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Oct 16, 2022

How can I keep from singing?

How can I keep from singing?

Passage: Ephesians 1:7-14

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Song & Dance - The Gospel Melody that Moves in Ephesians

Keywords: praise, redemption, grace, holy spirit, glory, inheritance, guarantee

The praise of God is central to the life of someone who knows God. But how erratically or temporarily do we experience what is meant to captivate our inner being until it spills over into words and works? We cannot force it but can we deny the importance of it? Paul’s introductory words in the letter to that early church both demonstrates words of praise and the reasons for it. For what reasons is God worthy of praise–and moreover, how do we find help to do what is fitting but which often falls prey to our frailty?

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 150
LEADER: Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!

PEOPLE: Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!

LEADER: Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!

PEOPLE: Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!

LEADER: Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath

PEOPLE: praise the LORD!

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) Psalm 42
LEADER: As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

Psa. 42:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation
6 and my God.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”

Psa. 42:11 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Ephesians 1:3-14
Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Eph. 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

CONFESSION OF SIN: based on Psalm 8:2, Isaiah 28:19, Luke 19:40
ALL: From even the smallest persons you have ordained praise. Were the whole world silent, even the rocks could not hold back their honor of You. Yet, because we rest too much on what fades too quickly, and hold too loosely to what must anchor us deeply, praise may be lightly on our lips but our hearts still far from You. Help us to see and grieve our folly. Help us to begin again by giving thanks for what is already true, and hopeful for what is still not yet fully true. Help us to find our footing again in His forgiveness, and in what He furnishes us to live in love. Help us to find again that praise of which you alone are worthy, and for which we were made.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON Ephesians 1:7-10
LEADER: In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 13:14-15
LEADER: For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

ALL: Amen!

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

Exodus 19:5 / Malachi 3:17 / 1 Peter 2:9
Psalm 42-43
Isaiah 43:20-21
Joel 2:28-29
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Matthew 6:19
Acts 20:32
Romans 8:16
Romans 8: 18-25
Galatians 3:18; Colossians 3:24; Hebrews 9:15; 1 Peter 1:4
2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:5
Hebrews 2:5-9

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. First: come to a consensus on what it means to praise something. Now, if someone followed you around with a recording device, what would you most likely be found praising in your daily life? Why that? What forms does the praise take?
  2. Why might praise of God be commanded, or at least called for, in particular in the Psalms? 
  3. What reasons does Paul outline for praising the glory of God in this whole section of verses 3-14? Why those claims?
  4. What are several forms of praising God? (yes, there is more than one) How is our desire to praise him in any of those ways a barometer of our inner being? 
  5. For what reasons do we find in Scripture people having neither praise on their lips nor in their hearts? What are other reasons praise might not be an expression of our being? When we note that absence, what then?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

InView Media Album - 10.16.2022

QUOTES: 

 

  • I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

 

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