Psalms Lesson 43

Summary

 

Tonight we’re going to summarize and end the Psalm series and I would like to do it by reviewing certain principles that we’ve had and I think this will pull together what we’ve tried to say.  Be prepared for turning through many, many pages of the Psalms because we’re going to go through many verses that illustrate these principles.  I’m taking this time by doing this because it’s my conviction that these principles can revolutionize our worship and they are principles that you, unfortunately do not find in Christian literature; they are principles that are just absent from a lot of literature.  So let’s go through the two large areas. 

 

We divided it up into what we have learned so far in the area of petition and in the area of praise.  We defined these two together; together they are worship and they form polls of emphasis in worship.  And it is these areas that show what we’re doing.  In other words, if there’s no activity in the area of petition in our personal Christian lives, though we may say we study the Word and so on, I can forecast that there’s very little spiritual growth that has occurred, for the reason that in Eph. 5:18 where it says “be filled with the Spirit” one of the manifestations of being filled with the Spirit is this petition and praise, it’s mentioned in verse 19.  So if this petition and praise is not occurring in our lives we’d better examine ourselves and find out where we think we are because the probability is we’re not.  So pay attention to these two areas.  I’ll define each principle as a sentence and we’ll go through, discuss it and then show verses on it. 

 

First, our petition: the simplest definition that is loyal to the content of God’s Word, and I think the simplest definition that we can design that will reflect what the Bible is trying to tell us as against what our culture tries to tell us is that petition is a request to God for Him to change things.  Petition is a request to God for Him to change things.  This means that the petition implies all sorts of things but please notice the petition is something concrete and it is something which if not done apparently will not be changed, as you look at the definition; it is a petition for God to change things, the implication is if you don’t make the petition nothing is going to be changed.  You have not because you ask not.  And the other implication of this definition, if you look carefully at it, is that you should be able to tell if the petition is answered because something ought to change.  Now I word the petition this way to deliberately steer away from human viewpoint; the average religious person today that’s all screwed up, the average young person that’s fooling around, when they think of petition they normally think of some psychological exercise, like yoga or something, where you just sit and contemplate infinity or you make a petition but it’s blah, blah, blah kind of thing, just holy words coming out of an unholy mouth or something, and this is considered petition.  That’s not the Biblical view of petition.  Petition is serious conversation with God to change something; something ought to be changed and there ought to be some action in history as a result of this particular petition.  Otherwise we can forget, if Christianity is true as the Bible claims it is true, then obviously there ought to be real changes occur.  This is the claim that can be made.

 

Now let’s look at the definition of praise as an opposite of this.  A petition is a request to God to change things.  And by the way, also think about a petition as something else, God may not change the circumstances externally but God can change your attitude toward the circumstances so don’t just eliminate… well, God didn’t change anything.  If He changed the way you think that’s harder to do than change external circumstances, because the way some of you think it’s impossible to change it, barring God with whom all things are possible.   But it is extremely difficult to change ingrained patterns and attitudes so it’s a lot harder for God to change the way you think about something than it is for Him to change the external circumstances.  So don’t say that you’ve got a last class low priority request to your petition because God didn’t change external circumstances; actually you got the best kind, He changed you.

 

Now praise, the best definition and the shortest one I can think of for praise is a thankful public response to God’s historic revelation.  Praise is a thankful public response to God’s historic revelation.  We’ll amplify that in a little bit with these petitions but those are the two definitions. 

 

Now let’s go back to the general category of principles, there will be six under petitions.  All six of these principles summarize what we have learned on prayer.  The first principle deals with the assumption, and the assumption of all prayer in the Bible is that God is affected by our actions, that God is affected by our actions and can personally respond to our actions and petitions.   Six principles under petitions: God is affected by our actions and He can personally respond to our actions and to our petitions.  This don’t consider to be some flippant observation; this is a very, very difficult and loaded statement.  If you do any kind of serious reflection at all the complexity of this statement should hit you.  It’s a very difficult statement and it’s saying a lot. 

