Why Do We Praise God? | Adam Weber

What if instead of focusing on everything that's going bad in your life, what if you focus on everything that's going so well? And to be clear, I'm not telling you to avoid the sucky parts. There's a lot of sucky parts. But what if we focused and we were consumed with all the good, friend, if you started looking in your life, if I started looking in my life, you and I, we wouldn't be able to count all the blessings. You and I have so many reasons to praise God because he's the one from whom all blessings flow. So today we are starting up our new series called Then Sings My Soul, where each week in the series, we're gonna be looking at a different hymn to explore the stories behind these old songs, the scripture that inspired them and why they still matter for all of us here today. But to be so clear though, our hope with this series is not just to reminisce or just to appreciate these old songs. No, instead our hope is that these hymns would light our hearts on fire for God. That's our hope. Now, personally for me, I grew up attending a traditional Lutheran church where the only thing we ever sang was hymns. It was all the classics,

how great thou art in the garden, great is thy faithfulness. And well, you've maybe heard this part of my story before. Growing up, I strongly disliked everything about church, including the hymns, okay? Didn't like any part of it. With the hymns, I'd look around as a young boy and everyone in my eyes would just kind of mumbling along to the songs and we'd sing these boring old songs and then everyone would sit and they'd try their hardest to stay awake for the rest of the service. And I just hated all of it. I can remember thinking as a little kid, why are all of you adults here? Why are you here? I'm forced to be here by my parents. Why are you here? Well, as a sophomore in high school, my family switched churches and I started following Jesus. And at that new church, we never sang hymns and I loved it. I was like, finally a place that doesn't sing boring old songs. Well, as irony has it, a few summers later, the summer before my senior year of college, I filled in for a Methodist pastor and guess what? Only songs that church sang was hymns. And yours truly was now leading the entire service. And you see friends, that summer,

instead of mumbling these songs, for the first time in my life, I came to actually hear and understand the words that we were singing and I was blown away. I was blown away. A couple of years after that, I attended Asbury Seminary out in Wilmore, Kentucky and every other week at Asbury, we'd sing hymns. And the guy playing the organ was an older man, but he'd play the organ like Jimi Hendrix played a guitar. No kidding me, these hymns would rival any rock concert and I'm actually not joking. It was the opposite of boring. Instead, they came alive. At one point I was like, I feel like the roof is gonna blow off of this church. Once again, with this series, whether these hymns are brand new for you or you've been singing them since the womb, I hope and pray that they'd come alive for each of you too. So today, the first hymn that we're gonna look at is the doxology. The doxology, for me, when I think about the doxology, I just immediately think about all the times and places that we'd sing this song. We sing it all the time. After taking communion, we'd sing the doxology. We'd sing it after receiving the offering. We'd sing it at funerals.

We'd even sing it at family gatherings before we ate. It's like, can we just eat the food? It's getting cold. I just have to confess, even into my early 20s, I had absolutely no clue what this song was all about. It's literally only 25 words long, but praise him above ye heavenly hosts. What in the heck does that mean? Today, I wanna start by reading the words of this hymn out loud for us, and it's almost hard to read them without singing them, but it just says, praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Okay, so before we go any further, I wanna give us a quick. Quick backstory, the word doxology comes from two Greek words, doxa and logos. And doxa means glory and logos means speech. And so you put these two words together, it means speaking glory or speaking praise. This hymn though, it was written back in 1674 by a guy named Thomas Ken. Thomas was good at writing hymns, but not a fashion icon, okay? But Thomas was an Anglican pastor and he originally wrote it. I thought this was fascinating for his college students

at Winchester College at Oxford University in England. Kind of interesting, the doxology itself, I didn't know this, it was actually a part of a larger hymn. Before we go any further, I just wanna highlight this for us. Friends, all these hymns that we're gonna look at in this series are great, but they're actually not that old. We often think of hymns as really, really old. The church is over 2000 years old. All these hymns that we're gonna look at, 300 at the most, 400 years old. And so genuinely, if someone ever tells you, these hymns, they're the right songs that you're supposed to sing in church. Yeah, this is how it's supposed to be. You can actually tell them, these songs are actually kind of new. Yeah, they're actually not that old at all. Jesus and the 12 disciples never, ever, ever thought of singing these songs. They didn't exist, okay? So jump it into this hymn. Again, in the first line, praise God from whom all blessings flow. If you've ever read this doxology, it's impossible to miss this hymn. It's all about praising God. Literally all four lines, they start and they tell us to praise God.

