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 for a long time, you just don’t know what’s going to happen - and I feel that way this morning. I feel so passionate about what the Lord is saying to me, and I believe to you that I would ask that you bear with me.
My thesis statement, if I were writing a paper this morning, is this: Praise is all about proclaiming God’s glory - it’s not about us. Let that sink in a minute. Praise is all about proclaiming God’s glory - it’s just not about us. Fred Herzog was a man of God - he may still be living - I don’t know. But he ministered in the non-denominational Charismatic streams up in Minnesota and Wisconsin back when I first became a Christian. My friend, Gary McCracken, sat under Fred a lot and Fred was a prophetic brother - and you remember the days when every prophecy began with “Thus saith the Lord” - and Fred was about to prophesy, he had a gift, so he began to prophesy and he said, “Thus saith the Lord” - there was a long pause and then he said, “Oops, sorry, that was me!” How refreshing to hear that. You know - Nope, that was me. And when we examine our own praise and worship to God, when He rips open our hearts and lets us see our motives for worshipping Him, I don’t want to have to say - “Oops, sorry God, that was all about me. That was about me insisting that my spiritual needs be met. That was about me getting off on my particular music worship style. That was about me demanding that I have an encounter with You where I could feel your Presence. It wasn’t about worshipping you.” Psalm 115, verse 1 says: Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory . . . The last verses of that say The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do nay who go down into silence; But as for us, we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever. Praise the Lord! That’s the Spirit that we’re looking for here. I’m afraid that in the Charismatic movement we are not only at risk of being tainted by humanism in our worship, but we are actually already infected. And you know, we baby boomers - most of us - we’re a congregation mostly of baby boomers - there are some of you who don’t fit into that category - but baby boomers are considered the “me” generation with a very strong gospel of self-fulfillment. It’s as if we wear rose-colored glasses everywhere we go - and we don’t even know that we have them on. And we look through this lens of self-fulfillment, so we really need Jesus to deliver us from that filter.
We’re going to carefully examine some things this morning so that we can make His praise glorious. Amen! Is that your heart? Would you love to know that the worship and praise you present to God is as possibly free from self as possible, and as pure an offering to His glory as possible? In short, I want to talk about how we need to avoid some serious potholes of praise. I have a pothole at the end of my street that has been there so long I should probably name him - I don’t know - but the neat thing about a pothole is no matter what you do to it, it’s never quite fixed. It just varies in depth. You can pour dirt in it, you can pour gravel in it, you can tar it over - I believe you could cement it - you could pour liquid titanium in it - but it would not be fixed! So, it just becomes a part of your life that you continually drive around. How many of you have a pothole on the way to work, or to the store, or to school that it has just become a part of your life? Anybody have one? Well, I hope that you never see that pothole the same. Now when you look at it you’ll think about praise and how we have to avoid certain potholes.
The first big pothole I want to call “narcissistic worship.” Narcissus was a youth from Greek mythology who wouldn’t respond to any of the female nymphs running in the woods who loved him. One of the nymphs was so hurt she prayed that he would experience what it’s like to want to give love but not have the one loved respond. And sure enough, Narcissus went one day and looked in a very clear fountain of water and saw his own reflection and he fell in love with himself. And he would lean down to kiss himself and the image would disappear. Then he would rise up and he would see it come back. He was fixated on this image and when he cried the image would disappear. So he kept looking and looking and looking and eventually he lost his handsomeness because all the life and all the vigor drained away from him. It’s said that even after he went over to the other side in death and he was being transported across the river Styx that he still leaned out over the edge of the boat to try to look at himself.
There is a pastor named Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel - the fellowship where the Maranatha label was born - and he went out into his congregation one time to interview them about what they were expecting out of their worship service. Here’s what he writes:
“Almost every person expressed something different. One person wanted relief from stress at work. Another was hoping to see God answer a prayer for a friend, etc. In other words, each person’s expectation as to what would happen during the service was born out of personal need and desire. They saw going to church that night as a resource to help them cope with their current concerns. We learn that in spite of our efforts to give worship a particular meaning, people bring their own meanings to the service. Second, the one expectation the majority of people shared was for some kind of encounter with God. Beyond the program, the social interaction, the music, the message, they wanted to touch God. Again, this desire was born out of personal need, a need they believed God alone could fill.”
