Praise First and Forever

Good morning, everyone. And welcome. Everybody else is welcoming you, so I might as well welcome you. But really, welcome. The feast is gone, and here we are at the last great day, the eighth, the unexplained holy day. I just want to comment about the music we've had. When I heard we weren't going to have lives singing, I went, Maybe outwardly. Inshah sure did. God tells us to sing. And I heard them we have to sing with Mass, and I went, At first reaction, and I said, you know, I shouldn't have. But this has just been lovely. This last song was beautiful.

And I want to especially thank Dr. Patterson for the special music, the offertories and other special music, Which is alive. Pianos don't sing and have breath to poison you with. It's just beautiful.

I had to say that because he bought my dinner the other night.

In fact, I just appreciate the years of professional playing and teaching. Somebody said, well, he's the pianist the other day. I said, well, yeah. Not to mention the chair of the whole piano department, the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Yep, he is definitely a pianist. And I, my dear friend, and I just want to say that because it's well deserved, much appreciated. And if I had time, I would love to go through and name every one of you for your service, Which God can do, but I don't have time, so I'd better get on the ball and do my job.

But really, that specific service and all your services is worth mentioning and important. And God does that. So with the Feast of the Abernackels 2020 finished now, it's history. It goes so fast. I debated whether I will tell you about this next thing, which is personal, but I'm going to.

Because I want to take another good, strong lick at honoring my parents. My parents were baptized in August, not sure which day. I remember it. I was disgusted because I had to stay at the car with my Aunt Nancy, who was a teenager. And my parents went down to the river and baptized. I didn't get to go swimming. It was three. But that was in 1950, making this the 70th, for sure, and maybe the 71st. Actually, it's the 70th Feast of the Abernackels, but the 71st last great day.

Because the mail was delayed. They were baptized. Dad was working in Tulsa. Mama was back there, pregnant with my sister, I think. And nope, she had to be just born. Newborn plus me, a three-year-old. And a letter went out informing them about the feast. Well, they'd been baptized and knew about the Sabbath. They didn't know about the feast. And so it was delayed. He finally got the letter during the feast. The feast was coming, and it was followed by the last great day.

So Dad did something really unusual for those days, and that is he made a long-distance call. Hardly ever did that back then. And he said, Phyllis, what are you doing tomorrow? Well, I'm going to do the laundry. He said, well, don't do anything! Why? He said, well, it's the last great day! And she didn't know what that was. So he explained it over the phone, and then he hopped in the car and drove like crazy. He got there, and they kept a teeny bit by knowledge. They knew it was the feast of the feast last day, and then the last great day.

So would you say I kept the last great day? Well, I was there, you know. But just to honor my parents. She is lost dad in 99, and she is not far from here in Baraboo at the age of 97. And survives. She has had dementia, and she can't really talk now. It's gotten that bad. But I would like to stand up and give them honor for their pioneering courage and their faithfulness.

Without them, I sure wouldn't be here. Anyway, so sorry for the personal touch there. Become a beloved baby the older I get anyway. And I don't like it. So we've had a wonderful feast here. Very interesting, deep, and some thorough messages. Very much appreciated. A variety of them. Just been inspired to go and do better. I don't know about you, but I always want to go and do better when I experience the feast every year.

Life is tough. There are many negatives, disappointments. It's full of sorrow and trials, as Solomon reminds us. But the Holy Days and life itself, represented by the Holy Days, are joyous. Special high family days of joy and celebration. Red letter days for God. And they should be filled with joy and exalting all the time. Like our lives in general. But we tend to lean towards the downward pull of human nature and discouragement and negativism of many types.

Because we're pushed that way. And we have that downward pull, which is not from us. We get used to it and learn that. But it's from the evil sources, spiritual sources, that there are around us, demons. And Satan and his minions, as we say, trying to burst our bubble of joy that we have at all times.

Do you think that there is a specific action that we can take? Do you think maybe God gave us an antidote? Something that we could do that would just fix that problem and just pull us out of discouragement or anger or jealousy or whatever it is. Do you think that God would have given us something like that? I suspect you do. And he did. We have the answer.