 

To go back and review a little bit on this principle, when we consider God’s essence, He is sovereign, He is righteous, He is just, His loving, He is omniscient, we list an attribute called Immutability, that God never changes, He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.  With God there is no shadow of turning.  Now the way we do this, I’m afraid, when we’re sloppy and not thinking carefully, is that we say God never changes and we stop; God never changes! And if you stop and think about it that leaves God as a piece of concrete; that leaves God as an immutable entity that just kind of sits there.  That’s not what we mean by immutability; immutability means His character doesn’t change but it doesn’t freeze Him, He is free and loose to respond personally in history or with the flow of history. 

 

Now there’s a wide difference, one is a heretical view of God Himself and it’s not a minor heretical view; it is such a heresy that it will destroy prayer; all prayer will be shot if you have the wrong concept of God’s immutability. And if you, conversely, do not have a rich prayer life it’s probably because you have a very sloppy view of God’s immutability.  You think because God is omniscient He already knows what I want before I ask Him, therefore I don’t have to ask Him.  Or you think because God is sovereign and has decreed all areas of history ahead of time, therefore what’s the use of bothering to petition Him.  Or you think other things about His character; you allow God’s attributes to kill your personal relationship with Him.  You define the attributes in correctly and unscripturally.  Being careful to label and define God’s character from Scripture we find He is perfectly stable in the sense that when He promises something it’s going to come to pass, that He always has the same stands of holiness, that His love is dependable.  That has to do with immutability, but it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t get mad, that He doesn’t rejoice, that He doesn’t respond to you as an individual in history.  Now beware of this, it’s a fundamental mistake that many make and I fear that particularly in strongly Calvinist circles within fundamentalism this mistake is made very often. Calvin didn’t make it but some of his followers have.

 

Now people say what are some examples of this.  There are three basic examples in Scripture outside the Psalms that I would hold up as shining lights to the fact that prayer affects God and that effort is often involved in personal petition.  Moses in Exodus 33; Daniel in Daniel 10; Jesus in Matthew 26; all three are prayer giants and in all three cases these men had their grapple to change the mind of God over certain issues.

 

Now let’s look at the Psalms and where this comes shining through in the Psalms.  Let’s turn first to Psalm 6:1, one of the first Psalms we studied.   Here is one of the many times in the Bible that God’s response to us is made clear vividly.  “O LORD, rebuke me not in Thine anger, neither chasten m in Thy hot displeasure.”  The ides is that there was once a time when God was not angry, there’s going to be a time in the future when He’s not angry, so hasn’t He changed.  Sure He has, He’s changed here, He’s changed from not being angry to being angry and the psalmist expects Him to change back, from being angry to not being angry.  So isn’t there a change occur in God?  There sure is.  And why is there a change in God?  Why does God change from not being angry to being angry?  Because of something the psalmist has done.  Why is God going to change from being angry to not being angry?  Because of something the psalmist asks.  Now doesn’t that teach that prayer is such a powerful instrument that you can reach to the Creator of the universe and change Him.  It’s a simple statement that it’s so simple it deceives you.

 

Let’s look at another verse, Psalm 30:8, “I cried to Thee, O LORD, and unto the LORD I made supplication. [9] What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise Thee? Shall it declare Thy truth?”  There again the psalmist expects a change inside God.  Psalm 32:3, “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.”  This was physical discipline David was under.  [4] For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. [5] I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hidden.  I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD, and Thou forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  Now isn’t there a change, isn’t it one time His hand is heavy upon David in the form of physical discipline and doesn’t something change in God as a result of the petition that is measurable empirically.  He gets better physically, so have changes occurred in God and you can see it reflected in what happens in the person’s life.  Something has changed within God. 

 

Psalm 34:4, “I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”  Verse 6, “This poor man cried,” David again, “and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”  So obviously something happened with God.

