Summer of Psalms: Part 5 - Begin & End With Praise
PSALM 117
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
There's a young man who decided to join a monastery. It was one where you had to take a vow of silence, but every seven years they would call you in and you could speak two words. So the young man joined it. Seven years passed, the elders called him in, and basically said, "What do you have to say?" He said, "Cold floors." They nodded and sent him back on his way. And seven years passed. He came in again. The elder said to him, "What two words do you have to say?" He said, "Bad food." They kind of smiled and nodded their heads, then sent him back. Seven more years passed. They called him in and asked him what he had to say. He said, "I quit." To which the elder said, "Well, it's no surprise to us. Because as long as you've been here, all you've done is complain."
And although I just love that story, it does give a very good principle: You don't have to say much to say a lot. And that brings us actually to the psalm we're going to look at this morning, Psalm 117. Now, Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible. Two verses. That's it. But it has quite a history because in those two verses, we see some incredible application to the world today. For us, of those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ, and for those who may not be yet followers of Christ but are exploring that and what it might mean for you.
Interesting enough, Psalm 117 played a critical role in the Passover celebration. Historically, in the celebration of the Passover with the Jewish nation, they talked about different times they've been singing psalms. Psalm 117 was the psalm that they sang when they completed the celebration of the Passover. In fact, where it talks about in Matthew chapter 26, verse 30, and Mark 14, verse 26, where it says, "They sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives." Many scholars believe that the hymn they sang was Psalm 117, because, of course, they were Jewish. And they had had the Passover. Then they were going to the Mount of Olives. And that, of course, put into play Jesus' sacrifice for us on the cross.
Now, on most Saturdays, not every Saturday, I have the privilege. We just now have three of our grandkids here who are in high school. Two of them are seniors in high school. And one of them, my oldest grandson, Brody, on a lot of Saturdays, we will go actually not too far from here, and we'll go work out on Saturday mornings together. When I say together, I mean we're in the same room at the same time, and we're not working out together because I can't keep up with them. So that's a little misunderstanding there. But what we've kind of started is this little—I don't even call it a tradition or whatever—both of us love Jersey Mike's. Now, do we have any Jersey Mike's fans in here? Oh, man, you're mostly an unspiritual group. But anyway, we'll go to Jersey Mike's. And over here, not too far away, we just drive down to Jersey Mike's and get a sandwich. And I'll get the same thing. I get number 12. And he gets number 8. And I get mine regular. He gets his. It's called the, what do they call it? The super, I think. It is large. It's huge. It's about this long. And you have to have like a forklift to pick it up. I mean, it's so heavy. I can't believe that kid eats all of that. And typically, I pay. And then he has an app for what they call ShorePoints. So I pay, but he gets the ShorePoints. And when you get enough ShorePoints, you can buy one and get one free. I think I've actually treated his girlfriend to a lot of sub sandwiches because he'll use that when he takes his girlfriend. She likes Jersey Mike's as well.
But one of the things we both agree on and we both do is this: When we order a sandwich, we say "Mike's way." Now, if you've ever been to Jersey Mike's, then you know, if you know, you know. It's Mike's way. That's the way to go. No matter what kind of sandwich you get, you get it Mike's way. And the thing beautiful about a sandwich is that, of course, typically you have two pieces of bread. In this case, Mike's, they're sub-bread or whatever you order. And then it keeps all this good stuff inside. So you got the sides, the bread on the top, bread on the bottom. Then you got the good stuff on the inside. But the bread kind of holds it all together. And I kind of see Psalm 117 as a sandwich psalm. By that I mean there's two things that hold it together. It's set at the beginning and it's set at the end, and then between those two pieces of bread, if you please, are the good stuff that's in there. And what is the two sides of Psalm 117 as a sandwich psalm? Here's what Psalm 117 says, two verses: "Praise the Lord, all you nations. Praise him, all you people of the earth. For his unfailing love for us is powerful, and the Lord's faithfulness endures forever. Praise the Lord." So what do we see here? Praise the Lord. Praise starts the whole thing, then there are some things that are said there, and then it ends with "Praise the Lord." So the praise is what holds the good stuff in the middle together. Praise is an attitude that can sustain us in so many areas. Praise is what keeps us going. Praise is a means in which to tap into the strength and comfort of God. We praise God. Psalm 71:6 through 8 says this: "You have been with me from birth, from my mother's womb. You have cared for me. No wonder I am always praising you. My life is an example to many because you have been my strength and protection. That is why I can never stop praising you. I declare your glory all day long." Praise that sustains us in all things. We read this also in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 5, verse 20: "And give thanks for everything, not just for the things that you like, not just for the things you prefer, not when things are going your way, but praise, give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 18: "Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."