There's a specific key that will directly move our attitude and something we can do. God has to do his part, of course, but we initiate it. And we can do this. And it'll just bring us out of whatever attitude or thought when we recognize something negative in our mind, which is often. And just bring us back.

Force ourselves back into the faith, hope, love, joy, exaltation mode. There is something you can do. And it just happens to directly relate to the meaning of this day. So I thought it would be good to present that this morning because it does directly relate.

I'd like to look at this command of God, a key action that God tells us to take. It's a command. It's not optional. And then how often we should do that. And then how important it is, and then we'll tie it into the last great day. It should be pretty easy.

So, in conclusion, not to be coy, but I'm going to use the takeaways. I have four takeaways. I'm going to give you three for the introduction. So we know where we're going before we start, and we can get on through it. Takeaway number one, three right now. No. God commands us to give praise to Him. We're commanded to give praise to Him. How often? Well, Hebrews 13 gives us the answer. It's written right there. Verse 15 of Hebrews 13, By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. In other words, all the time we are to come into the temple of God and offer. And that is a sacrifice. It's the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. Verse 16 is interesting to add in this context, right following. But do good and to communicate, forget not. For with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Interesting to note. And I did plan these together. Opening night service. One of the most important keys to making it a spiritual feast. And now praise. Just one of the very basic, if not the basic, key or requirement we have to be in God's kingdom. I'll explain this in just a minute here. But notice that praise even comes before service. You can serve and not have the right attitude. Get yourself in the right attitude and then your service is effective. Take away number one. God commands us to give praise to Him continually. Take away number two. God's way of thinking is always in an outgoing direction. It's always towards others. Actually, Satan's is also that way too, in some ways. That is, selfishly he will inspire lying, hatred, deceit, and all the bad things. Everything bad. His motive is to come in, but he aims it at those he hates. So it's always outgoing toward us. So you just have to understand the way that works. But God's way is an outgoing direction of goodwill and blessing towards others. We've used this. We talked about a God-playing relationship bound by God-playing love, godly love, greater than ours, or just defining love as outgoing concern. Real love has this outgoing quality. That's how God the Father is, and that's how Jesus Christ is. We'll come back to that with a little bit more explanation. God is always looking toward others with goodwill and favor, and always communicating that love through words and action. So this is long explanation or sentence. It's all very important. God's way of thinking is always outgoing, outgoing concern, always looking toward others with goodwill and favor in a positive way, not just having it, but always communicating it with words and action, His love. Take away number three. The whole kingdom and family forever will be built on this principle.

This is a vital thing. The basic principle of God's nature, which is, we read that in 1 John 4.8, God is love. And the expression of God's love, which we call praise, is one and the same, except it's the expression that outgoing, taking it to others. So the whole family forever will be built on this principle. It's not just that He has love. He's always giving it and giving and serving. It's a principle of His nature. And that first is what they had between the two of them before they decided to become father and son, way back before time began. Paul uses the term, which we can't really think about, but before refers to time. So it's before time. But that's, you know, we have a limitation there of thinking. But just between the two of them, they praise each other. They were bonded. And they still do. It was before time began. They presently do. And now that He has created other beings to praise and love and give to, they both do. And forever in His glorious Kingdom, they will be doing the same. And everybody there will be doing the same. Just having this outgoing love, outgoing concern that just drives, it's just natural, it comes out in power, but purposefully giving it to others. Now, first point then. That's the takeaways. Let's get right to point numero uno. The points aren't that important. It's actually for my benefit because I'm reading my notes. Stay where I am. Psalm 117. Now, I would suggest that you memorize that right now. The whole Psalm, just memorize it right now. You know what I'm talking about. So it's two verses long, and it's just what Psalms would say. This is considered a summary of all the Psalms. Two verses, if you want to recite a summary, if you want to talk about the Psalms in two verses, here it is. O praise the Lord, all ye nations, praise Him all ye peoples. That means all ye organized nations, and all the others. Tribes and groups and everybody in the world. For His merciful kindness is great toward us. The word is translated mercy or merciful kindness. It includes both thoughts. And it's great toward us. Usually it says His mercy endures forever. Psalm 136 and a lot of others, you know, repeats that a lot. But in this case, His merciful kindness is great toward us. And the truth of the Lord endures forever. I think it's reversed there in the way it's stated, so that we'll notice it. For His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise ye the Lord. Now this is useful for several things. It's a summary of the Psalms, but it's also a didactic or teaching Psalm because it teaches us about how the Psalms are built, and specifically how the praise Psalms are put together. If you want to know about the various types of Psalms, get a study Bible. In my experience, I haven't read all of them, but the NIV study Bible is really good on the Psalms, but so is the ESV, which is much more thorough. And you'll get this basic knowledge, the different kinds of Psalms and so on. If you want to know that, just grab one of those common study Bibles that we have available. In order to understand the subject of praise, we're going to have to understand a little bit about the Psalms. First of all, the Hebrew title. What does Psalm mean? Well, it's a Greek word. The English word comes from Greek, but I think it's psalmos.

