Psalm 147 - The Benefit of Praise

I'm going to invite you this morning to Psalm 147, where we're going to be together today. Psalm 147. For those that like to think ahead, we're going to conclude our Psalm series next week. We're going to end it with our state of the church message, which we usually do towards the end of summer. And we're going to look at Psalm 133, and then the week after that, we'll pick up in the book of Exodus. We're going to go through the book of Exodus together as we're making our exodus out of our building to our future promised place. We're going to go through the book of Exodus, which is a great book to study. So we look forward to that.

But Psalm 147, if you take time to read through the Psalm, the theme of this psalm comes forth very clearly from the very beginning. If you just look at the beginning of the Psalm, the end of the Psalm, you find that the focus of this Psalm is very much centered on the idea of praise. And this is what we're going to talk about today is the thought of praise. But more than that, we're going to talk about the benefit of praise. I know it's a very pragmatic title in the way it practically works itself out in our lives, but I think it's critical for you to think through the benefit of praise in your life. And maybe you're familiar with the idea that the Bible certainly talks about praise. It's not a miss to you, but wrestling with the concept and the importance of praise maybe is something you've not given a lot of time to. And hopefully by the end of our time together, you start to see the significance of its practice in your life and why the Bible calls us to it.

When you just study the word praise throughout Scripture, you find some form of the word praise used throughout the Bible well over 200 times, and more than half of those times, well over 100 times, you find the call to praise the Lord expressed through the book of Psalms. So the meaning or the thought of praise is used throughout the totality of Scripture. The practice encouraged among God's people to do it. And it's amplified in the book of Psalms. And when we think about what the book of Psalms represents, the Bible certainly teaches us who God is as we read through it, who we are in light of that. But the book of Psalms is unique from the rest of Scripture in that it's really walking us through how do we worship the Lord in light of what we come to understand who he is and who we are in light of him. So what does it look like to respond to the Lord? And the Psalms walk us through that. And praise then becomes a central theme to the life of the believer in light of who God is.

And noting that, I want you to look at this particular Psalm. You'll see the theme of praise expressed throughout it right at the very beginning of the Psalm. Verse one talks about the idea of praising the Lord. It's from the get go. The Psalm is telling you, this is what this psalm is about. It's about understanding what it means to praise the Lord. Then again, in verse seven, it tells you to sing a song of thanksgiving, which is really an outworking of praise. This is what praise looks like in a tangible way, singing the song of thanksgiving. Then again, in verse 12, it goes back to echoing the idea of praising the Lord. And then when you get to verse 20, it ends that way again. So praise the Lord. So you're certainly seeing the theme of this psalm is built on the idea of praise.

And then when you look at verse one all the way down to verse six, it expresses to us why my heart should feel compelled to praise. The psalmist builds on this idea. He's not just saying, do this, but then he's sharing why the heart should be compelled to live this way. And then in verse seven, he calls us to sing that song of thanksgiving as a practice of praise. And then all the way down to verse 11, he's sharing with us the theme of that idea. And in verse 12, he expresses it again all the way down to verse 19. And as if we might forget the whole theme of the psalm, he then ends with, praise the Lord. So you're seeing the motivation of this psalm is to inspire the heart to praise. And in so doing, we're learning the benefit of what praise is about in the lives of God's people.

So here's what we're going to do as we look at this Psalm. We're going to talk about what praise is. We're going to define it. That's at the very top if you have notes this morning. If you don't have notes and you download the Bible app, you can click on notes and you'll get them digitally there. But we're going to define what praise is. We're going to talk about why we do it. We're going to talk about how we do it. And then finally, we're going to spend the majority of our time on how do we inspire our heart to do that? Or how is our heart inspired to praise? Because in those first three questions, the why and how, we're going to more examine it from a theological perspective. But then we got to get to the place of putting rubber to the road. What does it look like for me to live this out in my life, if it's so important for the life of the believer? Knowing the Bible talks about it so frequently, what is it that we need to know about this thought of praise?

