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All right, Psalm 113. Take your Bible, go to Psalm
113. The title of the message is, Praise
the Name of the Lord. Praise the Name of the Lord. Maybe a familiar Psalm to you. And if it is not, Hopefully by
the end of the evening, you'll say, wow, I want to memorize
that psalm. It is such a great, great psalm. Follow with me from the beginning.
Praise the Lord. Praise, oh servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever,
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.
His glory is above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God? Who is enthroned on high? Who
humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and
in the earth? He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with
princes, with the princes of his people. He makes the barren
woman abide in the house as a joyful mother of children. Praise the
Lord. Our God is the God who is glorious,
exalted, lifted up, sovereign, unrivaled, transcendent. While at the same time, our God
is a God who is near, father-like, tender, compassionate, and very
caring. Who is like our God? Who can
be compared with our God? You have in your notes a couple
of verses from a wonderful hymn. I absolutely love this hymn,
written by Henry Light in the early 1800s. Praise my soul,
the King of heaven, to his feet thy tribute bring. Ransomed,
healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing. But then there's
another stanza. Father-like, he tends and spares
us. Well, our feeble frame he knows. Now ponder those lines that I
have just read. Think about that in your outline
tonight, that we have the king of heaven, that we bring all
of our worship to the feet of the king of heaven and earth.
And yet he's a father who cares for us. And he knows everything
about you. And he's involved in your life. And he is one who knows your
feeble frame. He can relate to you. We come
to Psalm 113, which teaches both the transcendence of God and
the nearness of God. Psalm 113 is a remarkable Psalm
because you see in your outline there, it begins a section of
Psalms that are often called the Egyptian Hallel Psalms. If you have a Jewish friend,
you can say, oh, we're studying the Egyptian Hallel, and their
eyes are gonna get really big when you know the Egyptian Hallel. It's a collection. Psalms 113
to 118. It is a series of Psalms that
the Jewish people sang at Passover at the mealtime. At the mealtime. And they would sing some of the
Psalms, 113, and following before the meal, and then they would
sing a few of the Psalms after the meal as well. What is so
neat about Psalm 113 is it teaches the transcendence of God. God
is big, holy, awesome, transcendent. He has his throne in the heavenlies. We take off our shoes. or the
place that we are standing as holy ground. While at the same
time, the psalm teaches the imminence of God, that God is near, that
He is caring, that He is involved, that He is concerned about your
life and my life. The psalm teaches the majesty
of God and the mercy of God. What a God. Who is like the Lord
our God? Now, I want you to look in your
Bible at the very first phrase and the very last phrase of the
entire psalm. You know the Hebrew. The Hebrew
is hallelujah. Praise the Lord. It begins that
way and the psalm ends that way. And that's the theme of the psalm.
Praise the name of the Lord. And what I want to do tonight
with you is I want to ask a number of questions about that so that
you and I will understand this psalm and be drawn to worship
of our God. Let's ask the question. Number
one, who? Who is to worship and praise
our God? Look at verse one. Praise the
Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the
Lord. Let me begin with the phrase,
name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord,
Job said. Even here in our psalm, praise
the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord refers to
the fullness of that which makes God to be God. Whatever it is
to be God is all confined in this phrase, the name of the
Lord. All of his character, all of his attributes, all of his
person and his work, the revelation of God, and the redemption of
God, and the providence of God, and the power of God. When we
talk about praising the name of the Lord, It would be like
saying, let's just list off all of the attributes of God. And let's praise God for the
fullness of who He is. And who, who should praise Him? Look at verse one. Praise, O
servants. Now, I suppose when we get to
the Psalms of Ascent and the Psalm 130s, we could make the
argument that this might refer specifically to the priests and
the Levites, the temple worshiping leaders. And that may be included
here as well. Although all believers are certainly
included because Jesus said in John 4 24, the father wants those
who worship him in spirit and truth. If you're a believer,
you are included right here in verse one praise oh servants
of the lord did you know that even creation creation is called
upon to praise god in psalm 96 even the trees and the fields
exult and rejoice in god for they even are god's servants
the angels Well, they are ministering spirits sent out to do God's
bidding. According to Hebrews 1, even
the angels are to bless the Lord. Psalm 103, verse 20. And then remarkably, David says
in Psalm 119, verse 91, all things are your servants. So everything
is to praise God. Let everything that has breath.