But in Hebrew, the title of this book of Psalms is called the Book of Praises. Psalms are described as hymns and psalms about God and God's things, kind of a variety. But it's specifically in Hebrew, the Book of Praises, a psalm, is a praise in the first place.

The word praise comes from, that is the Hebrew word, comes from a praise, English too. It comes from the word appraise, or the concept of praising, or like an appraiser does, he sets a price on. Well, how much is my house worth? How much is this painting worth, etc. And he sets a price on it. It also means, in a different context, to commend the worth or the value of someone or something.

So praise is the response to the worthiness of someone. We praise God for basically two things. We praise God for His actions. Praise God for He brought us out of the land of Egypt. A lot of the Psalms, that's mentioned actually all through Old New Testament, you'll find that's the major thing. And the next one is going to be the second Exodus, where He saved the world from death and brought the world out of the clutches of Satan, that great second Exodus in prophecy.

So His actions, what He has done for you, and secondly His attributes are His character, the characteristics. So actions and attributes are the two divisions, are the two main things. There are several types of Psalms. There are Psalms that are Messianic about Christ, the Messiah, Pentateuchal or Repentant Psalms, Didactic is a teaching song, Thanksgiving, seeking help or guidance, you know, Help I'm in trouble, it's desperate, those kind of Psalms. There are several of those. What do you think the most common one is? It's the lament. These are terrible, I need help.

It's just interesting commentary on human nature because David, of course, wrote a lot of those. And so did sons of Asaph. You know, these aren't just limited to David, of course. But then there is the praise Psalm, and there are a few of those. And it's specifically about praising God, obviously. All the Psalms, most of the Psalms have direct words of praise to God. There are a few, if you add the few that don't, or if you consider the few that don't, they certainly imply it like the first and second Psalm.

Praising God is implied. It's not stated specifically. That's the summary of the two main themes in the book of Psalms. There are two ways of life. Psalm 1, Christ is coming back. Psalm 2. And they certainly both imply praise of God. But there are some that are called praise Psalms. And 100% of them have at least implied praise. Now, in these praise Psalms, this is one of the fixed forms that has three motifs, I'm quoting from a commentary.

It's like a standard, say, classical logic. Or you can take, well, they say, that is a song from the 50s, a song from the 60s, the style of music we usually think of, but it's also the way the song builds. It's a ballad, or it's some other kind of song. And so this is a standard type of Psalm that's called a praise. Psalm has three motifs, or three sections. The first one is a formal call to praise. And if you look at 1-17, O praise the Lord, all ye nations, praise him, all ye people.

It is a call, and it usually tells who to come and praise. The congregation, all ye sons of Jacob, those who are faithful to God, and various things. It tells who it's talking to. Sometimes it even mentions how, like singing with a dance, maybe, or with a lyre or timbrel. But anyway, it's a call. The main section is just the praises, the different attributes of God that we're praising, and the different actions he has taken.

When singing, you know, over the next year, in the future, forever. Singing, take a look at that, and you'll find that their either attributes or actions can fit in those two sections. That's the main section. And then there's just a note of closure or resolution. Call to praise, why we're praising and who we're praising, and then a closure. So in 117, this is just a very condensed praise psalm, and the form is in many other psalms. That's just worth noting, because this is important, because this is how we're told to praise.

