Today, we continue getting back to the small things which are the big things to God. We’re getting back to the elemental parts of this amazing thing that Jesus created called church from the book of Acts.
Church Elements.
Last week, we learned about the first foundational church element; prayer.
Prayer fixes our focus and attention and hearts and minds on the Lord. Prayer takes us straight into the throne room of God; into His very Presence!
Prayer brings God’s Presence and His will right to where we are at; any time anywhere. Prayer releases peace and comfort and joy to our souls. It is through prayer that we carry our sins, our cares, our burdens, our fears, our frustrations, our disappointments, our successes, our victories, our everything to God.
Prayer is a priestly function that anyone can perform!
We do not pray to inform God.
We do not pray to impress God.
We do not pray to get attention.
We do not pray to manipulate God.
We pray to seek His will, not to have Him fulfill our will.
We pray to connect with God.
It is an essential and foundational church element.
Today, we move onto another essential church element called praise.
Prayer invites God’s Presence into our lives and circumstances. Praise creates an atmosphere and constructs a throne for God’s Presence to dwell; a habitation. Prayer invites God’s Presence in, praise prepares a place for it to rest.
Prayer and praise quite often go hand in hand. In fact, some prayer is praise and some praise is prayer. Some prayers flow in and out of praise and some praise flows in and out of prayers.
The Psalms contain many examples of this. The author is crying out in pain and anguish desperately requesting that God intervene for them. Then they say a phrase such as, “but you, oh, Lord” and begin to declare praises about God’s faithfulness and power and goodness and ability.
How much more effective and transformative would our prayers be if we began to pray this way?
How much would our faith increase if, while we are praying for God to work a miracle, we begin to praise Him for His miracle working power and authority? What if while we prayed, we began to declare the past miracles that He worked on behalf of His people and even within our own lives? What a faith builder!
Prayer and praise are fundamental church elements that combine together to form a compound that can manifest God’s promises right here and right now!
We read last week where Jesus built a whip and flipped tables driving out everyone because the temple was to be a house of prayer. In the very next verse, we read:
John 2:18-22
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
Not only did Jesus describe His body as the temple, we are taught under the new covenant that:
1 Corinthians 3:16
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
Now we are the temple, we are a house of prayer, we are the place set apart for God’s Presence to dwell. It’s a challenging concept to understand except by experience. Even when the physical temple was constructed by Solomon, he pondered as he prayed:
1 Kings 8:27-30
27 “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! 28 Yet give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. 29 May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. 30 Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.
Of course, there was not only the element of prayer at the dedication of the temple, but it was accompanied by praise! Oh, and did God ever respond to that compound of prayer and praise! After Solomon prayed:
2 Chronicles 5:6;11-14
6 The priests then brought the ark of the Lord’s covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place, and put it beneath the wings of the cherubim.
11 The priests then withdrew from the Holy Place. All the priests who were there had consecrated themselves, regardless of their divisions. 12 All the Levites who were musicians – Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives – stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. 13 The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang:
“He is good;
his love endures forever.”
Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud, 14 and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.
Prayer and then praise through music and song and sacrifices and offerings and lifted hands and reminders of God’s promises. When prayer and praise came together, God’s Presence showed up in a huge way! His glory came and physically manifested as a cloud that filled the temple!
When we pray and praise, we can expect God’s Presence and glory to come and to fill our lives as well!
It was praise that brought the walls of Jericho down.
It was the praise of Paul and Silas that broke open every jail cell and loosed every shackle.
It was praise that enabled Gideon to defeat the Midianites.
By simply singing praise, Judah defeated Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir and the Ammonites and Moabites.
It was the sacrifice of shouts of grateful praise that preceded Jonah being vomited out from the big fish.
Praise is a fundamental church element!
Psalm 22:3
NKJV But You are holy, Enthroned in the praises of Israel.
KJV But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
DARBY And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel.
ERV (Easy-To-Read) God, you are the Holy One. You sit as King upon the praises of Israel.
EXB (Expanded Bible) You sit as the Holy One. The praises of Israel are your throne.
Inhabit/Enthroned in most translations
Our praises prepare a place for God’s Presence to inhabit; a dwelling place; a throne. Under the old covenant, the place for God’s Presence to dwell was on the mercy seat, on top of the ark of the covenant, in the holy of holies, in the inner temple. Under the new covenant, that place that praise prepares for God’s Presence to dwell is within us!
Our lives are not only the temple for God’s Presence, but an altar on which sacrifices and offerings are made. Simultaneously, we are both the altar and the sacrifice.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.
We become a living sacrifice by choosing to live according to God’s ways and not by our own thoughts or opinions. We crucify our flesh and follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. Unlike the animal sacrifices that took place on the altars of the physical temple, we are living sacrifices daily taking up our crosses and laying down our lives.
However, that is the only way for God to continually work to transform our lives. As we sacrifice them and lay them down, His resurrection power raises those parts of our lives up into new life and into a new creation!
In fact, we often encourage one another and even sing about offering up a sacrifice of praise; praising in faith BEFORE God provides the miracle. Here is this verse in its context.
Hebrews 13:11-16
11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Living sacrifices continually offering to God sacrifices of praise! How can we offer a sacrifice of praise? I believe that a sacrifice of praise is when we choose to praise God even when we have no earthly reason to.
The example of this that I typically turn to is that of Job. In a single chapter, he receives bad news followed by worst news followed by even more bad news. The greatest man in the eastern world has everything stolen from him by the devil except for his life and his wife. How does Job respond?
Job 1:20-21
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
We always have something to praise God for. Even if everything is stripped away and stolen from us, we can still look to God and see enough reasons for praise to fill an eternity!
A sacrifice of praise is a praise given not in response to the good things that God blesses us with here on the earth, but when we praise Him for who He is with no earthly reason to do so. God is always good, always faithful, always loving, always forgiving, always merciful, always powerful, and so much more.
We offer a sacrifice of praise by faith in the good things that God is going to do in our future.
It took 42 chapters for Job, but listen to what God did!
Job 42:10-17
10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. 11 All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
12 The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so Job died, an old man and full of years.
I don’t know how many chapters it may take for you and I, but I’m confident that we WILL experience the goodness of God here in the land of the living! That gives us reason to praise, even if it is a sacrifice of praise!
Praise is a fundamental church element!
How do you praise God?
Well, essential church elements are all very similar in that the how is about as vast as God, Himself. Just like prayer, we can praise anytime anywhere and in so, so many ways! Praise is all about exalting God and lifting His name high!
The ultimate expression of praise by living our lives for Christ. However, we can use our words, our music, our bodies, our anything to express His greatness.
Psalm 150
1 Praise the Lord. (Hallelujah)
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4 praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord. (Hallelujah)
So, praise the Lord! Shout, sing, dance, lift hands, bow down, declare how good He is, pick up and instrument and play it, choose to live life God’s way instead of your own, and any other way that exalts Him! Hallelujah, praise the Lord!