So when we talk about praise and defining what it is, let me give you the definition. The most simple way of saying it is this: praise the Lord in Hebrew is the word hallelujah. That's the blank in your notes. And in fact, some English translations won't even put the word praise the Lord in writing. They'll just copy the word hallelujah and assume you know that that's what hallelujah means. But the idea of praise the Lord simply is the expressing of hallelujah. No doubt you've probably heard that term at some point in your life. It's two Hebrew words smashed together to create that idea, praise the Lord. The idea of praise and the Lord put together. Hallelujah. And it's the two Hebrew words of the Hallel and the Hebrew word of Yahweh, or at least a shortened abbreviation of the word Yahweh with Yah. So it's Hallel and Yah. The Hallel — for the Jewish people there are specific times when they use the word Hallel, where they're specifically talking about certain practices in their faith. So like on Passover, for example, if you read the New Testament, you find in the final moments of Jesus going into Jerusalem before he's crucified, the people of God are going into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and they're singing what they refer to as the Hallel, which starts in Psalm 113 to 118. When they would ascend up into Jerusalem — Jerusalem was on a hill — they would sing the Hallel. That's the Psalms from Psalm 113 to 118. And when Jesus appears in Jerusalem for the final time, they express praise over Jesus from that section of Scripture. And so the Hallel was not only a reminder of the ascending to Jerusalem to worship, but the word Hallel literally means praise, or to ascend or to shine brightly, to put the spotlight here, to acknowledge the worth of something. And then they're attaching it to Yah or Yahweh. So the idea of Hallelu is saying, not just you praise, but the idea of you is saying, all of us. So praise the Lord as this call for all of God's people to honor him. Hallelujah. Praise to God.

And so when we think about what praise is, it's also important to consider why do we do it? Like, why does the Bible command us to do this thing? And it's interesting when you start to dialog over that concept, you can quickly find out whose concept of praise is healthy and who isn't. And so when we talk about why we praise, let me give you a little bit of an explanation here. And you're going to see this unfold as we look within Psalm 147. But why do we praise? This first line is important. I want to stop here as we consider all of this. Praise does not change who God is. Meaning, this is where I say, if we talk about praise for a minute, sometimes we can immediately discover if someone has an unhealthy view of who God is. Because in some of our minds we might consider the importance of praise working this way. Well, I've got to praise, because if I don't praise, God's going to get angry at me. And if I don't praise, then God's going to be in heaven wondering where I am. Like God needs me to do this. Is this the reason? Of course God has commanded me, because, well, he needs me. And I want you to know if your concept of the reason that we praise is because you think, well, God's going to get mad at you, and you've done enough bad things, and you kind of got to balance the yin and the yang — you got to do enough good things, so you got to get here on a Sunday and you gotta praise with all your heart, you better do that, otherwise God's going to get mad at you because that's what the Bible tells you to do. And if you don't do what you're told, then you're simply going to live under the anger of God. Or, well, who's going to remind God how important he is? Like he's in heaven right now and he really needs you. He really needs you to show up and praise him. Because if you don't, he doesn't even know how he's going to move forward. He's like, he's just sitting there thinking, man, I made that person. And I've been working on their heart, trying to get them to go here, but they won't. And now they're not here and I don't know what I'm going to do. Like God's up in heaven having that kind of conversation right now.

And if your concept of God even remotely fits in one of those ideas, I don't want to shatter someone's wimpy ego. But if that's you this morning, it needs shattered for a minute, because that is absolutely unhealthy and wrong. The motivation of praise is not because, well, God needs me and I better get there to remind God of how important he is. That's a role reversal that's really putting you in the position of God. It's as if you're creating a God that's dependent upon who you are, and in his weakness and his own desperation he needs you to show up to remind him, because he is weak in his own being. The idea of praise is not built on God is weak and you're strong and thank God you're here. The idea of praise is built on the exact opposite. You're the dependent one, and God is the independent one in his own nature. So the motivation of praise isn't because of the desperation of God. The motivation of praise is certainly for the glory of God. But the benefactor of praise is you.