And that's going to be really important. There are some ingredients that make up praise itself. I'm going to quote the IASBE, International Standard Biblical Encyclopedia, when I guess two sentences here are three. There are certain of these ingredients that make up praise. One is elevation of the object of praise. If you're praising God, you're raising His value in your mind and others.

And if you're praising other people, complimenting. That was really great. You did a good job. Thanks a lot for thinking of that. Those kind of things. Well, you're raising that person. It's always outgoing. It's not the left-handed sort of thing. Well, it was pretty good compared... Of course, I can do way better, but that's not exactly praise. That's vanity, for lack of a more thorough term. But related to this is the direction of the speaker's whole being away from himself or herself and toward God.

I thought this was good because this ties right in. It's the same thing we say to describe God's love. Outgoing concern. It's the direction of the speaker's whole being away from himself or herself toward God. Thus, while praise psalms are filled with the speaker's emotions, we do not look at the speaker. Instead, we look with the speaker at God. It's not just on our plane. It's going toward God. Very important. It describes what we call praise. Then he talks about a double quality, where we're looking horizontally at others vertically toward God.

That just means that the example of our praise is very important to God because it's elevating and lifting up other people. That's what God does. That's how he thinks. He serves, sacrifices, and gives to all of us. Now, for a second point. I'm carefully watching the time and starting to sweat. By the way, I can take a hint. We want to keep things on time and not have anybody starving to death today.

We need to consider the example of Christ because he prayed a lot, and he praised God a lot. We know by looking at his example, the Lord's Prayer. In the first place, what we call the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father. The first big thing that we talk with about God is the kingdom. That's our goal. But before that, there's a preparation. Our Father naming him, addressing him, How load be thy name?

The praise element is the number one thing. That'll be real important in just a minute. It's actually the most important thing, or the gateway to every other kind of prayer. The praising of God, acknowledging his name with his greatness, and how important that is. It becomes more and more important as we study through the subject of praise. Many times Christ went out alone and to a mountain, a place by himself. So he'd spend some hours with the Father. He didn't dare flub up.

He didn't dare make one mistake and choose one wrong thought, and let it take residence all of his whole life. What a horrible trial that would be for us. What did he pray about for hours and hours? Well, he must certainly have prayed about that. But also, if you look at several times when he was praying for a long time, you read about the miracles that he did and read before that.

That's when he was praying for a long time. So he was planning out his service. What great or small thing he was going to do. But he was planning that, talking about the things he was going to do to fulfill God's will with the Father. So that's what we need to do in our prayers, in our praise. So this key, as I've said, I called it a key. It's not just praying. Some people say, well, pray about that.

And the good, the good on the need to say, give me this, give me that, give me the other thing. Oh, I need this. Oh, take this evil away and help me to, you know, give me a red wagon. No, make it blue. Well, I'd like both wagons. And gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. Does that ring a bell? We tend to do that.

We need to put praise first. Put God first. Get that settled. Then the other prayers will come along and be a lot better, a lot more honest and full. And you can learn more from them. So Christ taught and he explained and used examples from and prayed from the Psalm. Best example, or one of the greatest, is Psalm 22, verse 1, where he quoted that in agony, saying, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So we need to follow Jesus' examples, the example of many times quoting the Psalms and using the Psalms for our guides to pray to God.

Another point, which is, I think, especially insightful, and overall description of the Psalter, the book of Psalms, or the book of praises, is that it is described as the spiritual life of the nation of Israel. The spiritual life, the worship.

And when you think about it, it even applies more to the New Testament church than ancient Israel, to the Israel of God. It describes our worship, because worship is praise, as well as asking, and specifically praying other things, which we're told in the Lord's Prayer, for one thing, and other places.

But this describes our worship, the worship of the church of God, back then, mainly in the tabernacle, now, mainly privately with God. It's our worship. So we need to learn from that. We learn so much by using the Psalms as our prayer guides.

Fourth point. That was the third point. Here's the fourth point.

The points don't matter so much in this particular sermon, but why does God want us to praise Him so much?

Why does God want this? This is eye-opening, I think. I didn't understand a lot about this until I studied in the last, more than a year, I guess.

But I decided to pray that, to study that aspect of prayer.

And this was eye-opening, so I'll pass it along to you, and you may be way ahead of me.

Maybe you studied it before I did and understood this.