Now I'm going to share something with you, and I'm just going to recognize that, folks. You're going to think in your mind probably that's TMI. Too much information, Phil. That's okay. I'm going to share with you anyway. A few weeks ago, maybe it was a month or so ago, I ate something that really did not agree with me. In fact, it felt like there was a hunk of concrete in my stomach. And so I went to bed then. I even took a heating pad and put it over my stomach thinking that would help alleviate some of the pain. It did a little bit, but not much. Then about midnight, maybe a little after midnight, all of a sudden I had the call. You know what I'm talking about. I had to go deposit what I had in my stomach because it shouldn't be there, evidently. And I got to tell you this. My wife's not here to affirm this, but I am not a quiet vomiter. Maybe you are. My wife is. She could go, frankly, throw up, come back. You never knew. When I do that, everybody knows. If we lived in an apartment, everybody in the apartment building would know. I'm just loud, and I hate it. But as I went in there and I deposited this stuff, I remember sitting down in the bathroom. Of course, the toilet's been flushed. Get rid of all that stuff. And sitting in the cool of the bathroom, close to the porcelain—some people call it the porcelain god, but the coolness of that moment—and I kid you not, I sat there thinking, besides I felt so much better, I remember thinking how grateful and thankful I was that God has created us as people to sometimes allow our body to expel something that does not need to be there. Would I have preferred not to have done that? Absolutely. But to be reminded in that moment that I can praise the Lord even in that moment for the goodness and the graciousness and the creativity of God. When we live a life of praise, you ready for this? When we live a life of praise, we can find hope everywhere. We live a life of praise, a life of gratitude, a life of graciousness.
Another thing we see in this psalm is the universality of God's grace and mercy, that God's story, that God's salvation, that all that God offers for us is for everyone. How do we know that? Because it says it right there in verse 1: "Praise the Lord, all you nations. Praise him, all you people of the earth." One of the remarkable things about this psalm, as short as it is, is that it makes a statement to the entirety of the world. You see, typically, in the Near East at that time, different countries had their different expressions, and they had who their gods were. And, of course, the Israelite nation had the God of gods. He was the God. And typically, you just kind of let people worship their gods. Don't bother them too much. But in this psalm, we see that Israel is saying this: That Israel is proclaiming that their God is the God for everyone. That their God is the God of all nations. It's not exclusive to them, but it's something that can be applied across the world, the countries, the nations of that time. He was their God and is for all people. God's grace was to become an invitation for every person, for every nation, for all people to worship him.