Psalm 150, praise the Lord. Let's go one step farther. there
is the capitalist servant of the Lord. according to the book
of Isaiah, and he is the Lord Jesus. Hebrews chapter 12 talks
about the Lord Jesus singing praise in the congregation. Jesus is the one who praises
the Lord. We are to praise God. We join
in this chorus with creation and angels, even the Son of Man
himself in praising God. Praising God. We praise the name
of the Lord. I remember that story. Boys and
girls, certainly you remember this story of David and Goliath. Remember that story of Goliath,
the Philistine champion, this mighty nine foot tall man, and
he was a warrior and he comes to the battle line and he's taunting
David and he's taunting the Israelites and he's taunting the God of
Israel. He's mocking the God of Israel. David, David comes to the battle
line. And he says, you, Goliath, you
come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you
in the name of the Lord God of armies. 1 Samuel 17, 45. We praise God just like, just
like David did in every area of life, every season of life,
every situation of life. Who should praise him? You and
I as servants of the Lord. We praise the name of the Lord. You and me. Let's praise his
name together. What about number two? When?
When? When do we praise him? Well,
not only who, verse one, we as the servants of the Lord praise
him, but verse two tells us when. Verse two, blessed be the name
of the Lord from this time forth and forever. Verse three, from
the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord
is to be praised. From now until forever. From the rising of the sun, from
morning all the way until evening, the setting of the sun, all day
long, it's the worship and the praise of our God is to be continuous. All day, every time, everywhere,
in every place, our God calls for and our God deserves continual
praise. Now ponder, ponder with me for
a sec. How do you start your day? How do you start your day
in the mornings? Whatever hour you get up, whatever
time that may be, how do you begin your day and how do you
fill your day? And what role does the praises
of God have in your day? With what do you fill your heart
and your mind and your thoughts? How do we spend our evenings?
How do we talk and converse with other people? Maybe ponder this thought. Is
there something that you can do practically, tangibly in your
life, in your daily routine to help you and to aid you in your
praises of God from the rising of the sun to the setting of
the sun? For example, Something that has
helped me in my personal walk with the Lord is having on my
app, on my phone, an app of hymns. I have my hymnal on the floor
near where I kneel in the morning. I have my Gatsby hymnal there
as well. A hymns has a regular part in
my morning time of prayer and Bible reading and worship. It
helps me. It helps me refocus. It helps
me begin the day with God. I don't do it every day, but
many days I do. The worth of God is continuous,
and the character of God is constant, and the mercy of God is unending,
so the praises of God should be unending as well. Remember
David's words in Psalm 145. Every day I will bless you. Every day I'll bless you. And
I will praise your name forever and ever. What a great mantra
for our life. Every day. So, that is who should
praise God in verse one. That's us, the servants of the
Lord. Verse two, well, when, when do we praise God at all
times from early morning until evening? In your outline, number
three. Why? Why? Why do we praise God? I mean, somebody might say, mom
and dad, why do we have to praise God again? Why do we have to
go to church again? Why do we have to sing again?
Why do we have to do family worship again? Why do we have to praise
God again? Here's the answer. It's right
here in verse four. Do you see it in your Bible?
Here's the reason. The Lord is high above all the
nations. and his glory is above the heavens."
Now, verse 4, the word high. God is high above. The Hebrew
word means lifted so high above, when it refers to God, it refers
to his unparalleled greatness. There's nothing like our God.
There's no one like our God. He is unparalleled in his greatness. Bring the best thing in the world
and put it next to God and God far surpasses anything and everything. God is high and lifted up and
transcendent and unreachable. and exalted and elevated. And verse four, if you see it
in your Bible, the Lord is high above all the nations. Currently, there are 195 countries
in the world. The Lord is above all of them.
There are 17,000 people groups in the world. The Lord is above
all of them. There are 7,000 living spoken
languages in the world. The Lord is high above all of
them. There are seven continents. I
think seven, if that's the best number. Seven continents. The
Lord is high above all of them. Asia, 4.5 billion people. Africa,
1.5 billion people. Europe, 750 million people. And the Lord is high above all
of them. All of them. All of the galaxies,
all of the vast systems of stars and gases and matter, many of
which have billions of stars. God is high above all of them. The same word in verse four,
the Lord is high is the same word found in Isaiah chapter
six. When Isaiah had that vision,
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty, high and exalted, and
the train of his robe filled the temple. That's our God. Our God is lifted up. And his glory, verse four, is
above the heavens. One of my projects in a master's
degree was studying the ancient Near Eastern kingship, the customs,
the culture of the ancient Near Eastern kings. And one of the
things that I learned was how the, the ancient Near Eastern
kings that the monarchs would, would often have these, these
thrones that were elevated. They were high. They were lifted
up. They were, they were ornate.
