONATE PRAYERPsalm 147:1-20INTRODUCTION This psalm contains four commands to praise God (vv. 1, 7, 12 &20). Two of these commands tell us that this praise is to be sung and accompanied by musical instruments. You will also notice in three of them that the command is directed to a group, not to individuals (“our” God, “our” God, Jerusalem and Mt. Zion). Here we find commanded that the people of God gather together on a regular basis to sing their praise to him and to play music to him in thanksgiving. C.H. Spurgeon makes the point, based on v. 12, that the groupings in which we are commanded to sing praise are in our homes and in the church gathered together (“O Jerusalem” refers to the homes surrounding the temple. “O Zion” refers to the temple where all the people gather for praise.). God commands us to gather together to praise him with music and song in our homes and together as his people. When I considered these commands this week it helped me to look forward to being with you today to sing praises to God. It also motivates me to be more diligent to maintain the worship of God in my home. However, this psalm does far more than merely command us to get together to praise God in song. In v. 1 he says that praising God in song is good, pleasant and fitting. Think for a moment about each of those words. When God says praise is good, he means that it is morally right. It is immoral to not praise God in song. People who do not gather with others to sing praises to God are sinning, they are doing evil rather than doing good. When we come together on Sunday morning to sing praise to God or when you gather your family together to sing praise to God you are behaving in a moral way. C.H. Spurgeon says, “Singing the divine praises is the best possible use of speech: it speaks of God, for God and to God and it does this in a joyful and reverent way.” When God says that playing music to the Lord is pleasant, he means that it is joyful. Praising God in song is full of pleasure for God’s people. Praise is full of pleasure for Christians because God is delightful or valuable to them. C.S. Lewis says about praise, “…all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside… The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about… we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” You cannot tell new parents they cannot speak of their happiness in the arrival of their baby. Lambeau field will not be silent this afternoon when Brett Favre throws a touchdown pass. Gamblers must shout when they hit the jackpot. Praise, often shouted or sung, is the normal and natural response of humans to those things that delight them. Finally, when he says it is fitting he means that praise in song “fits” the people of God the way a glove fits a hand, the way that hunting fits a gun or sewing fits a sewing machine or water fits a fish or marriage fits a man and woman in love. Singing praise is what the people of God are made to do. It is as natural for the people of God to gather together to sing praise to him as it is for Packer fans to watch the game this afternoon. It is as unnatural for Christians to not gather together to sing praise as it is for people who love ice fishing to live in Florida from November through March. Verse one, indeed this entire psalm, is another of those passages that make it clear that those who say they are Christians but who do not regularly attend worship services are deceived. For a person who professes to be a Christian to not gather regularly with God’s people to sing praise is immoral, unpleasant and out of step with what it means to be a Christian. The bulk of the Psalm is taken up with giving the reasons why God’s people find God and singing praise to God so pleasant. The psalmist aims to remind and convince us of God’s greatness so that we will spontaneously and joyously gather with others to sing praise to him. What the psalmist does here is what my daughter Julia has done for the past six months in regard to the movie and play, “Phantom of the Opera.” You can always tell when Julia is at home because the sound track from the movie is playing. She daily talks about the story and the movie and the soundtrack and has on several occasions tried to force her mother and I to listen to the entire soundtrack. She regularly seeks to convince all who will listen to her of how necessary it is for their happiness to go see the movie. She recounts the greatness of the story/movie/play so that you will join her in enjoying and praising it. In exactly the same way the psalmist wants us to understand why God is so amazing that we will enjoy singing his praises together. MAIN POINT God’s people find pleasure in praising him because…I. The God of creation has made them his people by grace (vv. 1-6) Before we can see the glory of God’s gracious salvation here I need to address a matter of biblical interpretation. You can see throughout this psalm that it is addressed to Jewish people, those who live in Jerusalem. Yet, as I’ve already indicated, I am going to apply all that is said here to and about Israel, Jerusalem and Zion to the church, to all Christians. On what basis am I able to say that when the psalmist wrote this psalm about national, ethnic Israel and the physical city of Jerusalem and the physical temple on Mt. Zion, that he was really writing about us and to us, the church? There are three lines of argument out of the NT that I want to draw your attention to so that you can read your OT and know that it all applies to you. First the NT makes clear that true Israel, to whom God made promises has never been the same as the entire nation of Israel, but has always been every chosen, believing Jewish and non-Jewish person. In Romans 9:6 Paul writes, “It is not as though God’s word has failed for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s offspring. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Later in Romans 11:1-6 he makes a similar point. “What then? Did God reject his people? By no means, I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew.” All the promises in the OT made to Israel were not made to Israel as a nation but to elect, believing Israel which was made up of both Jews: like Abraham, David, Isaiah and Gentiles: like Rahab from Jericho, Ruth the Moabite and Namaan, the Assyrian. It is all those who have been born according to God’s promise, not those who are merely racially connected or who observe the law. The people of God have always been those who believe the promise of God to send a Savior. Every Christian is part of that universal, throughout time people through their faith in Christ. Second, Jesus says that he is the fulfillment of the entire OT. Every word of the OT points to Christ in some way and is fulfilled in him and by him. This is why Paul says that every promise of God in the OT is yes for all who are in Christ. In Ephesians he says that it is in Christ that Gentiles and Jews share together in all God’s promises and are members of God’s household together. Thus the true temple of God are all those who are united to Christ by grace through faith. The promises of the OT belong to Christ and to those who are in Christ. Third, the NT regularly calls the church Israel, Jerusalem and Mt. Zion. We read one of those passages earlier in Hebrews 12. Just as God promised to live in the physical city of Jerusalem, in the physical temple, so now he dwells in his church and therefore we are the new Jerusalem, the temple, God’s Israel. One of the most vivid identifications is found in Revelation 21. In v. 9 an angel says to John in his vision, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” Everywhere in Revelation, the bride of the Lamb is the church of Jesus. Then in v. 10 it says, “And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God…” The bride of the lamb, the church, is Jerusalem. What this all means is that when the psalmist says that the Lord builds Jerusalem, he is telling us that the Lord is building the church. When he says that he is gathering the exiles of Israel he is referring to his work of gathering all of his people out of all the nations of the world into the church. I want you to see how this paragraph is the gospel of Jesus Christ, written several hundred years before Christ was born. The word translated “exiles” literally means, “those who were banished.” Literally this refers to the people of Israel whom God sent into captivity in Assyria and Babylon because of their sin. At the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, is recorded the destruction of Jerusalem and the banishment of the remnant of Israel into captivity in Assyria and Babylon. God’s banishment of Israel was due to their sin. That means that those whom he is gathering up and whom he is healing and whom he is binding their wounds are those whom are guilty of great sin against him. The ones for whom he is building Jerusalem are those who have hated him and despised his laws. Jerusalem needs to be built because God destroyed it for its sin. However, it is not only Israel that has been banished from the presence of the Lord due to sin. In Genesis 3:23-24, after God has discovered the sin of Adam and Eve and has pronounced his curse upon them we are told, “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” Every human being has been banished from God’s presence due to sin. God builds his church by gathering all the banished ones of Israel, that is, all the sinners he has determined to save by grace. When he gathers them, he heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds. The broken hearts and wounds are the result of God’s judgment against sin. This isn’t just talking about people who have experienced some earthly tragedy but those who are broken hearted over their sin and wounded by their sin. Peter in his first letter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” We are broken due to sin but Christ by his death puts us back together and assures of God’s love and comforts us with his presence. God tenderly gathers out of all banished humans his chosen people, healing the hurts caused by sin and binding the wounds he afflicted for sin. He does this through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In verse 6, salvation is described in a different way, it is the lifting up of the humble. Again, all those whom God gathers and heals and binds and lifts up are humble people. As humble people we recognize that it would be completely just for God to banish us from his presence forever but contrary to what we deserve he lifts us up and grants that we share in the life and victory of the eternal Son of God. Humble people are distressed by their sin, not the sins of others. We know that apart from grace we are lost. But notice, all those who are not humble, all the wicked are cast down by this same gracious God. The God who saves by grace, also justly punishes the proud and wicked. In the middle of these two descriptions of God’s tender salvation of the banished ones of Israel, the humble ones, is a description of God’s power and understanding. This God who comes near to save and comfort us poor sinners is the God who determines the number of the stars and who gives names to each one of them the way we give names to our pets. The total number of stars in the universe is unknown to human beings. The number of stars just in our Galaxy is estimated to be between 200 billion and 600 billion and there are millions of known galaxies and an untold number of unknown ones. There are stars whose diameter is greater than the distance between the center of our sun and the earth. If you were going to pick the most powerful and numerous objects in the universe, it would be stars. God knows how many stars are in the universe and he has given a name to each one like we give names to pets. It is no wonder that the psalmist says immediately upon telling us this fact about God that he is mighty in power and his understanding has no limit. What is the point of inserting this statement? The God who builds Jerusalem, who gathers the banished ones of Israel, who heals their broken hearts and binds their wounds, who lifts up the humble is the infinite and eternal God of all creation. God is to be praised because he is awesome beyond description and yet he tenderly cares for us and saves us and forgives us and restores us and comforts us. As Isaiah 57:15 says, “This is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” God is not mindful of us out of any need in him but simply due to his love for miserable and poor sinners like us. He is the greatest and most august of beings who has drawn near to tenderly gather, heal and bandage all his chosen, humble people. God’s people find pleasure in praising him because…