We could expand that - I could take a mic out among you - and depending on where we were, we might say - I just need some help handling the week - and none of us would blame someone for that. Someone might say - I need to relieve the stress I’m under - I need to bring my focus back to God - I need to see God break a bondage in my life - what I expect to see is the Presence of God ushered in - I need to express my heart to God - I need to have an encounter with God - these are all good answers and no one would blame you for such an answer. First of all I want to say, in my view while all of those are good, they are not good enough. Where are the people who would stand up and say - what I expect to see when I go to a service is Jesus Christ glorified in His own house; I expect to see Jesus Christ lifted up and glorified in His own house; it’s His glory; it’s about His glory; it’s not about me. Let’s look into our own hearts. Are we coming to worship the King, or is it about us and our needs?
When we look into the Psalms we see the people of God - David the King exalting God, extolling God, exalting in God - three words that all begin with “ex” and then a different suffix. Yes, David lamented and it’s all right for us to lament, but I’m not sure that praise is the place for lament. Usually when David was lamenting he was alone in a cave feeling abandoned and things like that. Sometimes the people of Israel lamented but it was after a huge corporate sin or they had been dragged into captivity. No, the norm for when the great congregation gathers are the high praises of God. “I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter His courts with praise.” “Let the high praises of God be in my mouth and a two-edged sword in my hand.” “Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits, let all that is within me bless the Lord.” That’s worth shouting about, don’t you think! Let all that is within me bless the Lord. You know, current worship literature talks about just what we’re talking about. I didn’t realize this, but they have a name for it. Do you know what they call it? The pronoun problem. The pronoun problem. In Michael S. Hamilton’s article The Triumph of the Praise Songs, How Guitars Beat out the Organ in the Worship Wars, there is this quote, ”One cannot sing praise songs without noticing how first person pronouns tend to eclipse every other subject.” Have you ever felt that way? That what we’re singing, or what they’re singing, is more about them than about God; more about us than about God; more the agony of our soul than the greatness of His name. I’ve felt that at times. I’ve probably led songs that were really doubtful about who was the focus.
I want to contrast Psalm 113 with a song we sometimes sing, and I guess in the interest of time I won’t read Psalm 113. But if you turn there you will see that it is just filled with praise: “Praise the Lord, praise all servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord, the name of the Lord is to be praised, the Lord is high above all nations, His glory, who is like the Lord our God,” and it just goes on and on and on. I counted and here’s what I got - 12 references to Lord, God, He or His, zero references to I or me. Now the song I’m going to pick on today is one we’ve sung here - I may have led it - it’s called I Have a Destiny. Let me just read the words to you, sensitive to this now. I’m going to emphasize “I” so that you really hear it.
I have a destiny I know I shall fulfill;
I have a destiny in that city on a hill;
I have a destiny, it’s not an empty wish;
For I know I was born for such a time as this.
Long before the ages you predestined me
To walk in all the works you have prepared for me.
I know I have a place to play in history
To help prepare a bride for eternity.
I did not choose you, but you have chosen me,
And appointed me for bearing fruit abundantly.
I know you will complete the work you began in me
By the power of your spirit working mightily.
Now there’s good sentiment in that song, some good truth. Sometimes we need to realize who we are in Christ, but if we were to take - there are 16 “I’s” or “me’s” in that song. You don’t come across the Lord once, you don’t come across the term “God,” you do come across the term “Spirit” once and there are six “You’s,” implying God. So if we were to take a vote, is that song focused on God or is it focused on us, I think the “I’s” would have it, wouldn’t you?
Matt Redman also gets at this sentiment with a song he’s written called The Heart of Worship. I want to play a bit of that for you. . . . . .