 

Psalm 51:7, another one of the penitential Psalms, confession Psalms, notice again David praying, He prays all sorts of things in verses 7-12, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. [8] Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones which You have broken may rejoice,” again referring to the end, termination of physical discipline in his life. [9] “Hide Your face from my iniquities; and blot out all mine transgression. [10] Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. [11] Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. [12] Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,” aren’t those things that God is going to do that He wouldn’t have done if David hadn’t confessed.  So these things do hang and hinge directly upon the believer petitioning the Father!  You have not simply because you ask not.   

And finally Psalm 116:1, “I love the LORD because He heard my voice and my supplications, because He inclined His ear unto me.”  So then the first principle under petitions is that God responds.  You’ve got that kind of a God at the other end of the line.  That should do something if you devote any more than three minutes attention to a study and meditation on this principle; it should be explosive an principle. 

 

Second principle under petition: The basic motive of all petition is for vindication of God’s character.   The basic motive for all petition is a vindication of God’s own character.  It goes back to the plan revealed in Revelation 4-5, that God’s master plan of history is to glorify Himself, to show Himself empirically to be worthy of creature praise, to show evidences inside history so that in eternity no one can say well God, You don’t really deserve all this praise You’re getting.  No creature will ever be able to say this because the evidences that God has shown man for thousands of years in history in response to prayer will be trotted out daily, so to speak, over and over throughout eternity to show, I am worthy, I am worthy because of this, I am worthy because of that, I am worthy because of this.

 

Now let’s see how this theme plays out in the Psalms.  Turn back to Psalm 6:4-5, notice the basic motive of petition in the Psalms is not praying for God for band aids, it’s praying basically that He may vindicate His character.  This is why these petitions are so vigorous.  You don’t make, and can’t make in good conscience, vigorous petitions to God the Father over band aid solutions.  Try it some time, you find you just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s no conviction in your prayer, you don’t believe it even while you’re praying it and you know you don’t believe it.  The prayers that call forth a surge of power from your own human spirit are prayers that are made for the motive and the purpose of vindicating God’s character.  When you get tuned in to that frequency then there’s power in the prayer because there’s safe in the prayer because there’s a clear conscience in the prayer. 

 

Now let’s look at how this works, Psalm 6:4-5, “Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh, save me for Thy mercies’ sake.”  Not mine, but “for Thy mercies’ sake.”  And that’s His attribute of immutability and love; mercy is loving-kindness.  [5] “For in death there is no remembrance of You, in the grave who shall give Thee thanks.”  He’s saying God, You can’t allow this to happen to me because if you allow this to happen to me it’s going to block Your master plan, it’s going to affect it, it’s going to hinder it.  You can’t allow that because I know what Your master plan is. 

 

Psalm 13:3-4, notice again how the petition is designed.  “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. [4] Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.”  And the idea here, although not explicitly stated is if the enemies rejoice then the testimony of Jehovah is lost.  The enemies are rejoicing, just not because of his personal situation, they are rejoicing as they triumph over one who has trusted in the God of Israel, ha-ha, the God of Israel doesn’t come through, He doesn’t stay by His adherence, He doesn’t help His worshipers.  So he’s saying the enemy’s ultimately God are going to have their laugh at You if you leave me dangling. 

 

Psalm 22:1, this is the Psalm the Lord Jesus Christ prayed on the cross while He was dying for your sins and notice that the Lord Jesus uses the same kind of prayer and the same principle, He prays in order that God’s character be made clear.  Remember He starts off, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and He cries out why have You forsaken Me, because in verses 3-5 he says, “You are holy, you who inhabits the praises of Israel. [4] Our fathers trusted in You; they trusted, and You did deliver them. [5] They cried unto You, and were delivered; they trusted in You, and were not confounded.”  In other words, you answered the prayers of the saints in the Old Testament, how come you’re not answering Mine.  [6] “But I’m a worm, a no man….” Verse 7, “All they who see Me laugh Me to scorn….”  And they say in verse 8, “He trusted on the LORD that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him.”  In other words, God if you don’t get me off this cross, there’s going to be a negative testimony to Your character, to Your being.  So we find the Lord Jesus Christ employing this prayer principle right while He was dying, that God would finish the work, and the implication being that He had to pray this prayer, He had to cause changes.