And in the Old Testament, Psalm 117 is one of the clearest declarations of the fact that God's salvation and God's presence and God's grace is for everyone, not just one nation at one time in history. And we have to understand when it talks about the fact that it is for all people, and it will talk about the Gentile nation, we have to understand that at that time in history, there were really only two groups of people. There was the Jews and everyone else. And the everyone else was usually put across the title of the umbrella of the Gentiles. So there was a Jewish people and then there were the Gentiles or everybody else. And for many times, it was kind of like the twain should never cross paths. The twain should never meet. But the Apostle Paul, as he writes in Romans, which is one of the wonderful theological verses of Scripture, talks about what Psalm 117 says. He says this in Romans chapter 15, verses 8 through 11: "Remember that Christ came as a servant to the Jews to show that God is true to the promise he made to their ancestors. He also came so that the Gentiles, everybody else, not just the Jews, might give glory to God for his mercies to them. This is what the psalmist meant when he wrote, 'For this I will praise you among the Gentiles. I will sing praise to your name.' And in another place it is written, 'Rejoice with his people, you Gentiles.' And then verse 11 is where he alludes to Psalm 117, where he says, 'Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. All you nations praise him, all you people of the earth.'" God's plan has always included the entirety of the world. Always. That was his plan, and it's expressed here in the Old Testament. God's mission has always been global. The Great Commission is for everyone. It includes the opportunity for everybody to have the chance to say yes to Jesus. It is for everybody to have that opportunity to open their lives up to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
It is for everybody. Now with that in mind, thus the two sides, the bread of the sandwich, if you please: "Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, all nations, all people, praise the Lord." But in verse two, we get into the good stuff, the real meaty part of the sandwich. And here's what we discover in verse 2: "For his unfailing love for us is powerful, the Lord's faithfulness endures forever." So we're going to take a moment and kind of spend a little bit of time unfolding a little bit of these two verses, excuse me, these two statements in verse 2. The first one is the power of God's unfailing love. The power of God's unfailing love is that it's unfailing. That's it. I know I don't want to get too deep on you here, but that's what it is. The power of God's unfailing love is that it is unfailing. His love will never fail. His love cannot be compromised. His love has no conditions. His love has no caveats. We probably have all had this situation where someone's come to us and said, "I'd like to do something, but there's one condition." And they'll give you a condition. Or they'll say, "There's a caveat on this. There's something added to this." That's not what God's unfailing love is. There's no condition. There's no caveat. There's no, "Well, if you, I will." And we read about this again in Romans chapter 8, verses 37 through 39. Paul writes, "Or on the earth below, indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." God's unfailing love, unconditional, unfailing, caveat free, available to us. When I was a kid, and I still, I don't even remember, I never can quite pull the reason for the conversation to be honest with you. But I remember I was with my dad and my dad said to me, he said, "Son, you don't have to do anything to make me proud of you." I was just a little kid. I remember that vividly. I don't remember when the circumstances started. I just remember those words: "You don't have to do anything to make me proud of you." And what did that do for me? I went out and just tore up everything because there's nothing I... no. I didn't take that as a freedom of liberty to do whatever I wanted to do. But I can tell you the freedom I had in living life when I began to understand there is nothing I had to do for my dad to be proud of me. So I wanted to live a life that would help, I guess, instill his faith in me. It's in God's unfailing love that provides an overcoming spirit. When you, when I, when we understand the unfailing love of God, that there's no conditions there, there's nothing in reality we have to do to make him proud of us. The freedom that gives us to live a life of fulfillment, to live a life of enthusiasm and our faith, to live a life that represents him well. Part of this meat of the sandwich is the unfailing love of God.
The second meat in this sandwich which is the promise of God's enduring faithfulness. God keeps his promises forever. Now, some of you, because I look around here, I say you're kind of my generation, and some of you won't have a clue what I'm talking about. That's what I'm trying to explain. There used to be this way of paying people, and they'd take this piece of paper. It was called a check. You know, a piece of paper. You actually write on it with a pen, and actually it had usually your address on it. Says who to pay to and how much, the whole thing. It was a check. And you literally took that physical thing and you took it to a bank and you could cash that. You give them that check and then they give you money. Now, I know we don't do it that way. I don't even do that anymore. I don't think the last time I wrote a check, everything's through whatever. That's fine, which I think is a wonderful thing, by the way. When I was in high school, I had a little side, I guess you call it a hustle or a business, and I mowed lawns. That's what I did. I mowed lawns. And one lawn that I mowed was actually the youth pastor of the church that I went to. And I remember one day I went out and I mowed his lawn, the front yard, the backyard, did the edging, all that kind of stuff. And he came out to me, said, "Listen, I... you have done such a great job. I'm going to pay you a million dollars." And he handed me a check for a million dollars. He had signed it, filled it out, did the whole thing. And I looked at my... he said, "Now, I just want you to know when you take it to the bank, it won't cash." He didn't have a million dollars. But he was just kind of, I hope, kidding me a little bit. Or he thought he was stupid. Either one, it didn't make any difference. And so the thing is, is that when God talks about the promise of his enduring love, that check will cash. That means something. And we can see God covers his promises. Why? Because he promised it. The promise of presence, Matthew 28:20. The promise of salvation through grace, Ephesians 2:8. The promise of forgiveness, Acts 13:38. The promise of eternal life, John 3:16. The promise of satisfaction in life, John 10:10. The promise of transformation, Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. The promise of a righteous character, Philippians 1:11. The promise of the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 5:18. The promise of spiritual gifts, Galatians 5:22. And that just scratches the surface of the promise of God. And God's promises, I'm going to say it again, are good. They cash. The check will cash.
