This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome back to our look at Psalm 46 to 50. This is day two of
this week. We're going to look at Psalm 47 today.

Psalm 47, it's a psalm of pure praise. And we talk about praising God a lot in
church. We should, but let me ask a question that might sound too simple at
first.

How do you do that? How do you praise? How do you worship in ways that fill your
heart with praise?

Now, I'm asking that question out of the honesty in my own life and in talking
with others that we've all been to worship services where actually we came out
more worried than when we went in, because the time that we had to sit and think
about things, we thought about our worries and we didn't come out with a heart
of praise. Or we've all been to worship services where there was a lot of
excitement and enthusiasm, but we weren't quite sure how we fit in. We weren't
feeling it.

This psalm, Psalm 47, has some very simple directions for praise. To get out of
this psalm what I need, I need to start by admitting that I need to learn how to
praise. None of us have learned at all.

We have a lot to learn about praising God. You may feel like, oh, I'm better
than other people around me. Well, the truth of the matter is, when it comes to
truly praising God for all of who He really is, obviously we all have a lot to
learn.

There's three very simple directions here that talk to us about how to praise.
First, you want to learn how to praise? You clap your hands.

I know, that's simple, isn't it? You clap your hands. Chapter 47, verse one,
first half says, "Clap your hands, all you nations.

" Clap your hands. Now, what does that mean? Well, at its very simplest, it
means you get your body involved when you worship.

You don't worship just in your head. You're clapping your hands. You're doing
something.

First, you're going to a worship service, or you're being with other people in a
worship experience in a home. You're joining together. You're getting your body
involved when you worship.

It also means, the clapping, that's enthusiasm, that's applause. It means you
get your enthusiasm involved when you worship. When you clap your hands, you're
saying, I like what is happening right now.

And verses two to four remind us of what we are affirming, what we're applauding
when we worship. Those verses say, how awesome is the Lord most high, the great
King over all the earth. He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet.

He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loved. So these
verses say, the awesome God has chosen us. The King of the earth takes pride in
us.

The one who subdues nations loves us. Well, that is worth applauding. So you
clap your hands.

You have this sense of enthusiasm in worship. You get yourself involved in
worship. That's the first direction.

The second simple direction is in the last half of verse one, you shout to God.
Shout to God with cries of joy. Clap your hands, shout to God.

I know this is simple, isn't it? But sometimes we need it simple, shout to God.
In 1993, Darlene Jack wrote a simple song called "Shout to the Lord" and it
swept the planet because it was a reminder of something we weren't so great at
doing.

I was actually first heard this song in Australia in a little church. It had
started to take off in Australia. It hadn't come to the United States yet.

And in this little church where they didn't have that great of musicians and
they didn't have that great of singers, every word of this song touched my heart
because I knew I needed it. I needed not just to love the Lord in a quiet way. I
needed to shout to the Lord with my whole heart.

If you listen to worship music today, you'll notice that the word roar is
popular in worship music today. The saints are roaring. There's a holy roar.

You hear it again and again and again. And it all goes back to this idea of our
need to shout to God when we praise God. To shout is to turn up the volume on
your worship.

I don't just mean turn up the volume on the soundboard, although that might be
part of it in some worship services. Spiritually, you turn up the volume of what
it means in your life. You shout to God with cries of joy.

At the center of this shouting is this joy in our lives. In verse five, we hear
about this. God has ascended amid shouts of joy.

There it is again. The Lord amidst the sounding of trumpets. This idea of
ascending is the idea of going up to Jerusalem in the days that the Psalms were
written.

But we need to ascend in worship. We need to go up out of where we are. We need
to go up to a place of praise.

And it often takes a shout to do that. So we clap and we shout. It sounds more
like a football game than a worship service, doesn't it?

Listen, I love sports. But I can also see, and I hope you can see, that it has
become a kind of false worship for many people. The place where we have our most
exuberant expressions is not in worship services, but at sports games.