 

Psalm 30:9, notice David again, he says Lord, You’ve got to answer me because if You don’t Your plan goes down the drain.  Why?  Verse 9, “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise You?  Shall it declare Thy truth?”  In other words, if you kill me, you get me off the scene, then I cannot make petitions to You historically.  So the point remains that David is petitioning the Father to cause this to come to pass. 

 

Psalm 44:26, another petition and notice the reason, “Arise for our help, and redeem us for Thy mercies’ sake,” in other words, for the sake of Your character, because if the petition is not answered then it’s a blot on Your character.  Psalm 51:14, “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. [15] O Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.”  And then he goes on and discusses certain principles.  The point is that if God would deliver him, in verse 14, then verse 15 there could be historically praise occur because of this act of deliverance; it would be an opportunity for God to get credit, so to speak, in history. 

 

Psalm 56:12, “Thy vows are upon me, O God; I will render praises unto You. [13] For You have delivered my soul from death.  Will You not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?”  Again the emphasis on the fact that God must permit him to live in order to praise God, fulfill the master plan.

 

Psalm 59:13, “Consume them I wrath, consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God rules in Jacob unto the ends of the earth.”  The emphasis again is on a petition for the vindication of God’s character; God, show them you’re there, show them You’re real.  That’s the emphasis of this prayer. 

 

Psalm 63:2, what is he praying, “To see Thy power and Thy glory, as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary, [3] Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.”  The anxiety to have God’s character made clear.

 

Psalm 74:22, “Arise, O God, plead Your own cause; remember how the foolish man reproaches Thee daily.”  Notice this, “Arise, O God, plead Your own cause,” not mine, Yours, “remember how the foolish man reproaches You daily, [23] Forget not the voice of Thy enemies, the tumult of those who rise up against You continually.”  This is the thread of why these men were so confident in their prayer and why 20th century believers have such a struggle trying to have the same kind of prayer life. 

 

Psalm 91:14, God Himself answers at the end of the Psalm, God Himself tells us why He’s going to answer the petition, “Because he” that is the one who made the petition, “hath set his love upon me” God, “therefore will I” God “deliver him,” the psalmist. “I” God “will set him on high, because he has known My name. [15] He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him.  I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him. [16] With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”  Why?  Because he has set his trust on Me and if he’s set his trust on Me and I don’t come through, what’s that going to do for My name.

 

Psalm 121:3, “May he not suffer thy foot to be moved; may your keeper not sleep,” the idea being that if he’s a sleeping keeper he’s not a real keeper, the character of the keeper is going to be shown on whether he’s asleep or whether he’s awake, or whether he’s alert. 

 

So the second principle that we found is not just that God responds but the second one is the fact that the petition is that God vindicate His name or His reputation.  God has a reputation to keep and if you can struggle in your soul to get into the place where your petition becomes aligned with God’s reputation you have a most powerful focal for moving things.

 

Third principle under petition: the enemies of God must be judged and the elect and the elect must be saved.  The enemies of God must be destroyed and the elect must be saved.  This is actually simply a restatement of the second principle.  Obviously if God has elected a certain plan the plan has got to come to pass or it’s a blot on His name, it’s a blot on His reputation.  So enemies to that plan have to be destroyed.  So turn back to Psalm 6 and we’ll start again.  The only way to burn these principles in is to go from verse to verse to verse to verse; to see it’s not isolated Scripture, it is repeated over and over and over again. 