And more than that though, more than the hymn in scripture, the word praise, it shows up hundreds and hundreds of times. And it means to show glory and honor, to show joy and honor to God. But listen to this though, this word praise, it's an active verb. Like when you praise God, it's not just something that should be in your heart. It's not just something that should be on the insides. If it's just on the insides, that's actually not praise. Instead praise, it's active. It's meant to be done with singing and instruments. It's meant to be done in prayer. It's even meant to be done in dancing. Also, just for the record, as followers of Jesus, praising God, it's not an optional thing. It's not optional. Instead we're commanded as Jesus followers to do so. And so get this, even if we're not an expressive person, even if we're a private person, even if we're young or old, even if we're Norwegian or Dutch, again, it's active and we're commanded to praise him. Not optional. Just listen to Psalm 150, praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him for his acts of power. Praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet.

It goes on to say, praise him with dancing. Praise him with the strings and pipe. Praise him with the clash of cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. I don't know about you, but when I read that Psalm thinking about dancing and bagpipes and cymbals, it makes me picture like an Irish punk rock concert or something. Just gives me these terrible images. Once again, though, praising God, it's active. We're commanded to do so. It's actively telling God, Lord, I love you. It's actively singing and dancing. But Adam, I'm a German, I don't care. Lord, I love you so much. But Adam, pastor, I'm a reserved private person. It's not optional. Instead, I have to declare he's so great. But Adam and my family, the men in our family, we're not expressive. Again, it's not an optional thing. Instead, I have to praise you. I have to praise you. But Adam, you don't understand. No, friend, you don't understand. It's not optional. I have to. We're commanded to actively praise him. And so this hymn, it tells us to praise God.

And then it tells us one of the reasons why. And it says, praise God. From whom all blessings flow. The hymns remind us that every blessing and every good thing we have, it comes from him. Even Paul tells us. Paul says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. But Paul's saying every blessing we have, every single one comes from our God. Two years ago, I unexpectedly lost my brother. And over the last two years, almost every single morning and every single night before going to sleep, without even thinking about it, I find myself just telling God, Lord, I'm just so thankful for another day. I'm just so thankful for another day. Like I'm not just thankful for my job and I'm not just thankful for my house and my family and my dog, but I'm telling him I'm just so thankful to be alive. Like I'm just so thankful that God has given me another day to love him and serve him and friends. I'm just saying, if your heart is beating right now, you have a reason to praise him. If you have breath in your lungs right now,

I'm just saying, if you have breath in your lungs right now, I'm just telling you, you got a reason to praise him. Like what if instead of focusing on everything that's going bad in your life, what if you focus on everything that's going so well? And to be clear, I'm not telling you to avoid the sucky parts. There's a lot of sucky parts. But what if we focused and we were consumed with all the good, friend, if you started looking in your life, if I started looking in my life, you and I, we wouldn't be able to count all the blessings. You and I have so many reasons to praise God because he's the one from whom all blessings flow. Going back to our hymn again, praise God from whom all blessings flow. And it says, praise him all creatures here below, just to acknowledge it. As a kid, whenever I heard this line, I always pictured aliens for some reason. I'm like, I don't know why we're, why are the aliens praising God? I don't understand. But just listen to these words found in Psalm 148. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the earth, you creatures of the oceans, depths,

fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, young men and women, old men and children, let them all praise the name of the Lord. Don't miss this. The Psalmist is telling us that from the trees to the cows, from the wild animals to the birds, the human beings, it's commanding all creatures here below to praise God, to show joy and honor to him. Last weekend, I was at one of my favorite places on the planet, my grandpa's creek, creek, creek. Guess we'll never find out. I've talked about it before. It's 80 acres of trees and wildlife. You can't see any buildings. You can't hear any cars. My favorite part, my phone rarely works well when I'm there. At first glance though, as you're standing there by the creek, it's totally quiet. I mean, there's not another human being. Like there's nothing there. It's totally quiet. But at one point when I was there last week, I just stopped for a minute and just began to listen. And at first I heard the water in the creek itself. And then as I got quieter, my soul got quieter, I began to hear all kinds of different birds