They were beautiful. It would be a symbol, a symbol
of their power, a symbol of their authority, a symbol of their
own divine connection with their God. It would be a throne of
ivory, a throne of gold, a throne of wood, with all these ornate
carvings in all the thrones. And often the kings in the ancient
world would have attendants and servants and royal audiences
surrounding their throne. And verse four says, guess what? God is highly exalted above all
of that. He is highly exalted. This is the great doctrine of
the solitariness of God. There is none like our God. He is unrivaled and unmatched. He is unparalleled and unequaled. God is supreme. Why? Why? Men and women, boys and girls,
why do we worship God? Why do we sing to God? Why do we gather with the family
of believers? Why do we open our Bible? Why
do we hear the preaching of the word? Why? Because our God is
high and lifted up. He is highly exalted above all
nations. His glory is above the heavens.
He is great and greatly to be praised. That's the transcendence of our
God. Now, in your outline, you now
come to a fourth point. Not just who should worship and
when do we worship and why do we worship, but now, number four,
what? What has God done? I mean, what
has he done? We worship him. We know why,
but what has this God done? Verse five. is like the Lord
our God, who is enthroned on high, who's like this God. Verse six,
he humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven
and in the earth. He's a personal God, and he's an incomparable
God. He's an exalted God, and yet
he is involved. Check out this verse. Isaiah
57 verse 15, thus says the high and exalted one who dwells on
high. And then he says he dwells with
the contrite and the lowly. Wait, he's the high and exalted
one, but he loves to dwell with the lowly. What does this God do? Did you
see in verse 5, who is like the Lord our God? He is enthroned
on high. He is exclusive. To whom would we liken God to
be his equal? Well, how great is he, verse
6, he humbles himself to behold the things in heaven and on earth.
You know what this verse teaches in verse 6? God stoops down to
behold the things in the heavens and the earth. It reminds me
of the Tower of Babel. Remember that story when, when
the, the peoples come together and they want to build a high
tower to make a name for themselves? And then that amazing little
humorous phrase, the Lord came down. They wanted to make a tower
to reach high into heaven. The Lord came down. God had to come down, but our
God, according to verse 6, humbles himself. He humbles himself. Keep your finger here. I wonder
if Paul had that in mind in Philippians 2. Would you turn there real
quick? Go to Philippians 2. Now, as you're turning to Philippians
2, let me tell you what Paul's doing. In verse 1, Paul is saying
to the Christians, don't, don't be selfish. Don't be prideful.
Don't be self-exalted. Don't be inflated. Don't, don't
be conceited. Don't have selfish ambition.
But what we need to do is be humble and we need to consider
others. That's verses one to four. And
then beginning in verse five, Paul says, here's the ultimate
example of humility. Philippians 2.5, have this attitude
in yourselves, which was also in Christ, who, although he existed
in the form of God, he existed in all of eternity in the form
of God because he is God. He did not regard equality with
God a thing to be grasped or held on to. Well, he could have
stayed in heaven. He could have. The son of God,
the second person, the triune God, could have stayed in heaven.
But he didn't hold on to that prerogative. In fact, what he
did, verse seven, is he emptied himself. Theologians call it
the doctrine of the kenosis because it comes from the Greek word
for emptying. But careful, we can't fall into
heresy here. The emptying does not mean that he lost anything.
It's sort of unfortunate that in our English mind, we think,
well, if he emptied himself, he lost something. He didn't
lose anything. Ironically, in the Greek, he
emptied himself by addition. He gained something, human flesh. Like the hymn, Veiled in Flesh,
The Godhead See. He is fullness of God, real God,
genuine God, true God, all that there is to be God, and yet he
is clothed with real humanity, flesh and blood. Verse 7, he
emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made
in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as
a man, he humbled himself. by becoming obedient to the point
of death, even death on a cross. Jesus, Jesus humbled himself. He came with the limitations
of real humanity. The God who creates the womb
was conceived in a womb. And he was conceived in the womb
of the Virgin Mary, the very woman that he created. Born as
a baby, he grew in wisdom, he obeyed the Father perfectly,
and then he died a gory, bloody death on a cross rejected by
his own people that he came to save. And then he took our sin,
and he took our wrath, our punishment, and the judgment from God that
we deserved. What humility! What a God who
is lofty and transcendent, and yet he, back to our psalm, he
humbles himself. As you're turning back to Psalm
113, remember that psalm by Thomas Kelly? Stricken, smitten, and
afflicted. See him dying on the tree. He,
the Christ, by man rejected. Oh, my soul, tis My soul, tis
he, he the long-expected prophet, David's son and David's lord.