 

Psalm 6:8, this is the source, this third principle, of the so-called imprecatory requests.  This is where the liberals always try to jump you and say the God of the Bible is immoral, a nitwit claim.  Supposedly He’s immoral because He doesn’t exercise justice and the reason is because the modern liberal hates justice, except when applied to the other person.  And justice, because it’s downgraded today really sets off this modern… ancient men never had trouble with this kind of praying, it’s only the 20th century nitwit that has trouble with this kind of a prayer and the reason is that in the 20th century we’ve lost the sense of justice, that’s all.  If anybody comes up to you and complains about the God of the Bible being unholy or immoral because of these prayers you can immediately brand that person without even knowing them, just as soon as they drop that sentence in the conversation you know all sorts of things about them, you know that that person has absolutely no sense whatever of morality he has absolutely no sense of justice, none whatever.  It’s ironic, isn’t it, because usually he comes to you in the name of justice and says that God violates my standard of justice, when basically anybody that objects to this has no standard of justice whatever, he’s a person that’s … [tape turns, obviously some left out; Psalm 6:8 says, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.”]  

 

… But the imprecatory requests are directed to the principalities and powers of darkness, Ephesians 6; it is correct and quite correct for you to pray damnation down upon the powers of darkness, that when, for example you deal with people whose ideas undermine Scripture, it is quite correct for you to pray damnation upon any evil spirits that would be activating and influencing these people.  It is quite correct to pray confusion, ideologically down upon them.  This is a legitimate request to make. 

 

Psalm 28:4, again we as 20th century people have gotten so far away from Scripture that we don’t even recognize that the cause/effect forces in history are primarily spiritual and therefore we don’t recognize that damnation type prayers, these imprecatory prayers, do cause changes around us. “Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors; give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.”  Can you imagine getting up in ethics class and praying that sort of thing? 

 

Psalm 44:9, this is a complaint, remember that big long one, the sons of Korah and they complain about [10] you’ve made us turn back from the enemy, [9] you’ve cast us off, [7] you’ve put us to shame, [11] you’ve given us like sheep appointed for meat, [13] You made us a reproach to our neighbors, and so on, verse 16, “For the voice of him who reproaches and blasphemes, by reason of the enemy and avenger. [17] All this is come upon us,” and so he prays, the implication of all this complaint is that they must be destroyed; they must be destroyed!  In fact, in verse 22, you should recognize verse 22 if you’ve read your New Testament recently.  Where does verse 22 occur?  It occurs in Romans 8; now an important context of Romans 8, what kind of forces are mentioned.  Remember how Romans 8 ends, what the last few verses of Romans 8 is talking about?  “For nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ,” including and it goes on and it talks about angels and darkness, adversity, etc.  It’s talking about spiritual forces.  Now isn’t it interesting that the Christian is a victim of these just like the psalmist in Psalm 44 was a victim in a human physical political sense. 

 

Psalm 52:1, remember David praying against Doeg?  What does he pray against Doeg?  “Why boast yourself in mischief, O might man?  The goodness of God endures continually.”  This was David talking about praying, verse 5, “God shall likewise destroy you forever,” there’s praying damnation down upon the enemies, an imprecatory type request.  You have these imprecatory requests but if you understand why they are there you shouldn’t have any trouble with their (quote) “immorality” (end quote).

 

Fourth principle under petition:  Petition must cover even sovereignly promised items.  Even though God sovereignly promises to do something for you He expects you to ask Him at times; that doesn’t mean that He hasn’t got means for taking up the slack when we’re too stupid to wake up, which probably occurs more often that we’d like to know.  Nevertheless, the sovereignly promised items we find people praying about.  One example that’s clear that’s not in the book of Psalms is Daniel 10.  Remember what the petition was?  God sovereignly said Israel captivity’s will be up in 70 years.  What did Daniel do, sit around and say well, seventy years are up, I’m waiting God.  No he didn’t, he asked God to end the captivity.  Why did Daniel ask God to end the captivity if Jeremiah had previously said it was sovereignly guaranteed it would end, because the sovereign guarantee includes the means and the means was that somebody would be there the 70th year to make this particular prayer, and Daniel saw that he was the man elected.  So he made the prayer that ended the 70 year captivity.  So sovereignly promised items are included.  Let’s see some examples of this. 