from sparrows to metal arks are everywhere. There are pheasants all over. And then I began to hear the wind itself. I began to hear the wind go through the oak trees and their leaves resting and dancing. And all of a sudden, instead of it being quiet, it actually became this loud, powerful choir that was singing and praising. And as I stood there, I just had this thought that it's not just singing and praising God when I'm standing there at the creek listening for it. No, no, no, no, no. Instead of all hours of every day, 365 days a year, since way before I was born, since way before any of you were born, it's all been nonstop singing and praising God. Last weekend, as I was standing there, literally everything around me was praising Him, but was I praising Him? And are you praising Him? For all of us this season. Summer, I challenge you to get outside. I'd encourage you to put away your phones. Get your kids off their screens and instead get out in nature and just listen to creation. Just listen to the sound of all creatures praising God and then join in. Listen for it and then start praising them too. You see, you and I, we're not just called and commanded to praise God for an hour on Sunday mornings

when we're in a building like this. No, it's meant to be at all times, nonstop, just like all of creation. Continuing on with this hymn, praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Then it goes on, praise him above ye heavenly host. What this hymn is saying is above everything else, including the armies of angels in heaven, praise God. Above even the angels show joy and honor to him. Several years back, back in 2017, the city of Sioux Falls was changed. Why? Because Garth Brooks came to town, okay? Quick show of hands at all campuses, who was at that concert? Let's see the hands, don't be bashful. I'm actually a Christian myself, so I wasn't there, okay? Turns out, don't have any friends in low places. Forgive me. But after this concert, I saw this picture. I think a friend posted it or somebody posted it. And I was just struck by it so much so that I ended up posting this picture on my Facebook wall. And I just wrote this in the caption. I said, this is awesome. I love, Kap Lock's a good concert. Random thought though, I often tell worship leaders that embrace, don't be discouraged if the people, South Dakotans,

aren't very expressive while singing in church. A lot of us are Lutheran, Catholic, German, Norwegian, and we're just not very expressive. But then I see pictures like this. Now, maybe it's because we've been taught that we shouldn't act like this in church. Maybe it's because we're taught that God is a private matter. Maybe it's an understanding of God that we don't have, or maybe it's a combination of all three. But when I see this picture, I'd argue this picture is worship at its best. The only difference with church, Jesus is at the center instead of Garth. Then I ended, what a day it will be when every knee will bow before the Lord. This Sunday, if you go to church, whatever kind of church it is, worship with everything that you are, your whole body, get a little crazy. Now, this week, when I reread this caption, I just have to confess. And then looking back, I almost feel like I was giving us South Dakotans a pass on praising God. It's almost like I was saying several years back that South Dakotans, yeah, we're just not very expressive. And so it's okay and it's optional if we don't praise God actively. That's not true. First off, the truth is we all,

every last one of us, including you, we all get excited about all kinds of stuff. It just looks different for each of us. The other day, I was with a guy down the street in his garage. He's gotta be in his late 60s. He's about as stoic as they come. But when he started showing me his old cars, his eyes lit up and he was almost dancing around his garage. He's like, and I got this car over here. And he told me the story and he told me all the work that he put in it. And then this car over here, he told me why it was so unique. This man right before me was visibly praising each car. And so friends, if you follow Jesus, I just need to acknowledge, I'm not gonna give you a pass anymore. I'm actually not gonna give you a pass. Why? Because I actually, it turns out, I actually don't have the power or the position to do that. Instead, God commands us more directly. He commands you to praise him. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that if you follow Jesus, outside of worshiping God, you should be a curmudgeon. No, don't do that. No. If you're at a good concert, or you're at the AFC championship game,

and it's your favorite team, get a little crazy, okay? God wants us to enjoy the good things in life. What I'm trying to say though is this, you need to praise God above anything or anyone else. Like you, my friend, you need to praise God above. Garth Brooks or T. Swift. You need to praise God above Joe Burrow, even if Joe is a better quarterback than Jesus. You need to praise him above any old car. You need to praise him above any fashion or things that you get excited about. You need to praise him above anything or anyone else, including the armies of angels in the heaven. Now with this, maybe you're like, but how do I do this? Like, Adam, I actually don't know how to praise God. Well, a starting point is just stepping outside of your comfort zone. A starting point is just being open to praising God. Like in church during worship, and instead of crossing your arms, just to remind you, it's God, he's so worthy of your praise. Maybe it's just uncrossing your arms. And instead of just uncrossing your arms, maybe it's singing. And then slowly, instead of just singing, it's moving your body and it's raising your hands while singing. And then throughout the week, again, it's not just meant to be one hour,