I know that they’re not mutually exclusive - I know some of you are probably struggling because you say, certainly, God is going to meet our needs - and I agree and that is part of the reason, but we need to be united that we are coming here to worship God and that as we do, we trust Him to meet our needs. We don’t need to focus on that at all. It’s my position that it would be better to come with no expectation to meet God than it would be to come with my needs ahead of giving Him glory. Let me say that again. It’s my position and my belief that it would be better to come with no expectation of encountering the living God in a way that I can sense Him than it would be to put my needs ahead of His glory as my motive for coming. I think you’re there too, but I think we need to agree together. Petition is the purview of prayer, not praise. Praise is about Him. I get nervous when I read about pastors and their views of praise because they don’t talk about “how do I help the flock obey God?” - what they’re talking about is “how do I help God meet the spiritual needs of my congregation?” It would be like a shepherd hiring an assistant to coach him about how to tend the sheep. Really, that’s who we are as elders - we are under-shepherds - and is it our job to try to coach the Master, remind the Master, nag the Master-shepherd - about your needs. Or is it to help the sheep obey the Shepherd. Now, some of you might say, “Jim, that’s too fine a line. You’re drawing too fine a line; it’s not that important a distinction.” Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, it is everything. That different perspective makes all the difference in where you end up in your mindset and in your approach to God and where we end up as a church. It’s like turning the verse around - Matthew 6:33 - “See ye first all these things and His kingdom and His righteousness will be added to Him.” That doesn’t make sense. No, it’s “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to us.” So, I think biblical worship only works one way and when the Scriptures say - let us worship Him in spirit and in truth - that truth is what we’re talking about right now. I pray that we’re all on the same sheet of music about this.
The second big pothole is selfish worship. Would you turn with me to I Corinthians 14. (Forgive me for hitting that point pretty hard, but I think it is critical.) I want to read three verses from I Corinthians 14.
Verse 1: Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.
Verse 12: So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church.
Verse 26 is the last: What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
Now, to me selfish worship is where there is no concern to edify my brother by using my spiritual gifts in the great congregation. Today I thought we saw a beautiful demonstration of the gifts being employed by members of the body. Nobody was attention seeking up here, were they? If we get up to use a gift that God has give us and our motive is attention seeking, we know it don’t we? We sense it. We may not be able to put words to it all the time, and we may question our own gut, but the truth is if we get up to serve with our gift - it’s beautiful. If we get up for attention, people sense it. People sense it. I want to use BASIC as an example here, and I’m going to use BASIC as a good example later but right now I’m going to use them as a bad example. Probably one of the biggest frustrations for me in BASIC is trying to impart a vision to teenagers that worship is more than singing songs to God. We have great meetings and the worship team does wonderfully, but here’s what happens: we sing a song and there’s silence, we sing a song - silence, we sing a song - silence, sing a song - silence, sing a song - silence. Maybe Jim says, “Thank you, Lord.” Sing a song - silence, sing a song - silence, sing a song - silence. And it goes meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. And I don’t know how to change it. Sometimes I wonder if we are hiding behind music. What would happen if you all came some Sunday morning and we didn’t sing songs. How rocked would your boat be? Would we be able to use our gifts, build each other up, and have a great worship service? How dependent are we on instrumentation and singing. I hope that like the Apostle Paul said, “I will not be enslaved to anything.” I hope we’re not enslaved to singing or music. We are a people who believe God gives gifts; we are Spirit-filled, charismatic - we are committed to building each other up - or are we? Or are we into selfish worship where we aren’t even listening for a word to give our friends, our family of God. We’re just into encountering God. To me that’s selfish worship. It’s all about me and Jesus and it’s not anything about my brother. To me Owen Carey is a beautiful example of the right spirit. When he comes to visit, he goes around using his gift to serve us and we feel this level of joy rising in our hearts because we’re seeing the gift of prophecy manifested. But the thing that’s so beautiful is every once in awhile he pauses and says, “Isn’t God neat? Let’s give Him a hand.” No attention to himself. You sense that it’s not about him. It’s about serving us with his gift. So, when we ask how can we make His praise glorious here, I think a second big pothole to avoid is selfish worship where we’re not concerned about edifying our brother or our sister.
Third, copycat worship - another pothole. I wonder if we don’t fully understand in the Spirit that just like TCF has a unique history, a unique government, a missions calling, I believe we also have a unique identity in the Spirit about worship and praise and God does not want us to be anybody else. If we rely too heavily on one artist, one genre, one style then we start to become less than what God wants us to be. It would be like somebody who has a similar build as mine if we said “let’s switch wardrobes,” and I filled his closet with my clothes and shoes and he filled mine with his - they might fit basically, but the shoes wouldn’t feel right because they’re not worn the same way. Maybe the waist would be correct, but my legs being so long his would be here -(You’re supposed to laugh because I’m insecure about having short legs, but you don’t know that) - You do now, that’s right! I prayed things like that wouldn’t happen. It’s like trying to switch wardrobes. We had a worship meeting in my office some months ago, the worship team leaders, and we got a word - I felt a very strong and clear word - that God has a unique identity for us in worship and our job is to walk it out and to discover it. Not to look here and there. Have you noticed about this body that the things that are going on in other churches and nationally almost never are transferable to this body. Gordon, would you say that? I mean I’ve been here 18 years and watched us try to, you know, get the glory from over here to here. It just doesn’t work here and I think it’s because God is excited about our unique identity. It’s not that we’ve arrived in any sense, but He’s excited about who we are as a church just like He’s excited about the uniqueness of each individual. So let’s avoid copycat worship and bring our identity proudly before His throne.
