Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/visionbaptist/sermons/52957/happy-is-he-who-knows-god-is-our-help/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Psalm chapter 146 is where we're going to the night. Every passage of Scripture, every text, it has a request of us. It has something. The way Brother John likes to say it, what does it say, so what, and then now what.

[0:14] But it wants us to do more than read it. This psalm doesn't want us just to give a mere reading of it, but it wants involvement from us. It wants us to do something. I was asking Kristen and Ben before the service, and maybe you could tell me.

[0:27] I don't know. I wonder when Travis would know. He spent some time with some older churches there in the U.K. But when we stopped singing the psalms, when it wasn't as common to sing the psalms, I think some churches still do.

[0:41] And you can usually find somebody singing all the psalms if you look for it on Spotify. Sometimes they sound a little bit weird, but most psalms you could find some rendition of it. But just the idea that these were written and that we wouldn't experience them, but we would just read them and study them, isn't at the heart of what the passage calls for us.

[0:59] This psalm particularly calls for us to praise. Praise the Lord. It will say, put your trust in the Lord, and then it will say, now praise Him. All right? So go ahead.

[1:10] I'm just kidding. All right? But they're thinking, Brother Ty, praise the Lord. All right? Or hallelujah. Stephanie was in a choir in college, and they sung the Handel's Messiah, and she'll do that at the end of the service.

[1:23] And you're going to stick around. It's going to be wonderful. All right? And it started with hallelujah, and it ends with hallelujah. And it's really long. That's what I remember about it. It was beautiful. But hallelujah means praise the Lord.

[1:34] And this set of five psalms we're looking at is all about praising the Lord. And we've already started on it. And so I want to look at what it says and learn from it, information applied to our hearts, change our behavior, honoring to the Lord.

[1:47] But I really want to make sure as God's people we experience it. So I want to share testimony with you after we read the psalm together. Psalm chapter 146.

[1:58] I'm going to read the first four verses, and then I'm going to pause, and I'm going to ask you to read verse number five with me, and I'll finish the chapter. Psalm 146. Praise ye the Lord.

[2:09] Praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live, will I praise the Lord. I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being. Put not your trust in princes, nor in the Son of Man, at whom there is no help.

[2:23] His breath goeth forth. He returneth to this earth. In that very day his thoughts perish. Verse five. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, which made heaven and earth to see and all that is therein, which keepeth truth forever, which executes judgment for the oppressed, which giveth food to the hungry.

[2:48] The Lord looses the prisoners. The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises them that are bowed down. The Lord loveth their righteousness. The Lord preserveth the strangers. He relieveth the fatherless and widow.

[3:00] But the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. The Lord shall reign forever. Even thy God, O Zion, and to all thy generations. Praise ye the Lord. We'll walk through this passage together, and at the end of the night, Lord willing, I'll pray the psalm as we typically do on Thursday.

[3:15] But happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help. And the result is it would be that we would praise the Lord. Nate, would you mind coming over here? Nate Tannehill. I met with Nate this week.

[3:26] I'm going to say a word of prayer for him, and I want to share a little bit of his testimony. If you've been around any time, you probably heard it as he shared it. But we met earlier this week, and I meet people for coffee, and I never drink coffee, but he had dark midnight coffee that looked like motor oil, all right, from Dunkin' Donuts, all right?

[3:44] Man, it was such a blessing to me. Nobody had to tell me, to command me to praise the Lord. I heard it, and I heard that the Lord was his help. He mentioned to me, and it threw me off.

[3:55] He said something about, you know, about learning English. And I'm like, yeah, we all learned English. And he said, at the age of eight. I'm thinking, that's a little late to start learning English. But it's not if you grow up in Hungary.

[4:05] And then you move to Compton when you're eight. And then you learn English. And then through things in life, and he finds himself outside of a church.

[4:19] How old were you? Outside of that church? That was only five years ago. Only five years ago. I knew it was that long ago. You really needed me to tell you my age. No. That's right. All right.