So if you're showing up to praise the Lord and you're feeling like, man, I feel guilty, I better do this, I want you to know there might be a warped concept of your understanding of who God is. Because the purpose of our praise, certainly for the glory of God, is designed for your benefit. And when we understand this, as we get ready to look at the scriptures, you'll say to yourself, oh, now I see it. I see the significance of the benefit of what praise is about. Because as we go on from here, we would define the rest of it this way. Rather, praise changes our awareness of who God is and reorients our hearts towards him. What it's really saying is that we have the tendency of taking our eyes off the significance of who God is and getting distracted through the temptations of this world. And it can come not only in luring us with bad things that we shouldn't be doing, but also overwhelming us in the problems that life might throw at us. And we start to look at our problems rather than our God. And so in so doing, praise becomes a practice for your benefit because it's reorienting your life to the significance of who God is and what it truly means to live life in light of him as you walk with him.

Praise is a gift that God has given us. In fact, in verse 11 of this Psalm, one of the things that the psalmist does is at the very end of that verse, he reminds you of the steadfast love of the Lord. And what he's saying is, don't forget the unchanging, faithful, covenantal love of God. God does not change. We do. And because God doesn't change, he is the consistent one. And when he promises to us, he will be faithful to deliver. And so as we face the inconsistency of the world and we wrestle with the inconsistency of our hearts, this idea of praise is helping us to reorient ourselves to the richness of who we are in light of who he is. Praise honestly is really not for the Lord. It's for you and the toxicity that can creep into our own soul when we're not mindful of the richness of what we have in Christ.

So we see what praise is. We see why we praise. And let me just say this. As I was reading through this Psalm this week, I often read through these passages many, many times as I reflect on them to teach them. But I kind of jotted down my own little journal entry of what I think the expression of praise is stating through this Psalm, and this is the way I answered it. Praise is important because, number one, God is worthy of it. And number two, Scripture also shows that praise does something profound in us. It takes my eyes off my problems and reminds me of his goodness and his care for us through his truth that endures. It builds my faith. It changes my perspective. It fights discouragement, strengthens my soul, and produces humble gratitude. Praise is important for the life of the believer, and we praise God because of who he is and what he has done. And in praising him, our hearts are reshaped by the truth about him.

Praise is important and so it becomes significant then for us to consider how do I do it? And I want you to know the practice of praise is directional. And when we think about how we express it, if I gave you really all the answers under that next question in your notes, it is to remind us that praise is directional. As you look at these answers, I want you to know that the first two answers really categorize themselves together, and the bottom two answers, they categorize themselves in a cluster. Meaning, we talk about how do we practice praise? Well, we look up and we look back. And when we start by looking up and looking back, both of those things can happen simultaneously. Meaning we look up at the goodness of who God is and his character. And we also look back at the way that character is made known through the way that God has expressed himself, the things that God has done. Or sometimes we might look back at what God has done, and it reminds us of who God is. The actions of the Lord are the outworking of his character, and his character is expressed in the outworking of what he does. Both of these things can happen simultaneously. I get to know who you are, and knowing who you are, I come to anticipate the way that you would work. And in seeing the way that you work, I start to understand the nature of who you are.

So how do I express it? Well, it starts here because when I see the consistency of who God is playing itself out through a historical perspective, I then begin to see in the faithfulness of God how I can express my faith to God. His faithfulness is what leads to my faith. And in so doing, I begin to see what God does inwardly. And as God transforms me inwardly, he expresses that outwardly. The change that happens in my heart is made known in my life. And so this becomes the expression of praise made known. And this really helps us correlate between: is God just simply a concept, or have I truly known him? Because we can express the words of praise in our life but never truly demonstrate it. And praise works in many facets. It's not just saying a word. It's not just singing a song. It's every ounce of my being expressing the richness of who he is upward, backward, inward and outward.

It's kind of like the GPS of our life. I don't know if I'm the only one that this happens to, but every once in a while I'll get driving down the road with my GPS on, and then I'll kind of forget that GPS is guiding me, and then I'll just turn. Sometimes I'll turn before I should turn. Sometimes I'll turn having missed the turn. But then the GPS has to recalibrate and it reorients me so that it can lead me. And that's what praise is about. It becomes this place of recalibrating, reconnecting, reorienting where you are in light of who God is.

