praise – Emmanuel Pentecostal Church Gateshead Resources

TUESDAY 5th – Psalm 66

This whole chapter before us today is a chapter of celebration. The Psalmist is celebrating who God is and what he has done, and he invites the world to join in with him – ‘Shout for joy to God, all the earth . . . say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds!’’ (vv1-2) In verse 5 he invites all the earth to come and to see what God has done, ‘he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man’. Later in verse 16 he personalises Gods goodness towards himself, ‘Come and hear, all ye who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.’

The psalmist is excited about the goodness of God in general toward mankind, and equally excited about his own experience of the goodness of God and he thinks it is something worth celebrating. ‘I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue.’ (v17) High praise or high praises are mentioned again in a later Psalm, another Psalm that encourages to celebrate in worship, Psalm 149:6 ‘Let the high praises of God be in their throats.’ (KJV mouths) In the cluster of Psalms here, the celebration is one of exuberance and joy before the Lord. Psalm 148 invites everything and everyone to get involved in celebrating and praising the Lord, The heavens, the heights, the angels, the hosts, sun, moon, stars, great sea creatures, even the weather, (v8) mountains and hills, trees, beasts and animals, creepy crawlies and birds, kings, princes, rulers and all people – praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted, his majesty is above earth and heaven. (v13) In Psalm 150 the celebration of praise to the Lord is expected to take place with the accompaniment of instruments, lute, harp, tambourine, strings, pipes, sounding cymbals and loud clashing cymbals and with dance! What a celebration of praise, and why? Because the Lord is worthy.

Our times of worship should be times of celebration as we come to acknowledge the greatness of God, the goodness of God and the grace of God.

He is great – ‘Great is the LORD and GREATLY to be praised’ Psalm 48:1, Psalm 145:3, (my paraphrase ‘Great is the LORD and GREATLY to be celebrated’) the same chapter (Psalm 48) ends with ‘that you may tell to the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.’ (v13-14) He is great in his steadfast love (Psalm103:11) and great in his faithfulness (Lamentations 3:23) Surely his GREATNESS is worth celebrating.

He is good – Psalm 86:5 ‘For you, O LORD are GOOD and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.’ Psalm 145:9 ‘The LORD is GOOD to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.’ Surely Gods GOODNESS is worth celebrating.

He is gracious – Psalm 103:8 ‘The LORD is merciful and GRACIOUS, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.’ Psalm 145:8 ‘The LORD is GRACIOUS and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.’ His GRACIOUSNESS is worth celebrating.

Once this pandemic is over, there will be a lot of rejoicing and celebrating, there will be parties as families and friends are reunited, perhaps not having seen each other for many weeks, or possibly months, there will be many who during this time will have come close to death and they will want to rejoice because of the second chance they have received. I guess that we will be rejoicing and celebrating and why not, but the first priority must be to have the high praises of God on our lips, to be coming with joyful and celebratory hearts to the house of the Lord to give thanks from grateful hearts. Celebrating our God who is a Great God, a Good God and a Gracious God who has saved us and kept us from harm. I am looking forward to hearing Iain with the guitar and Tim on the piano, calling us to praise and worship, and I’m looking forward to hearing all of our voices blending together as we worship the LORD with grateful hearts.

Come on and celebrate

His gift of love, we will celebrate

The Son of God who loved us

And gave us life

We’ll shout Your praise, O King

You give us joy nothing else can bring

We’ll give to You our offering

In celebration praise

Come on and celebrate

Celebrate

Celebrate and sing

Celebrate and sing to the King

Come on and celebrate

Celebrate

Celebrate and sing

Celebrate and sing to the King

Daily Devotion April 24th

FRIDAY 24^th

Psalm 123

This isn’t a very long Psalm and perhaps you are wondering why I have chosen it, it’s not because it is one of my favourites, but as I was going through the Psalms for this week the first verse caught my attention. ‘To you I lift my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!’

It then gives an illustration in verse 2 of the eyes of the servant looking towards their master, and the eyes of the maidservant towards their mistress. This gives us a picture of our dependency toward God.

We depend on many things in our lives, especially in modern living with the technological era in which we live – we depend on our electric supply (and gas and water), we depend on our fridges, freezers, micro-waves, kettles, washing machines, our cars or public transport, and today we seem to be unable to cope without a particular device called a mobile phone or laptop computer. Imagine how different our day would be by trying to manage without each of these things I have mentioned.

Over the last months we have become even more aware of so much that we have taken for granted, everyday things we do, activities we do etc like shopping, meeting with family or friends, going out in the car, maybe the gym, or even popping out for a meal with others.

Things which we have built our lives around and of we have become dependent upon. Suddenly we have been stripped of these things and have had to re-manage how we live and organise our lives. There are many ways in which we can react, we could become angry, we could become rebellious, we could be resourceful etc. but one thing we can all be is pro-active. We can be determined to make the most out of a difficult situation. But there is something else that we who are believers can do, it is that we can take stock. We can take the situation and the time it gives us to re-evaluate our lives and in particular our relationship with God. As we think of all the things in this life that we have become so dependant upon how many of them have become an hinderance to us in our walk with and our dependency upon the Lord Jesus Christ without our realising it?

Let’s go back to the first verse, ‘To you I lift my eyes.’ Our eyes are incredible organs, they are very delicate and yet extremely powerful, it is with our eyes we have vison, through our eyes we see everything around us, it is through our eyes we can focus on things that are close or far away. Sight is precious. Every day, we who have our sight are looking, watching, and as a result are absorbing, taking in and learning. Every day we are seeing and as a result feeding our minds which in turn feeds our desires. There is a challenge here, as to how much of our time is spent using our eyes to watch, read, see things that are not really of any value, more so of any spiritual value?

Some modern smart phones give you a weekly report on your screen time, whether you have spent more screen time or less screen time in a week compared to the previous week. I wonder what the weekly report would be on how much time we have given to the Word of God and the things of God? It’s a challenge to me.

‘To you I Lift my eyes’ speaks of our dependency toward God, the other familiar Psalm 121, says ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.’ We need to remember that these words are not just for the difficult and tough times, they are applicable for every moment of our lives. We need his help regardless of what our circumstances are because in this modern age, there is so much than can distract us and cause us to lose our dependency upon him.

There is one well known New Testament Scripture that talks of where our eyes should be looking, and with this scripture I will conclude this devotion, it’s in Hebrews 12:1-2 ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.’

I lift my eyes

to the quiet hills

in the press of a busy day;

as green hills stand

in a dusty land

so God is my strength and stay.

I lift my eyes

to the quiet hills

to a calm that is mine to share;

secure and still

in the Father’s will

and kept by the Father’s care.

I lift my eyes

to the quiet hills

with a prayer as I turn to sleep;

by day, by night,

through the dark and light

my Shepherd will guard his sheep.

I lift my eyes

to the quiet hills

and my heart to the Father’s throne;

in all my ways

to the end of days

the Lord will preserve his own.

^{Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926) CCLI 788682}