[4:30] Five years ago, he's outside of a church, down and out. Life has just beat the snot out of him. I'm sure there's a better way to say that one. All right. But that's where he's at in life, outside of it.

[4:41] And a man came to him and said, hey, I'll help. Why don't you start coming to the services? And then a family gave him 90 days, I think, stay or longer. Six months. Six months.

[4:52] I'm not getting all this wrong. It's even better. All right. Six months to stay in the house, get his feet on them. And on the 17th of this month, that church is going to get to commission him for the mission work that he is going to do.

[5:07] Five years ago, he was on the front porch of that church. Well, those people that let you live with them, are they still there? I'm praying they'll be at my commissioning service, but they've since moved to Georgia. They've moved to Georgia?

[5:18] Yes, sir. Well, let's go find them. All right. I've got it. All right. But that is just, man. And he just got done. I'm just like, praise the Lord. My hope is in the Lord. No man wrote that story.

[5:31] What a wonderful story. And I'm so happy for that. Church, what's the name of the church? Down at the... In Florida. North Gainesville Baptist. North Gainesville Baptist Church. All right. And so we're going to say praise the Lord for what he did in Nate's life.

[5:44] And then he's going to go. And we took the young people down there more than six months ago and less than 10 years ago. All right. That's just one big box for me. All right. And we saw the... If you've never been to a service that's a completely deaf church, it's just an unbelievable experience.

[6:00] And there's just a few places like this in the world. And unfortunately, they want to see more. They're training people for more. But a deaf church and a deaf ministry, he'll go down there and he'll learn and he'll serve.

[6:11] And then it's his desire eventually to get over to New Zealand and to do that same type of work, assisting people as they're planting churches and working and signing. And I just want to say praise the Lord.

[6:23] I want to say hallelujah for what he has done. Can you say that in sign language? Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, yeah. That's good. That's an easy one. All right. And in Spanish, what do you think it is?

[6:34] It's probably this. Probably that. And what about New Zealand? I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to guess it's pretty similar. All right. Some raising of the hand. And I want to say praise the Lord. I'm going to pray thanking the Lord for what he has done and then bringing him by this time.

[6:51] And he's had a great experience. I'm like Zachariah, but he's had a great experience in the training center. And getting to hear your testimony is a real blessing to us. Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for your work, Lord.

[7:03] We want to say praise unto your name. We want to say thank you. Lord, you are a hope. You are our strength. We don't put it in men. We don't put it in the best of men.

[7:15] We don't put it in princes. We don't put it in kings. Lord, we look to you. You are the provider. Provider for the poor. Lord, you're provider for those that injustice has been done to.

[7:26] Lord, you are the provider for all of us. And we want to praise your holy name. Father, we see you showing yourself strong in the life of our brother here.

[7:37] Lord, I want to thank you for what you have done to such a strong visual display, Lord, of how you can reach down and take a hold of a life and change it by your grace. Father, I want to thank you for North Gainesville Baptist Church, for the faithfulness of those dear saints, Lord, who welcomed people into that church and believed and cared for them.

[7:57] And now, Lord, I pray that December the 17th will be just one of those type services that those people will never forget and how you use them. Lord, I'm praying for Nate as he'll serve down in Peru.

[8:09] Lord, his servant's heart and his willingness to serve in just any way, Lord. I know he'll be a blessing. Lord, I pray that he'll just soak up so many wonderful things there and that he'll take it in his heart and in his mind to the next assignment that you have for him.

[8:23] Father, I want to say thank you tonight. I want to say praise to your name for the wonderful work you've done in Nate's life. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. How many of you commit to praying for Nate? Would you raise your hand? All right. Thank you, Nate.

[8:34] And by God's grace, thankfully we've been able through the years to support the interns as they go, the ones that have, you know, been around here. We've got to know and plan to do the same for them.

[8:46] Zach Razz on the fence tonight because of some comments he made earlier. But we'll see maybe next week when we pray for him how we're feeling about it. All right. So we're back to Psalm chapter number 146 and I jokingly say go ahead.