You see, in this way of thinking about praise, you realize that it's not a command that God's saying to you simply because, well, you better or he's going to be angry, or you better because he's really needy and he needs to know how important he is. The glory of praise is given to God, certainly, but the benefit of praise is for you. This is a gift that God has given us in our own relationship with him to delight in him all of our days. And therefore learning how to praise becomes important.

So then we could ask the question, well, what stirs my heart to praise? So it's good to know this information, but rubber meets the road — what can help my heart to be faithful to this if it's so beneficial for my relationship with the Lord? What helps me walk this kind of path? And even asking that question, like, what stirs your heart to praise? Let me just ask you: when you think about this last week, was praise a part of your walk with God at all? Now, I'm not saying, did God hear from you? Because I don't have a doubt for most of us that claim to have faith in the Lord that at some point during the week, God likely hears from us. But the way that God hears from us — it might often not be because we're truly seeking God because he may not be our real God. But the motivation behind the reason why sometimes we might seek God — and by the way, I'm not hurling insults or trying to accuse any of you, I'm obviously talking about other people because you have a healthy walk with the Lord, right? But maybe our motivation in pursuing God really isn't about the Lord at all. Maybe if we're being honest and we reflect back on our week, the only time I can remember when I talked to the Lord was when I faced a problem. And the reason I talked to the Lord was because I wanted God to change my problem. And so I came to God asking him to change my problem.

And let me just say it like this. It's not wrong to do that, but I would just say it's worth stopping and reflecting on that for a moment. Because perhaps your real God isn't God. Your real God is comfort. And the reason you pursued God wasn't because you wanted the Lord. It was because you wanted to use the Lord to serve what you truly desire, which is simply comfort in life. And if you reflect back on your last week and the only time you sought after the Lord was so that the Lord would change something in your life, I want you to know there might be a praise problem. Because praise believes this: God, no matter what I go through, whether it be the mountain or the valley, you are so good that I am trusting that whether you change that season of my life or not, you're going to meet me there and sustain me with everything that I need. So that when I'm going through the trials of my life, I can always praise, because you're always good and you will always be faithful to be there with me.

See, there's a walk in the life of the Christian — and I would say amplified in societies that are more affluent — where there is this creep to worship comfort rather than the one true God. And it's not wrong to ask, God, help me in this. Lord, if it be, can you change it? But I want you to know when you read Scripture, God doesn't always remove the storm, but he is faithful to walk with the believer through it.

So how does God stir my heart in the praise that he is deserving of, for my benefit? Let me give you number one. Number one is this: recognize his faithfulness. Recognize his faithfulness. And I want you to know as we look at this particular song, we're going to have to look at it in chunks because the psalmist expresses from verse 1 to 6 — we'll look at it together — verse 7 to 11 together, and 12 to 20 together. But I want you to see how he shapes this idea of recognizing his faithfulness.

We already read verse one, but verse two: the Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars. He gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.

What stirs my heart? The psalmist is really expressing this — I'll say in two words. He's expressing it in the power of God and also in the person of God or the personality of God. Meaning he's showing God's authority, his sovereignty over all things. And he's saying things like, look, you go outside at night, you see the stars. God not only put those there, but he's mindful of the details of every one of them. So you have this God that is sovereign in his authority over all things, but also intimate in his care. And this becomes critical for you and for me — both of those concepts. How God is personal and powerful. Both of those concepts are critical because if you're seeing the power of God but you don't see how God is personal, you're going to think, that's great, he's got the authority, but that God doesn't care about me. But then if you see how God is personal without his power, you're going to say, I'm glad God cares about me, but he doesn't have the authority to do anything about it.

But in this Psalm, he's saying, here's the motivation of your praise: the authority and the grandeur of this God and all that he's created that displays his hand to you. And at the same time, how God is personal in the lives of his people. And the way that we know this is, if God even knows every star he's created and it's simply a star, you're the crown of his creation. Why would God give such concern for the stars but not that detail of concern for his people?