But why does He want us to praise Him so much that He says continually? I think we need to pray in the words day by day as we come to God, go to the temple, to offer that sacrifice.

And the answer is, to that question, why is that there are many benefits to all parties.

First of all, what does God get out of our praise? Does He get it? Yes.

He gets converted children, those who are willing to be converted, who are practicing His way of thinking of outgoing concern.

Practice that and you serve. That's part of our service.

Thinking away from self. This is so important for us to do, because our natural tendency is just to think, me, me, me, me, me.

I've written an article in Time called, Ode to the Me-God.

It was very interesting.

We have the natural state of mind of mankind as we worship ourselves.

The me-God. What I think, of course, is exceedingly important.

Well, then how about to us, what do we get out of praising?

So God gets a lot out of our praise. It's not that He needs it for Himself, but there's something happening in us, and what do we get out of it?

Absolutely everything. It's the gateway to all the other kinds of prayer.

Getting the attitude straight. You're up there, I'm down here. You're great, I'm teeny tiny.

You're powerful, I'm weak as a kitten.

You don't need any help, you have all power. I need help in everything.

And you straighten that out, and then your prayer becomes much more weighty, much more meaningful, much more honest, actually.

So spiritual growth in every area is what we get out of it.

I mentioned, and then this is mentioned three times already in the feast, Jeremiah 9, 23 to 24.

If you're going to glory, well don't think about how rich you are, how strong you are, or how smart you are, or wise, and so on.

But let Him the glorieth, this is verse 24, Jeremiah 9, glory in this, that He understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, and that He delights in loving-kindness, and so on. I'll break off there.

There's another description of the Psalms, general description. It's the worship of the Church of God.

It's the spiritual life and worship. But another description, true description, is that Psalms is all about God.

There are a lot of different subjects. There are a lot of different feelings.

You learn about how to crawl out of depression, Psalm 40 and 41.

You learn about how to exalt, how to learn about history. You learn a lot of things.

I don't have a list here. But you learn more through those things. That's not the emphasis.

The emphasis is on what God is like through the praises in the Psalms, every one of them.

You learn what God is like. The Psalms are all about God.

What He is, He's gracious, He's merciful, He's absolutely honest, straight as a string.

Faithful, perfect in character. What He does, He never slumbers, He always looks out for us, He camps around us, He builds a hedge around us, He hears us, He actively looks for opportunities to help us, He's extremely generous, He gives blessings in favor and love, and He just delights in giving and helping and having mercy. He gives us wisdom when we ask.

By the way, very low bar for that. That's the first gift of the Holy Spirit in one view.

He has to give us wisdom as the first gift in one sense because if you don't know what to do, the first thing you need to do is, what should I do?

You have to have the wisdom to see the truth of what to do.

And so there's a very low bar just to ask for it. James 1.5.

People say, oh, I'm not worthy of will. God give me the will. Yes, He'll give you the wisdom first.

You've got to use that to make the right decision. At least one little right decision, low bar, and He'll give you some more wisdom.

But that's the first one. God even helps, well, He helps us to learn. He even helps our memory. John 14.26.

When you need it, I'll bring it back to you. A lot of college students have thought that, you know, taken a test.

I sure prayed it a lot, a lot of times. And other times when I needed to remember, and God will help us with that.

He's the God of all comfort. He gives us comfort. He's just glorious in so many ways. He wants us to know this.

And this isn't just a laundry list of good things that we say about Him. The Egyptians said good things. They wrote some beautiful Psalms. Sound very much like David's, but it's to the different gods with, you know, beaks and horns and hooves and, you know, scales and all the things they worshipped.

It's not just words to say. This is how the true God really is. So it's really, really important. And we learn by practicing, saying, by verbalizing this in our worship to God. It's a learning experience. It's a fabulously deep learning experience.

So when you obey God and praise Him for all of His attributes and His actions, you learn. And you know God more deeply and personally. You get to know Him. God gives you understanding of the subject that you're studying, which is, in this case, Him and of what He is like.

Come to know God. And this is, in one view, one way to state the purpose of life, to come to know God. This is exceedingly important.

We praise Him continually. That is day-by-day habit. And we come to understand, personally, His words and thoughts and have the mind of Christ.