Psalm 28:9, “Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance;” now that didn’t have to be asked for did it?  Didn’t God promise to do that under the Abraham, under the Davidic Covenant, under the New Covenant.  God promised to do all these things.  Why then do you have the psalmist asking God to do something that God already promised to do?  Because promises describe a personal relationship between God and ourselves, and He expects us to act personally.  He wants to act toward us personally; if He didn’t He could treat us like rocks, you know, He’d say to the rocks, Don’t sweat it rocks, by the time we get to the eternal state you’re going to be changed so all you have to do is just sit there and I’ll take care of it.  Now that’s the way He’d handle us if we were rocks.  But we’re not rocks, we’re people and He expects a little two-way business going on. 

 

Psalm 34:4, “I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Again if you know David, David really theoretically you could argue shouldn’t have had to pray this prayer; remember where he prayed it?  What was the background of Psalm 34?  Look at the heading, where had he chosen to take a vacation with a very unusual piece of baggage?  Goliath’s home town, with Goliath’s own sword.  He was going to hide and be inconspicuous.  So this is David’s situation and he was promised that he would get to the throne.  Didn’t God sovereignly guarantee that David would be to the throne?  Yes, but God’s sovereign guarantee didn’t nullify David’s responsibility to pray his way to the throne.  Application: God sovereignly promises you that He will conform you to Jesus Christ but that doesn’t remove your responsibility to pray your way there. 

 

Psalm 44, that amazing Psalm that goes through Israel’s history, verse 9, “But You have cast us off, and put us to shame, and go not forth with our armies.”  Verse 24, “Why  do You hide Your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?”  Verse 23, “Why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever.”  He shouldn’t have had to pray that, you could say.  Didn’t the Abrahamic Covenant guarantee that Israel would be saved forever?  Yes it did.  But God’s sovereign guarantee included somebody making a prayer like this. 

 

You see it again in Psalm 74, another one of those long Psalms that deals with Israel’s history. Remember how it ends, verse 20, God sovereignly promised and then they say, “But have respect unto the covenant, for the dark places of the earth are full of the inhabitants of cruelty.”  Didn’t make God make a covenant with Israel and say it would automatically, sovereignly come to pass.  What do you have the psalmist making this kind of a petition for if sovereignty doesn’t negate volition? 

 

Psalm 89:49, what does it say here, Lord, “Where are Your former loving-kindnesses, which You swore unto David in Your truth,” isn’t that the Davidic Covenant, wasn’t that a sovereign unconditional covenant?  Why did this prayer have to be made?  Because sovereignty does not remove our personal responsibility to fill our part of the bargain, that’s why.  That’s enough of those kind of things; the fourth principle includes God’s sovereign promise, we must pray for those.

 

Fifth principle of petition is the boldness of the petition.  Here it’s only necessary that we turn to Psalm 74 , those two bold petitions that we discovered, Psalm 74:3, 11, the psalmist experienced national disaster and what does he say to God in verse 3, “Lift up Your feet,” move it!  And that’s a very pious, a very bold petition being made to God.  Verse 11, “Why withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Get it out of Your bosom,” and the idea is get it out of your pocket, the word “bosom” is the fold in the front of the Arab garment where they put their hands.  The idea is that this would correspond to us to a pocket. And so he says God, get Your hand out of Your pocket.  Imagine how that would settle in a prayer meeting some place, but that is the nature of the boldness of these.  Please remember they’re not being flippant when they’re being bold; they can be as bold as they are because they have first identified themselves so closely with God’s plan.  That’s why they can be so, what appears to be to us, impious.  But let’s turn it around; maybe it’s because we’re not close enough to God that this kind of a prayer strikes us as being impious, because we’re so far away from Him when we make our petition that we’d be shocked if we made these.  Maybe that’s a reflection on us.