[8:59] The command to praise the Lord. Brother Ty was obedient and I appreciate him doing that. He said praise the Lord. But let me give you three verses here and I can give you hundreds. Yeah, I believe I've put there say of scriptures and Psalms or through the Bible that gives a command to praise the Lord.

[9:17] Psalm 29 verse 1 says given to the Lord O ye mighty given to the Lord glory and strength given to the Lord the glory due unto his name worship the Lord and the beauty of his holiness the voice of the Lord upon the waters the glory of the God of glory thundereth the Lord upon many waters.

[9:33] Andrew the Knight preached a great message for us and he talks about the glory of the Lord and not taking it for ourselves but we give him the glory we give him the worth and the majesty the respect that he deserves.

[9:45] Psalm 146 Praise you the Lord Praise the Lord O my soul while I live will I praise the Lord I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being. The first verse of this tells us to praise the Lord tells us right here it says three times and it says sing praises unto God and then the verse number 10 tells us the Lord shall reign forever even thy God O Zion unto all generations and it ends in case you missed it with praise you the Lord.

[10:12] That's what you see that it's a command that you're told to do it and there's always plenty of reason to praise the Lord. It isn't something that you have to just sit out and wait throughout the day for the wind below for the right circumstances.

[10:27] It isn't like all the circumstances everything just fell together and because of that we now have occasion to praise the Lord. It can be commanded at any time to praise the Lord because he's always worthy of praising the Lord.

[10:40] You wake up in the morning and you read your Bible and it says praise the Lord he's worthy. You're going through the hardest day and we have a friend that's going just through the hardest day that many of you are aware of there's occasion to give praise to the Lord.

[10:52] There's wonderful occasions meeting with Nate there's occasion to praise the Lord. Stephanie and I just got a reminder of four years ago a kid came to our home who's now our nephew and that was a day to say praise the Lord.

[11:05] Today is another day to say praise the Lord. Today is a good day to say praise the Lord. Let's all say it one more time praise the Lord. And we should study and be aware of the nature of praise.

[11:18] There's a lot of confusion and little understanding about the practice of worship. Also there's severe consequences of false worship and then because worship is of such great importance to God.

[11:31] There are angels whose entire existence have been flying around God singing praise unto him and that's been a wonderful existence. no story before no story after that's what they were created to do and they were created with wonderful purpose.

[11:49] We were made for it as well. So there's some visible reactions to demonstrate praise to the Lord. There is the raising of the hands that the Bible speaks about and we see that in sign language there but raising of the hands and sometimes that's a way that you'll respond or shouting praise the Lord or hallelujah meaning the same thing here.

[12:10] We're singing songs with sincerity taking the words that are in the song and singing them unto the Lord but fundamentally that praise is a response. We're made to look for something and then when we see it we're made to respond.

[12:25] My kids have told me that I have told you enough times that I'm from a small town in Kentucky and they also told me that I wouldn't have to tell you but you would know that about me if you hung out with me very long right?

[12:36] But my pastor Larry Lockston grew up growing up he told me that if I was really a preacher I wouldn't need a pulpit. He says the people that only preach from a pulpit are pulpiteers and if you're a preacher you're going to find places to do it wherever you go and so I signed up for a writing contest and I had some help as I do now when I write stuff with English grammar and David the boy you'll remember this song about there being a God shaped hole at all of us.

[13:04] Do you remember this song? Alright, no? Alright, well there's one. And there was a song that was popular at the time about it and so I thought I would write about the fact that there is one in all of us and that all religions seem to recognize there's a deficit there's a hole there's something broken inside of us but most people don't ever know what the answer is and that our life should be lived searching for it and then finding it and then responding in praise to the fact that God has met those.

[13:35] And so that's what I wrote about and that's what I did not win that contest talking about alright? But tonight I feel the same here now is that we should rejoice in the fact that we have an answer to the world's greatest question but going back to that thought that it is a response everything in our life towards Christ is a response why do we love him?