And that's the definition of conversion. And it's done through this key of praise.

Praise, as I say, can be viewed as a gateway to all the other kinds of prayer, and therefore to every blessing there is.

You gain understanding for whomever you praise and pray for. Understanding of God and understanding and empathy for the people that you pray for.

The projects, even in God's work. God gives understanding about what we pray for.

So, praising God, not just that there is praise, but praising God. That is the action that we take.

It is in itself one of God's great blessings, because the action of following through and doing it changes our mind.

And God is able to convert us through that, through our articulating verbally His praises, what He is like.

It's a principle of learning, and that's a broader subject, but I don't have time to go into that.

And I don't have all that much knowledge. I have to read books and read experts on that.

If you verbalize it, your brain learns it better. I can say that.

So, you know you're in a bad attitude, and you want to move to...

But we move from the crummy, miserable, rotten, selfish, cynical, all those other bad words, frame of mind, and go into the faith, hope, love, joy kind of thinking. The exaltation. And you'd like to be thinking that. You're having a rough day. Things are going kind of poorly.

You're fighting bad thoughts, bad attitudes, and you need a break, so take a break already.

Go outside, go to wherever you have to go, so you can think quietly, not be interrupted, and start praising God.

You can do that because you know a lot about that already. Get your mind off yourself. Into the outgoing mode, and guess what? God will do His part and give you a positive attitude.

It's called the Spirit of God, the attitude or Spirit of God. It's almost magic.

As a matter of fact, I like to use that word sometimes, explaining it real quickly. We have magic. We can't understand it. It's beyond us.

Well, black magic or actual magic, I don't mean sleight of hand tricks, that's always fun, but actual magic, that's just counterfeit for God's miracles, for God's Spirit.

So it is magic, with air quotes, except it's not. It's the real thing. God, magically as it were, spiritually gives us a change of mind. He's at work converting us.

It's a fabulous offer. It's one of the greatest gifts.

Okay, a list of benefits and observations. I'm going to try to read this at double speed.

Because you can make up your own. You get the idea. Praise is like building or hooking up a conduit straight from the throne of God to yourself, the prayer, in which He gives you all the spiritual blessings that are talked about.

The love, the hope, the joy, the fruits of the Spirit, the riches, Paul says, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 3, and Colossians 1.

Just the riches of the kingdom, of having the assurance, the faith, and words like that.

Words fail me because I can't think of it right now.

Assurance, just the reassurance, the strengthening spiritually. God calls them riches through the pen of Paul.

It's this attitude of the outgoing, mind off self, mindset.

The idea is I will take care of my brother or sister first, and I know that God will take care of me.

So I'm going to have His attitude of outgoing because there's plenty of strength where that comes from.

And God has all the strength. Colossians 1, verses 9 through 14. I just mentioned that. I don't have time to read it.

But that's an example of what I'm talking about. It's just like a pipeline coming straight from God.

God's thrown to you.

God strengthens us in all these gifts through our praise and appreciation of His attributes and His character traits.

Praise, this is another observation, praise elevates. It's always raising, not yourself, but it's raising the object of who you're giving the praise to.

It actually praises God to praise other people.

That's not a stretch. That's really true. It's praise of God. When we pray for other people, we are raising them up because we're placing value.

We don't pray for somebody that doesn't need prayers or that we never heard of or consider unimportant.

And to be truthful, we do consider a lot of people unimportant.

That's the area we need to grow in. But somebody you never heard of, you don't even know them, might pray, thy kingdom come. Please help those poor people in that distant land with that flood, all that death and destruction and misery.

But when you, even that, is in your own mind lifting them up. But when you pray for somebody, you're saying, this person is worthy, that I can use the name of Christ, not in vain, because this person is worthy of this prayer.

And I ask in Jesus' name, Father, that you will help a good friend or this person that I don't know very well, but they need help. This is placing high value on them.

That praises them as a person, and it praises God as their Creator. It's all good.

In God's way, it just becomes better and better and better, and it becomes higher and higher and higher.

The good grows. So when you're in the middle of a daily grind, I think I mentioned this in an earlier point, and you're fighting off bad thoughts, bad attitudes, and so on, so go, I mentioned, praise God, and good things happen.