II. They are impressed by God, not themselves (vv. 7-11) The psalmist again commands that we praise God in song and tells us the reason we should do so. God sends the clouds to cover the sky, then he sends rain from the clouds to water the earth, then he causes the grass to grow on the hills. He does this in order to provide food for cattle and for the fledglings of ravens that cannot fly and are squawking in their nests for food. We talked about God’s providence just a few weeks ago when we looked at what it meant to ask God to give us our daily bread. We saw how Jesus, in Matthew 6, rebukes our worry about money and physical provision by telling us to look at how God feeds the birds and makes the flowers grow. This is one of the most basic assertions of the Bible. God is the one who is the ultimate cause behind all weather and all life on this planet. He is intimately involved with everything that happens in the world, caring for all life. I probably have shared this story before but understanding what these verses are saying was one of the most significant things that ever happened in my life. I would say that for most of the first 15 years of my Christian life I usually felt like God was far away and uninvolved in my life. I knew that Christ had died for me and that he was going to take me to heaven. On a few occasions I had a profound sense of God’s love and presence. However, most of the time I didn’t feel like God was near or involved in my life. Like most Christians I know I was looking for the big miracle or powerful experience to let me know that God cared. In the summer of 1992 I took my first seminary class at TEDS with Dr. Wayne Grudem. One day we spent an hour talking about God’s providence and going from one verse to another throughout the Bible to show that God is the ultimate cause behind everything that happens. He is personally directing the clouds and deciding when and where and how much it will rain. He makes the grass to grow and then feeds the livestock and the wild animals with the grass that he makes to grow. It doesn’t matter what secondary causes like evaporation and condensation or photosynthesis or farmers who sow and plant God may use, he is the first and determinative cause behind all that happens. I remember walking out of class that day and looking at the trees and the birds flying around and it was as if the world was blazing with God’s presence. Elizabeth Barrett Browning captures this reality in a stanza from her poem, “Aurora Leigh”, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.” To live with the knowledge that God is right now causing me to breath and the earth to spin on its axis and the sun to shine and the wind to blow is to live securely and joyfully. To know that he is causing the universe to work in order to support life by providing food for even the fledglings of ravens gives to life purpose and peace. This really is “My Father’s World.” Immediately after asserting God’s loving, providential care of his world he tells us what does not make God happy and what does make God happy. First, he is not pleased with the strength of a horse, nor with the legs of a man. What does that mean? If you were going to pick a created object that was impressive to human beings at the time this psalm was written, a horse would be that object. For thousands of years, horses were those mighty animals that made the life of humans easier. Horses were indispensable in the defense of your country and in conquering other countries. They are impressive in their speed and their power, especially when directed by man for man’s welfare. Even today we recognize the value of horses in that we measure the power that our car engines exert in “horsepower.” The God who is able to send water thousands of miles through the oceans to the farmer’s field in a gentle rain is not impressed with what a horse can do. Even less is he impressed with what a human can do. Our legs are the strongest muscles in our bodies. The psalmist is using “legs” as a symbol for all that humans are able to accomplish. The God who cares for and feeds the hundreds of millions of baby birds born each year and who treats mighty stars like pets, is not impressed with your ability to read a book or fix a car engine or sew a dress or build a church building or sing songs or play instruments or preach a sermon. He is not impressed with human achievement or ability. Would Owen Gromm or Norman Rockwell the famous artists be impressed with my attempts to draw or come to an exhibition of my artwork? Would Josh Groban or Frank Sinatra be impressed with my singing, would they come to a concert that featured me singing? What makes God happy, what draws his attention is human beings who fear him and who hope in his unfailing love. What God delights in are humans who are delighted with him. When we respond to reality as it actually is, then God gets excited. We recognize that we are created beings, that we are not the cause of our own existence and that everything is a gift. We understand that the God with whom we are dealing is infinite in power and his understanding is beyond our understanding. We are overwhelmed by the fact that it is this God against whom we have sinned. We have not simply disobeyed our mom or some human law. We have offended the God who feeds us and who directs the course of the wind and who sends earthquakes that send tsunamis that wipe out over 150,000 people in a moment. Fear is the only rational response to these realities. We ought to tremble before him. We are living in his world and using his gifts and at the same time treating him with contempt. But also, this same fearsome God is the same God who gathers the banished ones of Israel and heals our broken hearts and binds our wounds. This God has shown his love for us in creation but most clearly in the sending of his only Son to live and suffer and die for us and so we hope in his unfailing love to deliver us from his fierce anger. We don’t hope in our ability to sing praises to God. We don’t hope in the sincerity or length of our prayers. We don’t hope in our diligence in reading the Bible. We don’t hope in our working in some ministry of the church. We don’t hope in our being good. We hope in the fact that God, through Christ, loves sinners like us and counts us righteous because of Christ and pledges to sustain our faith by his Holy Spirit and so bring us safely to our eternal home. When we fear God and when we hope in his love, then is God pleased in our pleasure in him. C.H. Spurgeon, the most famous of all Christian preachers and pastors said, “It is a striking thought that God should not only be at peace with some kinds of men, but even find a solace and a joy in their company.” God’s people find pleasure in praising him because…