[13:58] Because he first loved us and so love does not originate in us but in God and love being able to love him as a response Philippians 3.3 talks about we worship God in spirit and we rejoice in Christ and having no confidence in the flesh it's the work of the spirit in which we're able to praise the Lord yielding to the work of the spirit would lead us to praise the Lord we were made to do that I'm told that airplanes are built in a way that they are made to fly if their engines go out they continue to fly well because of the new birth in Christ we are now made to fly we are made to praise him yielding to the Holy Spirit in our life lives a life of praise it's sin and opposition to that that would cause us to do something different we've looked at good works and praise is something that belongs to the redeemed it's something that we are now able to do because you have to know this truth you've got to embrace this truth before you can ever respond to it so praise belongs to us it's demonstrated in our lives through prayers of adoration we go to the Lord and we pray to him we ask for things and we tell him what is upon our heart but we also give praise of adoration we say we recognize

[15:10] Father that you are great then we give testimonies of God's goodness like the testimony we heard of Nate today and we should repeat it all of our days Psalm 104 33 I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live I will sing praise to my God while I have my being just the last chapter we saw that again all the days of my life I will praise the Lord we will sing for him forever every part of our day we should praise him one pastor said we cannot be too firm in the holy resolve to praise God for it is the chief end of our living and being that we should glorify God and enjoy him forever our holy resolve for God cannot be too firm we can't make too much of it I'm going to make mention of that here in a little bit something where God has worked in my life where it's it is a purpose of us gathering together that sometimes a psalm just simply calls for us to praise the Lord and that is our assignment when we get together it's just simply the praise of the Lord that that is the primary responsibility in my that I have in your life is to call you to praise the Lord

[16:16] George Carpenter Bo's great great great uncle that he's never heard about let me tell you about him alright George Carpenter a Bavarian man makes a great donut alright no he's not alright Bavarian martyr being desired by some godly brother and that when he was burning in the fire he would give them a sign of the show that he was committed answered let this be a sure sign unto you of my faith and of perseverance in the truth that so long as I'm able to open to hold open my mouth or to whisper I will never cease to praise God and to profess his truth the which also he did saith mine author and so did many other martyrs beside him George Carpenter as he was dying a martyr's death praised the Lord until his very last breath Matt Minster gave me a book some years ago it's about this big it's this field of stories of Anabaptist martyrs and the story after story of people some days when it's cloudy outside and I'm bummed because it's cloudy outside

[17:23] I look at that book and I think those people praise the Lord to their very last breath and I'm discouraged today because it's really cold outside it is really cold outside but God is worthy of our praise and so it should be fundamental in our gatherings and our preaching David and Jennifer I get this from the Eternity magazine from Bob Jones Press okay and this is what really shook me what I wanted to think about our purpose and gathering for praise part of the problem is that we have made our churches into centers of evangelism and instruction and there's certainly nothing wrong with that but the focus of our services are on man and his needs instead of God and his glory this is true for example in music where it is triteness and content and tune tends to entertain rather than provoke worship further a fancy pulpiteering has made worship seem peripheral or at least preliminary the preaching I thought that was a good saying you know I love you guys

[18:24] I want to be relevant I want you to walk out of here with something to do I want to give you five steps to make your life and marriage better or whatever it is that you want to hear I would gladly give that to you but the Bible calls for times where it's not about you and it's not about me it's not about us corporately it's just all about Him and we say praise the Lord and then we're given a caution in here so what's the opponent what's the defensive line about I mean what is going to keep us from simply doing this with our days well in this psalm we're told that the challenge here is trusting in ourselves that is something that stands against our praise or trust in others it said in verse number 3 put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man in whom there is no help so it talks about royalty a person of resources the person who has the potential he's going to be the king he's headed there don't put your trust in man even the best of men putting your trust in the best best of men is at odds at putting your hope in God putting your hope in God is a form of praise unto him and trusting him and then in verse 4 it tells us why we shouldn't trust man his breath goeth forth he returneth to the earth in that very day his thoughts perish he goes from from dust to dust we will perish so there's a danger in trusting in kings the Jewish people they went marching in the Zion in the days of