And so he's saying to Israel in this passage, in verse two, the Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. When you put this in its context, it becomes significant for us because Psalm 147 is from that time period where Israel is coming out of Babylonian captivity. They've been conquered and taken away as slaves. God's now liberated them, and he's bringing them back to the Promised Land. They were asking questions like, God, we must be forgotten by you because we disobeyed you. We've been chastised by you. We've been removed from you. And now we're outcasts here. We're on the fringe. Do you even care about us, God? Are you going to be faithful to what you promised when we weren't? And this psalm is the answer to that. He's bringing back the outcasts. He's faithful. He's consistent when we're unfaithful, when we're inconsistent. And he brings them back to their land to fulfill the promises that he gave them, which leads to the redemption of all humanity.

And then when you look in verse three, he says, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. This is important for all of us to think about, because when Israel is taken into captivity, not only were their homes destroyed, their temple destroyed, the city walls destroyed, but their hearts were shattered with it. They saw their people attacked. They saw their friends and family killed. They lived as slaves in a foreign land. And when they're coming back to Jerusalem, they're not only coming back looking to repair their walls, but at the same time, they need to discover their hearts repaired too. The psalmist is saying, not only is God sovereign in his power, but he's personal in his nature. And he's reminding Israel as they're coming back with this broken city, Jerusalem — he knows they're also coming back with broken hearts. And he's saying to them, not only trust me with your walls, but trust me with your soul. I bind those broken hearts in me.

Because it's the same for you. And the significance of praise is reminding us of this God, that no matter what season I'm going through, I can always praise him. Because he may not change the season that I'm enduring, but he promises to sustain me by his presence as we walk through it. And therefore, as God cares for the stars, he has the same personal care for me, and even more so, because we are the crown of his creation as humanity made in his image. The question is, do you trust him that way? And I can tell you the evidence of whether or not you have is seen by the praise of your life.

What stirs my heart to praise? It's recognizing the faithfulness of who God is. You know, one individual in recent history that I think has lived this out more than any other that I know is a man by the name of Louis Zamperini. He actually passed away just a little bit over a decade ago. It was in 2014, an incredible story of God's grace in his life. They actually made a movie about it the year he passed away. The movie came out a couple months after he passed away. It was made by Angelina Jolie — like that matters. But she produced it. It was called Unbroken, and she told just a portion of his story but failed to share really the totality of his story. And I think it's extremely compelling.

Louis Zamperini was an athlete. In fact, he was an Olympic athlete who went to fight in World War Two as a pilot. His plane crashed in the Pacific and he was lost at sea for 47 days. Miraculously, he survives, but he's captured by the enemy, and he's put into a Japanese prison camp. And in that prison camp, he's tortured for over two years until finally he's liberated. And when he comes home from the war, the problem with Louis Zamperini was that the war came home with him. And through all that he endured, those monsters followed him, and his life turned to alcohol to cope. And he became a raging alcoholic, and it negatively impacted all of his relationships in life. And he was absolutely desperate, until one day he learned Billy Graham was coming to his town, and out of desperation, he thought, I'll go listen to what Billy Graham has to say. And when he went and listened to the message that Billy Graham shared, in those moments Louis Zamperini gave his life to the Lord, and those demons that he wrestled with were conquered in Christ.

So much so that Louis Zamperini went back to Japan, and he visited those same soldiers who tortured him in prison. And he told those soldiers he forgave them. This moment was even further highlighted when, some 50 plus years after he was held in prison, he went to the Winter Olympics that were held in Japan in Nagano in 1998. And one of the most incredible things about Louis Zamperini is they allowed him to run with the torch for a kilometer through Japan, and not just any place in Japan — the very town where he was held as a prisoner. And once again, he declared his forgiveness for those who had tortured him because of what Jesus had done in him. He found the faithfulness of the Lord. And in so doing, rather than be riddled with hatred, his life was one of praise. Understanding the significance of who God is transforms our life. God is infinitely great, yet intimately near. His greatness is what makes his care so comforting, to know that the grandeur of this God would care for me specifically.