But then at the end, if you need help, then that's the time to ask for yourself.

Praise God first, and then ask. That's kind of a separate point, because I didn't mention that last part.

Praise has a lot of benefits. One is it relieves stress and lowers blood pressure.

It's better than puppies! You've heard that pet a puppy or a cat, you know.

God has built everything into His way, everything that we need.

Feel the stress, get some time, and get your mind back in the right way. Your blood pressure even goes down.

Praise is a running conversation with God, the Father, and Jesus Christ.

You can't just speak to one. They're both there, you know. You can't whisper to one or the other. They both hear, you're praying to both. And He said, let's pray to the Father in My name.

So it's just a running conversation we have through our life. Instant in prayer is what Paul called it.

If we praise God and each other, here's the last reason on this little list. If we praise God and each other, how could we possibly ever fall away and leave God and leave our dear friends, brothers and sisters, and leave His truth and walk away from His church and His people?

If we praise them continually along with our praises of God.

Do you think praise is good? Do you think that's the understatement of the century?

It's one of those. There's a lot of interstatements about God.

Now, the next section is to explain verse by verse thoroughly every word of Psalm 107, which is a long one, and Psalm 145, which is not too long.

So we're going to have to skip the next two points.

I knew it before we started, but I would like to say this. Psalm 145, just to give you an example, gives three wonderful, great aspects of God attributes after the introduction and then the closure. It's just a great example, an expansion, as it were, of Psalm 117. And Psalm 107 is kind of the granddaddy of all praise Psalms in that. It goes through this. If you look carefully, you'll notice, hey, I just read that.

Oh, that men would thank God and praise Him for the wonderful things and His actions that He takes.

And you say, well, hold on, I read that. Well, it's five times because it's five separate praise Psalms.

And then it comes up with a fantastic conclusion, which I'm not going to tell you because I want you to read it.

The reason He goes through these five examples is so that men will understand. The wise people will examine it and look at it, and they will understand. But their four more words are five to the last verse, Psalm 107.

And you look at that, and He tells you what they will understand, the number one thing that God wants us to understand. So that's for you to study, if you like. I highly recommend it. So we don't know much about the vast eternal future pictured by this day, but we do know about the foundational character of God's family in His kingdom, and that is praise. That is love. God says, I am love. God is love. Focused on other people. Always the outgoing element of God's love. That's the basic fundamental principle that we have to have in our minds. Just enjoy it yourself. It's always focused on others. Outgoing. That's to be like God. So the two great members of the Godhead loved each other and showed that continually. Let us create men in our image, in our likeness. How much? They didn't have years. They just had eternity. How much did they discuss that before they decided on the plan? They were so tightly bound. They were always building each other up. This is not just a guess. They had to be. Then when Jesus became a man and came to earth, His priority all through His whole ministry, especially He mentions this in John 8 and John 12, but a lot of other places, was to glorify the Father. Not me. I'm doing this, I'm saying His words, not mine. To glorify Him, not me. And then He also told us the Father's focus, His goal, His objective, was to glorify the Son. So they had been praising each other forever. They're also the same yesterday, today, and forever. They're just always the same in terms of character. They have been praising each other for all time, since I don't have a better word, and will forever for eternity. And we have to have that same attitude of absolute love and devotion and praise, deep understanding from years of praising God continually in our daily prayers and at other times.

We have to have that well developed and built into our minds, so that that's not just the way God is, but that's the way we are. That we praise. We have God's love, and it comes out to be expressed in praise towards others, and first to God and to Jesus Christ. So that's the sermon. There's more to say. It just kills me not to give you these other five points. No. I'm just kidding. I knew we wouldn't get to a lot of things. I'd like to review the four takeaways, though. Number one, God commands us to give praise to Him continually. Number two, it's God's way of thinking, outgoing concern. Number three, the whole kingdom and family forever will be built on this principle. And number four is likened to it. Praising God and others is the expression of the fundamental characteristic of God. So we were called to the greatest, most glorious calling. There could be more than we can imagine. At the foundational core of our calling to God's work and to His kingdom is the imperative command to praise God continually. It's our job. It's what we are, what we are becoming. Brethren, always and forever, praise ye the Lord.