See, the author of creation, he the true and faithful word. What a God, that our God is transcendent
and lofty, and yet he's humbled himself Our psalm says in verse
6, to behold the things that are in heaven and the earth. You say, psalmist, like what? What does God do? You tell me
that God is involved. What does that look like? Now, if you look in your Bible
at verse seven, do you see it there? Psalm 113 verse seven,
he raises the poor from the dust and he lifts the needy from the
ash heap to make them sit with princes. That is a word for word
quotation back from 1st Samuel chapter two. You know what I
love about the psalmist here? He says, let me prove to you
how great our God is. Let me just quote earlier revelation
back. Remember the lady Hannah? Remember
that mother of the boy Samuel and she would pray and she would
call out and she would cry out for a son. And then God heard
and God gave and God answered. And what did Hannah do? Hannah
prayed, and she said, God raises the poor from the dust. He lifts
the needy from the ash heap. He makes them sit with princes. Now, be careful. When you look
in verse seven, you see the word poor. Maybe in our American culture,
we think poor equals little money. Wrong association. In the Hebrew
mind, it has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with
your status and your wealth. Maybe a better way to think about
it is you're an outcast. You're shamed. God is so involved
and so near to you in such a way that he shows amazing grace to
the shamed ones, to the outcast ones. Like Paul says, didn't
God choose the foolish of the world to shame the wise? Didn't
God choose the things that are not to nullify the things that
are so that no man may boast before God? Isn't that what our
God does? And then doesn't God raise us
up and seat us with Christ in the heavenly places? Isn't that
what our God does? Isn't our God full of compassion
on the outcasts like the leper? Like the tax collector? like
the town prostitute, like the widow, like the Samaritan, like
the children, like the unclean and bloody ones. Jesus is so
merciful. He is the exalted God. And he's also very near to the
brokenhearted, as Psalm 34 puts it. Oh, this is so helpful because,
because this is the gospel invitation for any and all. This is the
gospel invitation for any sinner to come to Christ. For any outcast,
for any who has been shamed, for any who feels poor and dejected
and rejected, for the drunkard and the adulterer and the fornicator
and the immoral and the selfish one, the self-righteous one and
the angry one and the anxious one, and the hypocritical one. God says, come, come. I will lift you from the dust. I will lift the needy from the
ash heap. And he can take ashes and make
it beautiful. Can make it beautiful. You see that there in the psalm.
You say, yeah, but psalmist, can you give me an example of
that? And that's how the psalm ends. Look at verse 8 and 9.
Look at how the psalm ends. Look at the compassion of God.
Verse 8, he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit
with princes, with the princes of his people. He makes the barren
woman abide in the house. Real quick, we gotta pause. A
barren woman. If you're a married woman and
you have no children, In the ancient Near Eastern world, it
would be the height of embarrassment. You would be a social ostracized
outcast. People don't want you. Your husband
would be ashamed of you. You would be humiliated. You'd be a disappointment to
your husband. You'd be a disappointment to
other women. You'd be a disappointment to
yourself. And you would think, I have no children. But didn't God provide children
for Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, the mother of John
the Baptist? What a God! What a God who is
so exalted and lofty, but he cares for the needy. He cares
for the outcast. He cares for the humiliated.
He is transcendent and imminent. I think there's an appropriate
application here. Maybe if someone's here tonight, and you feel rejected
by others, and maybe like people you share the gospel with, They
know they're not good. They know our world is a mess.
They know their life is a mess. Could God accept me? Could God
forgive me? You may be rejected by others,
but you can be received by Christ. You may be shamed by the world,
but you can be embraced by God as a loving Heavenly Father.
Perhaps someone may be an outcast to many, but God invites you
in through faith in Christ. What a psalm, because the psalm
brings our unrivaled God right to our attention. Verse 5, who
is like the Lord our God? He's high and lifted up, but
he's very near. He's very near to the brokenhearted. In your outline, you have a conclusion,
and I just want to close with this before we pray here in a
moment. John Frame, and I think I even
gave you the link there as well, he has a wonderful essay on both
the transcendence and the eminence of God. It's superb. Really,
really good. He said this, quote, divine transcendence
and eminence are the related Christian doctrines that while
God is exalted in his royal dignity and exercises control and authority
in his creation, he is by virtue of this control and authority
very present to his creation, especially his people in a very
personal and intimate way. Ponder this. God is king over
us. but he also came to live as Emmanuel,
God with us. And we say, amen. Who is like the Lord our God? Father, thank you for your word
and the power of it, the clarity of it. We marvel at your unrivaled,
transcendent, imminent being and personhood. Now, as we lift
our hearts together in prayer, we pray that you would fill us
with the joy of the Lord as we worship and praise and exalt
you in this prayer meeting together. In Jesus' name.
Praise the Name of the LORD!
Series Psalms
Teaching on Psalm 113
| Sermon ID | 71025155393459 |
| Duration | 35:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Psalm 113 |
| Language | English |
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