So that when we see the faithfulness of God made known, number two, we can do this: trust him fully. As I see his faithfulness, it encourages me to place my faith in him, and therefore I can trust him fully.

And you see in verse seven it goes on. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. Make melody to our God on the lyre. He covers the heavens with clouds. He prepares rain for the earth. He makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens their cry.

So here he is again, this God caring for everything in all his authority and power, intimately made known. You see the magnitude of who this God is and how personal he becomes as his power is expressed intimately in our lives. But then he says this in verse ten. This becomes important because we might think to ourselves at this moment, this is great, this God making himself known both powerfully and personally. I better make this God happy. I better show God why I'm worthy of his love. I better perform enough that God owes me something. That tends to be the way that we react in a religious sense to the Lord.

But then he says this in verse ten: His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, and those who hope in his steadfast love.

Here's what he's saying. The purpose of praise is not for you to come to God to impress him with who you are, but for your life to understand how great he is and for you to surrender to it. You know, when you think about spiritual health, we don't measure our spiritual health as Christians based on our capability, but our dependency. Because if we're not careful, we might have the tendency of saying, I come to know the Lord, I grow up in him, and I start to learn what the Bible says — and look how great I am. And we just kind of climb this pedestal of intellectual understanding of God. And we think, I have arrived. I'm better than the peons beneath me because I can quote more scripture now. And I want you to know that those who truly understand what praise is about, it's not expressed in how independent you become through this God, but rather how dependent you realize you are based on who he is. The only reason we're able to do anything for his glory in this world is not because of us, but because of him.

And so therefore, learning to trust in the Lord — there is no path forward with God without humility in our lives. And can I just tell you our greatest battle in living this out? The battle with this passage isn't that we disagree with what the Bible says or who God is. We can intellectually agree with that. However, at the end of the day, we can still struggle with trusting him because we're more interested in trusting ourselves than entrusting the Lord. Meaning we can come to the Lord and have this intellectual understanding and say, you know what, I agree that the Bible says this about Jesus. But at the end of the day, still not truly surrender our hearts. And James 2:19 tells us, even the demons believe. And it's not a big deal to know about God. When you read the Gospels, you find out the only people that ever understood who Jesus truly was, it wasn't the religious leaders. It really wasn't any human being. It was the demons. The demons got Jesus right every time. But they didn't ever surrender to him. Because it can be the same with us. Praise can just be this practice of the flesh but never the true surrender of the heart.

That's the scandalous thought of grace. And we may know about what grace is — God's riches at Christ's expense. I don't earn it. I didn't deserve it. God gave it anyway. I might be able to say that, but not truly surrender to what God's done for me. Grace offends our sense of pride. I like to be independent. I don't want to admit that I am dependent. And this is what the psalmist is saying. If you're going to connect to God in this way, you got to understand who he is and how really dependent you are in your life. That's why praise is necessary. Praise is that reminder of the fact that we need him. We can't live independent. We're designed to be dependent. And therefore grace becomes scandalous because it's losing all that we are in who he is. But then when we look at who he is, we realize the gift of God and the power and his personal nature being made known. So trusting in him — praise is not for him. It's truly for me. It's to the benefit of his people, but for his glory.

So to learn to trust in him. And let me give you this last point, because I got to end. But the last thing we need to do then is receive his work. Receive his work. You see in verse 12 it says, praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, for he strengthens the bars of your gates. He blesses your children within you. He makes peace in your borders. He sends out his command to the earth. His word runs swiftly. He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs. Who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word and melts them. He makes his wind blow and the waters flow. And it makes you think that this psalm was likely written in the winter time.

But then in verse 19, he declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation. They do not know his rules. Praise the Lord.

Well, you know, there's a really important concept being taught here. And it comes to the idea of through the Hebrew word for wind, spirit and word. The Hebrews developed this concept of ruach in Scripture, in the Old Testament, and the New Testament is the word pneuma, from where you ultimately get the word Holy Spirit. Pneumatology — study of the Holy Spirit. And so when we think about what the Holy Spirit does in our life, or we think about the ruach, the wind, there's this connection between God's Spirit and the Holy Spirit, or the idea of God's word and the wind being made known.