The last one I’m going to call the Corinthian syndrome. In I Corinthians 1:10 we read where Paul addresses divisions: “I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I’ve been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe’s people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying ‘I am of Heather and I am of Larry and I am of Jim or I am of Christ - of course, meaning Hallett’” . . . but you get the point! At TCF we have four worship teams and that’s a potential pothole for us where Heather might be your style and you feel released somehow to worship God more when she’s leading. Or Larry is your style, or I’m your style. So, what is the answer? I want to read again from that same worship article about a huge United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama called Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church:
“Early risers, mostly middle-aged and older gather at 8:30 a.m. for a traditional worship service in the 700-seat sanctuary. The organ and one of the church’s three smaller choirs are the musical heart of the service. Music Director, Mark Riddings, usually selects standard worship hymns from the new United Methodist hymnal - Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley or Fanny Crosby. An hour later the sanctuary empties and is immediately reoccupied with a younger, more casually dressed crowd. The organ sits silent in favor of a piano, and sometimes a guitar. These accompany a somewhat introspective version of praise and worship” (You see the Baby Boomers sneaking in there?), “where the people sing Southern Gospel standards - I’ll Fly Away, traditional hymns - Great is Thy Faithfulness, done in a contemporary style with projected lyrics. At 11 a.m. the sanctuary again empties and refills - this time with a mixed-aged group for another traditional service with organ, hymns and the large sanctuary choir. At the same time, in another part of the building, the 300-seat fellowship hall fills with young adults and young children. This is the Sunshine Service, also known as rock-and-roll church. A worship team of singers and instrumentalists, piano, amplified guitar, drums, tambourine, lead a lively, hand-clapping congregation in a potpourri of crowd pleasers. These range from Southern Gospel to old rock-and-roll songs like the Dooby Brothers Jesus is Just All Right with Me, to repackaged hymns Amazing Grace sung to the tune of the Eagles’ I Got a Peaceful Easy Feeling. (I’m really reading this!) “At noon, most everyone goes home and the building is relatively quiet until the 5 p.m. vespers in the chapel. There 50-60 retirement-age folks gather to sing favorite hymns and simple Gospel songs - In the Garden, from the old Methodist Cokesbury hymnal accompanied by the piano. They finish up at 6 p.m. leaving a one-hour buffer before youth worship begins. This is a monthly service where the teenagers are the musicians singing both contemporary praise choruses and songs, etc. The music is amplified, raucous and very loud. In the words of church member Lee Benson, ‘not for the faint of heart.’” And those of you who are here Sunday night know that is where BASIC is at. Now, listen to this. “With five musical styles for six services, Vestavia Hills embodies the new reality of congregational singing in America. All over the country churches are customizing worship music styles for particular demographic groups. Vestavia Hills is living evidence that American church goers no longer sort themselves out by denomination so much as by musical preference. Our new sectarianism is a sectarianism of worship style. The new sectarian creeds are dogmas of worship. Churches that are too small to sustain separate congregations with separate worship styles are either trying to mix musical styles, which they are calling blended worship” - and that would be what we’re doing here; we’re trying to mix hymns and contemporary songs and those that have had meaning to us over the last couple of decades - “or they are fighting and dividing over which music to use.”
I heard Brother Bill Sanders say one time that the worship team is the war department of the church. And that’s really true. Maybe there is a connection there to Satan and his ostensibly leading worship in heaven and having a desire to ascend and be like God and a whole other pothole that I’m not going to talk about is “soulish worship” where there are all these agendas in worship to do other things, etc. We’ve seen those.