[19:50] Cyrus the Persian and they rejoiced they had protection by a powerful king Cyrus was on the throne no one would dare attack them the great weight of the empire had their back and their cause and what more could they want than that but by the time the singers wrote this hymn times had changed and it was not longer it wasn't much longer before the Samaritans were writing letters to the Persian kings and saying things like this beware of the Jews they are a troublesome crowd they attend to fortify Jerusalem so as to raise insurrection against the throne that is their history search the archives and see let your history books tell you how much trouble Nebuchadnezzar had with these Jews and so before long the Persians had second thoughts about letting the Jews continue with any more building and orders were issued for the work to stop you can find in Ezra 4 but even when that was happening they could still praise the Lord because their praise was not placed on the king or the empire that they were part of but it was in the God who gives us hope and God is to be praised man is to be questioned there is no salvation that's what we're saying when there is no we shouldn't trust in them there is no help we say our salvation does not come from man they don't find our help there and the greatest among us are only men were subject to death from Adam to dust or to say from dust to dust you know it's a foolish exhortation to say just have faith people like to say that sometimes right you just gotta have faith you gotta have faith baby

[21:21] I think that's a quote alright from a song but you just gotta have faith you know an exhort just have faith and it can be misplaced faith in what faith in whom faith in our conscience or gut feeling is not correct I'm gonna share with you a story two people have faith one was misplaced one of them was properly placed but just having faith was not the answer nor can we put our faith implicitly in conscience when John Huss one of those martyrs from that book was burned at the stake a poor widow brought a bundle of sticks and gave them to the priest in charge of the fire she said put them up close holy father John Huss said to her you must hate me greatly what have I done to you or yours that you hate me so she said you are a heretic wood is expensive and I am poor I cannot afford this bundle of sticks but to burn a heretic is a good work so I have made the sacrifice conscience said to John Huss give your body to be burned conscience said to the widow give your bundle to burn him conscience alone is a poor thing to put your trust in in case I read it too quickly story of a widow with very little money took her money to buy wood to burn a martyr because she just had faith she just had this feeling that's what she should do but faith ought to be placed in

[22:44] Jesus faith ought to be put in the God who is praiseworthy what is praiseworthy and it's the fact that God is our help you've walked in the rooms before and they said what are you so excited about people should walk among us and they should say what are you so excited about and it's the fact that our God is praiseworthy and so reasons have been given here in this psalm for confidence we're going to look at verse 6 and 7 and we'll give you three of them God made the heavens and the earth he made them the sea and all that is therein and he keepeth truth forevermore he is that powerful he is the creator of the universe and so we can put our confidence in him if you're going to hire somebody you want a resume if you want to you look at reviews online you want to know are they trustworthy our God is the creator of this universe he keepeth his truth forever he never breaks a promise verse 6 he made heaven and earth the sea and all in he keepeth truth forever this is the end of it there and then verse 7 he provides for those that are in need he is powerful and he is trustworthy but whatever need that you have he is able to meet and provide he executes judgment for the oppressed which giveth food to the hungry the Lord looses the prisoner three things are said about him he provides justice for the oppressed you feel like something's been done in your life there's an injustice and that's a cause that has caused you to be upset you find there's no hope you can put your hope in a God who created the universe who doesn't break a promise who provides for your need and he provides justice for the oppressed he provides food for the hungry and he provides liberty for those that are in prison and there is all kinds of prisons in this world but most of them we voluntarily walk into and he can provide liberty for us and this leads to this proclamation of power and loving care from our God verses 8 and 9 the Lord opened the eyes of the blind the Lord raises them that are bowed down the Lord loveth the righteous the Lord preserves the stranger he loveth the fatherless and the widow but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down the proclamation of his power and love opening the eyes of the blind raising them that are bowed down he loves the righteous he preserves the stranger he loves the fatherless and the widow but those that are against him he will turn upside down those are descriptions about the faithfulness of our God and how we can put hope in him you know what we learn in the New Testament about Jesus Christ the Messiah who is God in Matthew 9 we see him opening the eyes of the blind in Luke 13 we see him taking those that are bowed down and telling them to stand up