If you go back to the book of Genesis, as God creates, it says, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and God spoke. Ruach — the Spirit of God hovering. Ruach — God's presence made known. And there's power in his presence as it's made known. And there's transformation and there's life. And ultimately, when he created you and me, in Genesis 2:7 it says, he made you different than anything else. He spoke everything into existence. But for you and me, he formed us from the dirt. And then he breathes into us. The breath of life. And man became a living being.

And then when you get to passages like John chapter three, verses five and six, as Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, he says, you know, the wind blows where it desires, and where it comes and goes we have no idea, but you can see its effect. You can see its presence. So it's given the idea of authority, the idea of power. You think in terms of you as a human being, you have a little bit of power maybe in your home. You have this thing called a thermostat. And most of the time you can control the temperature of what is blowing within your home for about 5 to 15 years until it breaks. And then when it breaks, you tell everyone for the next three days until you get someone to come there and fix it. But then when you step outside, you're back in the elements of the Lord. And everything surrenders to his power and the wind recognizes his authority. It blows, who knows where it's coming from and where it's going, but we see its effect and things in creation surrender to it based on the power of the wind made known.

Even for you, you're dependent on this wind. For a moment you might capture it within you, breathe it in, but you can only hold on to it for just a moment. And you've got to let it out. And you have to entrust that you'll find another breath to fill you. And the Hebrews had this way of saying, that is the Word of God being made known. But more than that, the Word of God has been specifically shared with you that you could know the power of this God through his Word. That's what the concept is. He's saying this all the way down to verse 19 and 20, to the point that even the Hebrews expressed it this way. And in 2 Timothy chapter three, Paul wrote, all Scripture is breathed out by God. Literally the inspiration, the ruach, the pneuma of God, the breath of God, made known his power to you in a personal way. How do you know his work? One of the best places to turn is to his word. If you really want to praise the Lord, it's to get into his word to understand the work of God.

I need to end with this. If I just thought about the concept of praising the Lord and what it means for us — praise, no doubt, hopefully you've got this idea in our minds now, that praise is critical for our well-being. And I think one of the ways it's most expressed in Scripture is through the concept of sheep. And if you read throughout the Bible, you find out that the idea of being a shepherd is not something that's praised in really most cultures in the Old and New Testament. In fact, it's considered one of the lowliest positions someone can have. Now, I'm not saying that's our position. We love shepherds, okay? That's the way the Bible expresses shepherds. And if the Bible sees shepherds that way, or at least cultures express themselves towards shepherds that way, you gotta think how much worse then is the sheep. And sheep are some of the dumbest animals in all of creation. And the Bible calls you a sheep. I don't know that that's nice to insult you, but that's what the Bible says. We are sheep.

And probably one of the sheep that I find most amazing out of all the sheep I know, which is really just this one, is the sheep Shrek that's there on your left screen, that some of you may have seen this picture before. Shrek was a sheep that was lost in New Zealand in 1998. He wandered from his shepherd, and six years later he was found. I don't think he could have gone six years one day longer, because you look at that sheep and you think, how does a sheep eat grass like that? I don't even think you can see the grass, let alone been able to eat it. But Shrek was found, and because it was such an anomaly that a helpless sheep — I mean, once a sheep is lost, it's to the elements. Something's going to eat it. It's done. You count your losses and move on. But for this particular sheep, somehow miraculously survived. It made international news. Shrek survived. Now that's an anomaly. And it reminds us, don't wander from your shepherd.

But one of the things that's maybe endearing about sheep is, one, they seem like harmless animals, but also how much they appreciate community. And in that way, you're not much different than a sheep. God made you to belong. God made you for an important reason. And we want to know we have purpose, and we find that sense of purpose in community. But that community is only as healthy as its shepherd. And if you can find a good shepherd, the trajectory of your life will go well. When you understand the picture that the Bible paints of Jesus, that's who he is. He is our good Shepherd. And praise is that way we turn our hearts to him so that we can experience his richness all of our days.