 

Sixth principle of petition is the extreme confidence, a historically based confidence.  It wasn’t confidence, most people don’t have a confidence, you know, it’s a promise but I don’t believe it. I know the promise but I don’t believe it.  Now again we could cite verse after verse of this but if you’ll just look at one of these illustrations, Psalm 44:1-6 for an illustration of confidence, a very good illustration of a historically based confidence.  “We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work You did in their days, in times of old: [2] How You drove out the heathen with Your hand, and how You did plant them, How You did afflict the people, and cast them out. [3] For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but Your right hand, and Your arm, and the light of Your countenance, because You had a favor unto them.”  You see, historically based confidence.  Why did they believe God could answer the prayer? Because He did before.  See why the history is so necessary, why people who criticize the historic basis of the Bible, the liberals, many evangelicals who are trying to undermine the accuracy of God’s Word, what does it do to your historically based confidence?  It destroys prayer, it’s that simple.  You’ve got either an inerrant Scripture and something to trust in prayer or you can just forget your prayer. 

 

There are six principles that I’ve tossed out, maybe you can find some more if you’ve taken notes carefully in the Psalm series but those are six for your consideration.  I’d like to spend the remaining time with some principles of praise. 

 

The first principle of praise is that it is always a result of some historic revelation.  It is always in response to some historic revelation of God.  An illustration of this might be Psalm 89:3.  The praise in Psalm 89 was because of what God had done to David.  It says, “I have made a covenant with My chosen, I have sworn unto David, My servant, [4] Thy seed will I establish forever…. [5] The heavens shall praise Thy wonders, O LORD…” and so on. Verse 10, “You broke Rahab in pieces,” that was the destruction of Pharaoh at the Red Sea, so praise always flows or results from historic deliverance or we could say revelation.  Now look, here’s a criteria for you on measuring good and bad songs.  If you have a good song, such as Luther’s A Mighty Fortress you’ll have an emphasis on what God has historically done so you out here singing have the freedom to respond to what God has done.  That’s a good song, it gives maximum freedom to you to respond the way you want to as you sing about something historically true.  Now take a bad song; a bad song takes a historical work of God, then takes the author’s response to that and then here you are, now what are you responding to?  If you’ve got a song, how I feel about Jesus, imagine, here you are singing in, what can you respond to?  You’re responding to the response of the song writer, you’re not responding to Jesus, you’re responding to the song writer and that’s the mark of a bad song.  It cuts you off from a directness; a good song lets you worship, a bad song puts something between  you and God, the songwriter.

 

Second principle of praise: Praise grows into generalizations about our personal relationship with God.  It grows into generalizations about our personal relationship with God.  By the way, for the nitpickers here I’m using God and not Christ, not because I don’t believe Christ is God but I’m trying to phrase this as the Psalms do.  Obviously this is a pre-Christ dispensation.  The New Testament dispensation would be obviously a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  It grows into generalizations and there are many, many instances that we found in this.  Psalm 34 would probably be the clearest one.  Praise starts out in response to historic revelation of God, that is good praise, well-designed praise.  Then it moves you to truths, general truths.  See what happened in Psalm 34, it started out in verse 6, a specific historic deliverance of David, so that was one little event, one event in history.  But what happens in verse 11, “Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.”  Verse 13, “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile. [14] Depart from evil, and do good,” see, they are all generaliza­tions, things that David has learned from that deliverance.  So praise, good praise, will always lead you to generalizations.  Truth, in other words, is governing your relationship with God. 

 

I hope when we get through these you’ll see why praising God doesn’t mean going around saying “praise the Lord, praise the Lord” every five minutes.  Praising God takes work and it’s difficult to do correctly.  It has to be learned. 

 

Third principle of praise is that it always terminates in adoration of God’s character.  Real praise always terminates in an adoration of God’s character, not man.  So again, forms of praise that leave you saying “O how I love Jesus” are wrong; a good praise should end how Jesus loves me, that’s a good one, the bad one is how I love Jesus.  How you love Jesus isn’t the issue.  History is not going to stop because you love or not love Jesus but history would stop if Jesus didn’t love us.  The subject and the predicate exchanged in that sentence changes the universe.  So it terminates with an occupation, so to speak, or an adoration of God’s character. 