Story about Spring Valley here. Back in the day, and Lauren was kind to mention, I pastored this church for a couple, two or three years, I can't remember how long, back in the early 2000s. And when I was a youth pastor, I was a youth pastor for many years down in San Diego, Southern California, at a church called Skyline. And at that time, the lead pastor was a gentleman named John Maxwell. Now, some of you may know that name. But John Maxwell, to this day, is one of the leading leadership experts, primarily in the business world. You Google John Maxwell, you'll discover some interesting things. But he was the pastor at that time. And when we stepped aside, we were not renewing our agreement, I guess, because we were going to actually move up here to be on staff at another church. In 1988, and John, which was kind of his working with staff, took my wife, Joni, and I out to brunch after church. So it was our last Sunday at the church. He took us out to brunch and we're sitting at the table having a great conversation. Then finally John says to me, he said, "Phil, do you need anything?" And I said, "John, I really don't need anything, but I do have a request." He said, "What's that?" I said, "There's going to come a day where I'm going to be at a church somewhere, and I really believe, as watching the trajectory of what God's doing in and through your life, that you're going to be a point where you really are out there, well known. And I said, so there's going to be a church. I said, I don't know where it is. I don't know when it's going to be, but I would like you to come speak at the church that I'm at for nothing." 1988, pastor of Skyline Church had not yet had this large scale influence. And he said to me, "I'll do it." Okay? 1988.
Fast forward, I think it was about 2000 to 2003. I'm at Spring Valley. We're actually meeting in a different location down here, a different place. And so I thought, I'm going to pull the trigger. Because we had actually, at that time, we had a lot of business leaders that were coming, and I wanted to have a ministry of business leaders, and I knew that John had a good reputation with business leaders. Not necessarily Christian, it's business leaders. So I contacted John's office. I talked to his executive assistant. Fortunately, I knew her. I actually had her son in my youth group back in the day. And I explained to her the story that I would like John to come speak at Spring Valley in Rocklin, California for free. And so she said, okay. I don't hear from her for a while. So I wanted to follow up, and I go back, and I say, in a pastoral way, I said this. Now, just so you know that, so you don't think less of me. I said to her, in a pastoral way, "Just following up about John coming to speak at Spring Valley Church in Rocklin, California. Do I have a snowball's chance in hell to have this happen?" Because, you know, I'll be honest, I wouldn't blame him. I mean, at that time, he was not quite as large of an influence presence as he has now, but it was pretty large and pretty significant. And I knew it wasn't inexpensive to get him to come. And she came back and said, "No, he's coming. We're just trying to work out the time frame that he could be there." I think, Bob, you were there at the time. It was a great day. A lot of business leaders. It was exciting. John was fantastic. And here's my point. John promised in 1988 and in 2003 he was good on his promise. I'm not saying John Maxwell is God at all, but that's how God works. If he makes a promise, which I just listed some of those, those promises are fulfilled. They're going to be fulfilled. Here's the thing: the power of a promise is not in the promise. The power is in the one who gives the promise. That's where the power is. If I gave you a promise, but I had no ability to fulfill that promise, that's not where the power is. The power is in my ability to fulfill that promise. It's who gives the promise. And these promises that we looked at, God gave those promises. God gave them. So we can trust the promises of God.
Everyone. And I sure appreciate the songs we sang this morning about praising God and realizing every day we have the opportunity to praise the Lord. But everyone should praise God because his powerful love and his faithfulness endures forever. God's unfailing love and enduring faithfulness are grounds for the entire world to worship. Let us praise him today. Let us praise him in the good times and in the bad times. Let us praise him for where we are and where we are going. Let all nations and all people, including us, praise the Lord. Father, we thank you for this very short chapter that has a very large and encompassing message. And Lord, I would ask that as we leave here today, that we will go from here committed to praise you, to praise you in all that we do, to praise you in all that we encounter, to praise you in all things, because you are a faithful God. Your promises endure forever. Your love endures forever. Let us live a life that believes those things and make us a thankful and grateful people. In Jesus' name, Amen.