praise him with your words. Like randomly throughout the day, just tell him, God, God, you're awesome. Lord, thank you for all the blessings in my life. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for my kids. Thank you for this car. Thank you for an income. God, I just have so many reasons. Sing to God in your car. Praise him. Maybe it's reading a Psalm, like Psalm 148 out loud to him. If you see a beautiful sunset, maybe it's literally clapping for him. Maybe more than anything else each day, make sure that you're praising him above anything or anyone else. And just an honest question for you, do you do this? You do this. Do you praise God above anything or anyone else? And if not, could you start? Could you open up? Could you step outside of your comfort zone? Okay, so I wanna go back to our hymn one more time. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise father, son, and Holy Ghost. But this last line in so many ways,

it's actually the reason that we should praise God. Like even more than the blessings that God has given us, the reason that we should praise him is for who he is. You see, God is three persons. He's three persons. He's the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, and yet he's one God. The churchy word for this is the Trinity. And so this hymn, it's telling us to praise God, first off, as the father. And as the father, we praise him as the one who created us. We praise him for the one who designed us. We praise him for the one who's breathed life into our lungs. We praise him as the one who's given us a plan and a purpose no matter what, and also we're told to praise him as the son. And as the son, he's the one that came to us in Jesus. As the son, he's the one who taught us how to live, how to love people, how to forgive people who betrayed us. As the son, he's the one who died for us. As the son, he's the one that forgives us of our sin. And then lastly, we're told to praise him as the Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit, he's the one who lives and dwells within us. As the Holy Spirit, he's the one who gives us his strength and he gives us his peace. As the Holy Spirit, he's the one who changes us when we've tried so hard to change ourselves. When we've tried so hard to change ourselves.

As the Holy Spirit, he's the one who's always present. No matter where we go, he's already there. Friends, when we understand who God is, when we understand his character, it takes the focus off of ourselves. It takes the focus off of me, myself, and I. It also takes the focus off of our worries and our problems, off of your worries and your problems. And it puts all of our attention where it's meant to be, on him. And friends, we need this. You and I need this, we need this on our best days when everyone's cheering us on to take the focus off of me, myself, and I, and we need it on our worst days when we're broken, we're struggling, we're grieving, we're hurt, to take the focus off of our problems. One more time, praise Father and Son and Holy Ghost. Okay, so that's the doxology. Again, it's only 25 words long, and yet it's so powerful. And as we shared, Thomas Kenney wrote this hymn for his college students, but listen to this. Thomas specifically instructed and encouraged his college students to sing the doxology in the morning when they woke up. And he also encouraged them to sing it in the evening before going to bed. This last part's my favorite part, and then also he instructed his college students if they were struggling to sleep at night,

he encouraged them to sing it at midnight to remind themselves about who God is. And I just have to say that when I read that part, it struck me that over time, some things change a whole lot and then there's other things that don't change at all. I'm just curious to ask, does anyone here struggle with sleeping at night? Anyone here like paralyzed by worry, being anxious? About what? You name it, all of it. You see, what Thomas knew is that praising God, it takes our focus off of ourselves and it puts us, it puts our focus and attention on something that is so much greater. And it puts our focus on something that is so much greater. God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. At this time at all campuses, I'm gonna invite everyone to stand if you would. Even if you're at home online by yourself, it might be a little awkward, I'm gonna invite you to stand. In a moment, we're gonna sing the doxology and I just wanna encourage you, when we're singing, don't just stand there, I just invite you, don't even just sing. Instead, I wanna invite you to praise him. Before we sing, let's just take a moment to pray. Lord, we praise you. We praise you, we actively praise you. And we don't just praise you, but we praise you above anything and anyone else.

We show joy and honor to you, not just in this time, but with our lives, Lord. God, we are so grateful for who you are. We're thankful that when we take the focus off of ourselves, when we put it on you, we understand who you are. And when we understand who you are, that changes, that changes everything. And so Lord, we love you, we thank you. We praise you and we pray all these things in the name of Jesus. All God's people say, amen. Amen. ♪ From whom all blessings flow ♪ ♪ Praise him, all creatures here below ♪ ♪ Praise him above the heavenly host ♪ ♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪ ♪ Holy Ghost ♪