 

An illustration of this would be Psalm 95:3, these are adoration Psalms, adoring God because of His character.  Notice how it expresses, these gospel Psalms as we called them, verse 3, “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.  [4] In His hand are the deep places of the earth,” the psalmist is excited about this, these aren’t just blah, blah, blah kind of words, they mean something to him because he has gone through the steps, through the process from the historic deliverance to the generalization, to terminating in an adoration of God’s very character and being.

 

Fourth principle of praise: it is offered, done with instrumental accompaniment.  Psalm 57:8 is an illustration, “Awake up, my glory, awake psaltery and harp,” meaning the idea that David so needs musical instruments to express himself.  Musical instruments are necessary to some forms of praise.  And along with this principle, besides musical instruments, often times the raising of the hand was used in Scripture, Psalm 63:4, [“Thus will I bless Thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in Thy name.”]  And this would be duplicated in the fact that you could have as part of praise dancing, properly done. That would really wow a few fundies wouldn’t it, not the kind of dancing you may think about but there are forms of dancing that can be praise forms and were in Scriptural times.

 

Fifth principle of praise is that it is intended to be cosmic.  Just as it terminates in an adoration of God’s character and its being, like you drop a rock in water and the ripples go out, the praise that you do when you praise, you should conceive as ripples that should go out to the edges of the universe.  You should never be ashamed of any creature overhearing your prayers so that when you pray, if an angel is listening a million miles away, the angel can join you in your praise.  So praise biblically should always be cosmic and this is why you have many statements in the Psalms that we have seen, let me do it before “all the nations.”  Psalm 138:1 is one of those illustrations, remember David saying, “I will praise Thee with my whole heart; before the gods will I sing praise unto You. [2] I will worship toward Thy holy temple,” in other words, David was well aware that his praise was cosmic in its dimension, there were other creatures in the universe tuned in and listening to this kind of thing.  If you don’t think this occurs in the New Testament, put in your notes Ephesians 3:10 because that verse teaches that the angels watch you. 

 

Sixth principle of praise: the praise befits the creature, there’s something abnormal about a creature that doesn’t praise.  The sixth principle of praise is very, very simple, but the claim has been made over and over again in the psalms.  The praise befits the creature, there’s something abnormal about a creature that doesn’t praise.  That’s why man lost without Christ or Christians who are in rebellion against the Lord are considered very deeply to be abnormal people because they are creatures who function but no praise ever comes out.  It’s like a tree that never bears fruit and it should; all creatures, that is personal creatures, are designed to praise God and when they don’t praise there’s something wrong. 

 

Psalm 116:12, “What shall I render unto the LORD for all His benefits toward me?”  In other words, how can I pay God back for His grace. [13] I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD. [14] I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all His people,” see the public nature of it.  And then he says in verse 17, “I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving,” you see, it was a verbal sacrifice, it wasn’t animal that he brought, “and will call upon the name of the Lord. [18] I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all His people.”  Now in some cases in the Old Testament it was an animal that accompanied this but the point was it was also verbal.  And in Hebrews 13 it says its verbal.

 

One final verse, Psalm 33:1 summarizes the six principles beautifully.  “Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous ones; for praise is comely [befitting to] the upright.”  The King James says that praise is beautiful, praise fits in other words.  So those are the six principles of petition, six principles of praise and I hope if you’re interested in this series that you’ll go back through your notes and notice as we’ve gone from Psalm to Psalm how praise has occurred.  These principles should act as guidance and meditation to check out own spiritual growth.  These give the Biblical norms; these are the Biblical standards, far, far removed from the 20th century.  The 20th century man loves to praise his experience; the Biblical man praises his God.  The 20th century man can’t stand justice; the Biblical man is excited about justice.  The 20th century man cannot stand the idea that there are other cosmic intelligences listening in on the praise, in the sense that there are angels; the Biblical man rejoices that other creatures and that all the creation can join with him.