I want to talk about TCF. Whether we have 250 or 5,000 members, it is my conviction that the Elders are always going to insist on blended worship because otherwise what we have is what the worship literature calls musical tribalism, where people are gathering like tribes around a particular music style and they’re saying - I am of Darrell Evans, I am of 100 Portraits, I am of Jars of Clay, I am of Dennis Jernigan, etc., etc., etc. And again, that’s not good enough because we are asking God to make us an international church and an international church has many worship styles, many flavors, many cultures represented. So I think blended worship fits our calling. I think it forces us to glorify God, to value glorifying God above our own personal tastes, and it probably reflects heaven better. You know, where all nations, tribes and peoples come together to praise the Lord. You, know, Hallett, sometimes when you sing that song where you make us sing in Spanish - I don’t like it. My flesh doesn’t like it. But in reflecting on this word - Yes, why not! Many of you probably don’t know this, but Jim Garrett - if he had his way - would worship to Jazz! He is a Jazz nut. He talks about Turk Murphy, Mingus Fingus and all these guys - and he would love to worship to Jazz. So, a lot of it is taste and let’s avoid the Corinthian syndrome pothole.
So, how do we make praise glorious here at TCF? First of all, let’s be obsessed with exalting God even more than encountering Him. Our motive needs to be exalting Jesus, giving Him glory. And then let’s trust Him to let the cloud descend when He knows when we need it. Amen? He knows us better than we know ourselves anyway. So, let’s let Him decide when the cloud descends instead of trying to strive and make it our goal that each service more and more of His presence will show up. That’s a dead end. I believe that when we are determined to glorify God, those things will happen. But if we’re deceived at all, and we’re worshipping self in some way, we won’t see those things happen. It’s critical that we have our priorities right.
Second, I think TCF is and will always insist on blended worship that forces us to grow and forces us to die. It forces us to grow in our appreciation of styles and to glorify God no matter what style is coming at us. It forces us to die to sentimental affections to that particular worship style that releases us the quickest.
Third, we need to avoid selfish worship and be eager to edify our brother and sister. Use our gifts for service, not attention, not for self.
Then, fourth, I think we need to embrace the challenge, if you will, that God has authentic worship for TCF. In being who we are, being authentic, not trying to be anybody else, but simply focused on being passionate about His glory, that everything else will fall into line. And we’ll be who we are supposed to be in worship.
Let me conclude with this story. Not too long ago at BASIC, we had a meeting where the presence of God fell in a powerful way - or released, if you prefer. But nobody was manipulating things, Jacob was leading worship and I hope my son won’t mind me divulging this, but he’s an athlete, he’s a big strong guy who loves Jesus, but expressing that love has not been easy for him. At this particular meeting I looked over and he was holding his hands like this - and I thought “cool, that’s neat.” I look over again and he’s like this and I thought “Wow, God is doing something.” Then I got up to teach and I looked over where he was and he was gone. I looked a little closer and saw he was on his face before God. Then he started to wail and for the next 45 minutes he wailed, he cried, he laughed, he tried to get up and he said later, “Dad, every bone and muscle in my body would hurt and I’d have to fall back down again.” This was a sovereign, sovereign move of God. Some of the other kids also began to experience that kind of sovereign act and it was totally real. It wasn’t put on in any way and none of us could take credit for it. It was absolutely God which is the way He likes it, don’t you think. Isaiah 42:8-9 says this: “I am the Lord, that is my Name, I will not give my glory to any other, nor my praise to graven images.” If we are looking through this filter of self and we’re not being delivered from it, it’s a graven image. We don’t realize it, but that’s what it is. “Behold the former things have come to pass; now I declare new things . . . . . .
(tape ended side 1; lost some)
. . . . . material that will fill these potholes and really fix them. And that is passion for His glory. Passion for His glory. I want to move into that kind of passion, that’s not looking at self, but is looking at His glory. I think that is who we are called to be. Make His praise glorious! Make His praise glorious!
Play the song again. Take time to examine our hearts and respond to this word. It may be that you sense a need for repentance in one of these areas, or it could be that you just want help in taking off those glasses and focusing in a new way to His glory. The altar is here. Don’t be bashful. Come and pray. Make your vows to God - Lord, I will be passionate your glory - I want to be focused on you as you spoke to us prophetically - Lord I want to get self out of the way and I want to trust you to do what I need. Would you come now. Would you come and let the Lord minister to you. Thank you, Jesus.
Lord, make us a people who glorify You. Lord, we know if we get this right we will truly have all these things added unto us, but we don’t even want that to be the motive. We just want to glorify You, Lord. Take these words and use them for Your glory. Lord, again I ask what is not of you would just drift away. These who have come, Father, we pray for a special touch to be released from self and totally free to live a live for your glory. We thank you and praise you, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
