Make His Praise Glorious

Make His Praise Glorious
March 5, 2000
(Jim Grinnell)

I’m going to speak today again on the area of praise and worship. Laura was telling me she thought this would be the third time on this subject since the first of the year. I’m not sure. I know I have spoken once this year already, but God has more and I know it will be a blessing. So, would you turn with me to Psalm 66:1-4 in the NAS:
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth; Sing the glory of His name; Make His praise glorious. Say to God, “How awesome are Thy works! Because of the greatness of Thy power Thine enemies will give feigned obedience to Thee. All the earth will worship Thee, and will sing praises to Thee; They will sing praises to Thy name.”

Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that you would divinely edit what is not of you, but those things that are of you I pray that they would come through with such force that we would be changed forever. We love you, Lord. Let this be a divine moment, Father, because it is the preaching of your Word and You are a glorious God. Your Word is eternal, Your Word says everything will pass away, but Your Word will not pass away. So, Father, give us insight into Your Word and what we can hang our hat on, and how we are to grow this morning. Have your way with us, we pray, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

I want to focus on the second line of verse 2. In my version it says this: Make His praise glorious. And that’s the title of this message. Make His praise glorious. You know God has already really given the message through the songs that we sang and the words that we received. I never cease to marvel how when I come in with a word prepared, how God will often confirm to me that I’m on the right track by the words that come forth. One this morning was - You are the Source, fix your eyes on Jesus. Set your mind on things above. We sang “He is Worthy.” Wasn’t that a great song? He is worthy. Salvation belongs to our God.

So the message is Make His Praise Glorious and I want to give you a few disclaimers before I begin. First of all, when we talk about worship, we need to be very aware that worship is a very sensitive issue of our faith. How we touch God is very precious to us. So we need to be careful to maintain unity and approach this subject sensitively. Second, when I’m talking this morning I want to focus specifically on that first thirty minutes of our Sunday morning of our service where we come together - we call it praise and worship. But I’m not talking about the entirety of praise, personal praise and that kind of thing - what you do in your car - or in your prayer closet. I’m just talking about Sunday mornings when we come together. And third, when I say “we” I don’t mean just TCF, I mean, yes, us, but beyond us to the whole Christian aspect of praise and worship that’s going on now. Particularly the non-denominational Spirit-filled praise and worship that we experience. I’m using praise and worship interchangeably this morning so let’s not be very particular about those two words even though in my last message I talked a bit about how they are not the same thing. And finally, I want to ask you to bear with me a little bit because there are some messages you preach and then there are some messages where you are unpacking your bags. I mean you feel so passionate about it that you might get a little crazy, you might leave your notes