[25:15] Matthew 13 we see him loving those that are righteous in Matthew 8 we see him watching over and caring for the strangers in Luke 7 we see him blessing and caring for the fatherless and the widow in Matthew 21 we see him turn the way of the wicked upside down Jesus Christ God shows us that he is one that we can be happy in and have hope and so this is supposed to produce what in our lives what should this produce in our lives and the answer is happiness being able to put our hope in the Lord it provides happiness that was verse number 5 happy is he that hath his hope in the God of Jacob for his help whose hope is in the Lord his God it should provide a happiness for us and so there's a negative to positive here if we only had one another to look for help we would be most miserable we don't put it in man we can put it in God but because we can we can be happy 9 out of 10 times when I said a pastor said

[26:16] I'm talking about Charles Spurgeon 10 out of 10 times when I say Spurgeon I'm talking about Spurgeon alright here's what Spurgeon says about this matter we never praise God better than by exercising faith in him quiet trust is among the sweetest music that reaches the heart of God why do I quote Spurgeon because I couldn't have come up with that one on my own alright I want to say that again quiet trust is among the sweetest music that reaches the heart of God Brother Steve I like that I've never recorded any singing you've never invited me to do any vocals because the singing part that's my problem but this idea that quiet trust is among the sweetest music that reaches the heart of God really excites me when we put our trust in man we rob God of his glory and we're giving to others the confidence which belongs alone to him quiet trust in the Lord you know the number one person that you put your trust in outside of God that robs God from the glory it's you and it's me so many times we have taken things on ourselves and we think that we are the ones to solve them and so what are we going to do we're going to praise the Lord the Lord shall reign forever even thy God

[27:28] O Zion unto all generations praise ye the Lord we'll sing together I'm going to pray and then we'll stand and we'll sing a song as we leave the night and let the little kids and Awana hear us praise the Lord but as Stephen and the musicians come and get in the place let me tell you one last story something I just really loved Pastor Danny Guess we would go to these churches and do Bible drills any of y'all do Bible drills anybody want to compete Jason you're on after church alright and the portico alright Bible drills you open up the passage the place in the Bible well Pastor Danny Guess we never knew when he was going to do it but he would bust out in a song and he would say just the precious name of Jesus is worthy of our praise let us bow our knees before him our hands to heaven raise when he comes in clouds of glory with him to ever reign let us just lift our happy voices and praise his name and they would all join in the chorus and it would say let's just praise the Lord praise the Lord let's just lift our hearts to heaven and praise the Lord let's just praise the Lord praise the Lord let's just lift our hearts to heaven and praise the Lord and that's my encouragement to you today is the praise of the Lord because he is worthy of us placing our hope in and then putting our hope in him and having a place to place our hope ought to create a happy people

[28:44] Heavenly Father I thank you for your word thank you for how it's been given to us in so many literary forms and we read stories of your faithfulness and then we sing songs of your faithfulness and then we see prophecy of your faithfulness and Lord we just have promises and all these things allow us Lord to put our hope in you Father we repent we turn from placing our trust in lesser things and we turn to you and we say praise your holy name praise the Lord oh my soul and as long as we live we want to praise the Lord what we want to do at our workplaces and at our school and wherever we go we don't put trust in the best of men and not even in ourselves because one day we will die and we will return to dust and we're not worthy Father I want to thank you for the happiness that comes from us being able to put our faith and trust in the God of Jacob our hope is in you you've made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in it you execute judgment against the oppressed we are not to be the judge your son will judge this world you give food to the hungry and Lord you loosen the prisoners you've opened the eyes of the blind and you've raised them that were bowed down you love the righteous you preserve strangers you relieve the fatherless and the widows and you turn the way of the wicked upside down

[30:05]  Father we want to thank you for coming to this earth being born in a manger and then living this out Lord so we could see that these were not just promises and songs and psalms but you did this for us and so Lord you shall reign forever oh God oh Zion of Zion of all generations Father your people tonight say praise the Lord in Jesus name I pray Amen