In a sports game, we remember a great play for years. For me, it was the catch
with the 49ers. I don't know what it was for you, but we remember it.

We go over it again. We watch video maybe of it again for years. Do we do that
in worship?

We should. For me, at Saddleback, it was the children's offering. It was the
Passover celebration.

It was the Easter in a rain-soaked tent. We need to have this shout to God
attitude in the way that we worship. This clap your hands to God attitude in the
way we worship.

And then the third simple direction in this Psalm is sing praises. You clap your
hands, you shout to God, and you sing praises. We're going to come back to this
again and again in Psalms because Psalms is the song book of the Old Testament.

And the Lord really wants us to get this one. He wants us to get this idea of
singing our praises. And I don't know if there's anywhere that that's more clear
than in verse six.

Verse six, listen to this. It says this. Sing praises to God.

Sing praises. Sing praises to our King. Sing praises.

Four times in one verse, he tells us to sing praises. I got an idea God wants us
to get this one. He's telling us, if you're not singing praises, you are not
doing something that God commands us to do.

You're not doing something that God commands us to do here. You're not doing
something that God commands us to do in Ephesians chapter five. Ephesians 5:19
says, speak to one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

You sing and you make music in your heart to the Lord. Sing praises. Verse seven
gives a clue of how to sing praises.

Verse seven says, for God is the King of all the earth, sing to him a psalm of
praise. That last phrase, a psalm of praise, is the Hebrew word maskele. Many
Psalms are actually called in their title a maskele.

So that's why they say a psalm of praise. But there's more behind this word than
just a psalm. It also has to do with how the psalm is sung, most likely.

The idea behind this word that a lot of commentators see is that it means to
sing with wisdom. It means to sing with skill. Now the skill we're talking
about, very important to understand this if you're going to sing praises to God,
the skill we're talking about is the skill of focusing on God.

It's not the skill of singing on key. It's the skill of keying in on God. It's
the wisdom and understanding of knowing God as you sing.

It's not the wisdom and understanding of musical notes and keys, it's knowing
God. Because I know when I say sing praises, a lot of us think, but I don't sing
very well. Well, let me ask you, with that definition I just gave, who do you
think is the better singer?

Is it the person with perfect pitch and a beautiful voice who knows it? And
maybe though they don't really want to, in the corner of their soul, they feel a
little impressed with themselves every time they sing. And even though they may
not really want to do it in another corner of their soul, they sort of downgrade
everybody around them who's not quite singing on pitch every time they sing.

You think that's the better singer? Or do you think it's the person who couldn't
stay on pitch to save their life, but who belts out a song anyway because they
love the Lord and because they have a joy in their heart that it has to spill
out somewhere? Don't miss who we're singing praises to, to the King.

In both verse two and verse seven, we're singing to the King over all the earth.
That has to spill out somewhere. And there's one final reminder about praise in
this psalm.

We were, in Psalm 46, we were told to be still and to know that he's God. And
now here in Psalm 47, we're told to clap and shout and sing. So which is it?

Well, it's both. It's not either or, it's both. It's not, well, I'm a be still
person.

I mean, that's my personality. No, we're commanded to be still, all of us,
whatever your personality. And it's not, I'll be the clap person, I'll never
clap and shout because I don't have that personality.

No, we're all commanded to clap and shout and sing. Your personality might lend
yourself better to being still or to clapping and shouting, but the truth is we
all need both in order to praise God. So let's end this by just praising God.

God, we end by praising you. We praise you for who you are. We praise you for
who you've been.

And we praise you for who you will be. We praise you that whatever the
circumstances of our lives today, you know and you're with us and you will carry
us through. And we praise you, God, for the wonder of who you are in your power.

And that God, there is nothing in all the universe that can touch who you are.
It can come close to who you are. We see a bit of it now through what you do and
through what you've made and through how you work in our lives and through your
word.

We thank you for that day when we'll see all of it in heaven and praise you
forever and ever. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen. - Tomorrow we're going to look
together at how you find a place of security.