III. God’s word, which rules the world, also sustains them (vv. 12-20) In vv. 13-14 God is to be praised because he makes the church secure from all harm and sends his blessing upon all who are a part of the church. The church is indestructible and all who live within its walls are watched over and provided for by God. The only safe place in the world is the church of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said in Matthew 16, he is building his church and the gates of hell will not overcome it. Though the church is surrounded by enemies without and betrayed by false Christians and false teachers within, yet God defends her. There have been many, beginning with the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem in the months following the birth of the church 50 days after the ascension of Jesus, who have attempted to destroy the church. Yet they are all dead and the church yet stands and grows in spite of every human attempt to destroy it. In our days, communism sought to wipe the church out of existence throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and China. Yet, Stalin is dead as are the dictators of the Soviet bloc countries and Chairman Mao, and the church is flourishing in those countries. In China, though the Marxists have worked for sixty years to wipe out the church, yet it is 10 times the size it was when they took over. All who dwell within the boundaries of God’s kingdom on earth, the church, are fed with everything they need to live the life he has called us to live. We have received everything necessary for a life of godliness. Now look at how the psalmist moves from God’s special care of his church to God’s command over the weather. God controls the weather by his word. He sends his commands, his word to the earth and spreads the snow like wool and scatters frost like ashes and throws down his hail like bread crumbs. Then, that we might consider the power of God’s word he asks, “Who can withstand his icy blast?” No matter how much I enjoy winter and snow and being outside in the cold, I cannot live outside in the winter. Every human must at some point retreat into a shelter and seek the warmth of the fire of burning gas or oil in your furnace or of wood in your stove. Anyone who attempts to live outside in the cold without fire will die. You and I cannot withstand his icy blast. He commands the cold and snow to show us how weak and frail we are. We have a very real example of how futile human effort is in withstanding God’s ice. Right back in that corner of or our new sanctuary our weakness is exposed. God sent a little snow and ice and the dry wall and paint that we just put up is dissolving. Why are their potholes in our roads every spring? Because of God’s ice. How much human work was wiped out in fifteen minutes of water crashing ashore on Dec. 26, 2005? Human work is not what is ultimate, God’s word in directing all that happens is what is ultimate. Then, in v. 18, he sends this same word to melt the snow and ice and to cause the river to flow again. The life giving water that is now locked up in snow and ice and cannot be used by plants is going to be melted in the spring when God sends his breath to melt it and cause the water to flow again. The emphasis here is on the power of God’s word over all human power. We cannot stand against this word that rules over the weather. We cannot withstand the cold or tornadoes or hurricanes or hailstorms or drought. God’s word overwhelms all human attempts to control the world. In a moment human civilization can be reduced to rubble by God’s commanding the weather as those in Florida discovered this last summer. This same God whose word commands the weather has revealed his word to his people. He has given his word to the church. That same power that rules the weather has been entrusted into the hands of the church. He has not given this word of revelation to any other people but only to his church. This God whose word controls the weather also has given this word that creates and sustains our life. As Peter says in his first letter, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. ‘For all men are like grass and all their glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you.” This word of the gospel of Jesus Christ has been given only to his church and it is this eternal word that gives eternal life. God’s word is an irresistible power, creating life and tearing down all the pretensions of men. Paul in 2 Corinthians describes the power of this word, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons that we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” It is this word of God that creates the church, defends the church, blesses the church and sustains the church. How we ought to prize this word personally and corporately because it is only by this word that we will continue safe in the world. History is strewn with the rubble of churches that used to preach and believe this word but who abandoned this word that cannot be resisted for mere human words. It is a chief ambition of ours, here at River Hills Community Church to hold fast to this word and to permit it to have its way with us. We do not want to join the heap of discarded institutions that were abandoned by God once they abandoned this word. How we ought to praise God for this powerful word that he has given to us and which is the source of our life and power in the world. God’s people find pleasure in praising him because…
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2004 John Swanson. |