Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Captain Eddy Richenbacker was in an airplane crash in Atlanta and was rushed to the hospital.

He was going in and out of consciousness.

It was thought that he would not survive.

The most famous radio commentator in the U.S. then was the late Walter Winchell.

He said in his broadcast, "Friends, pray for Eddy Richenbacker.

He is dying in an Atlanta hospital.

He is not expected to live out the night."

Richenbacker was listening to that broadcast, and when he heard this he took a jug of water and threw it at the radio knocking it across the room.

He said, "I'm not going to die.

I'm not going to give up."

Here was a man wh survived many trials because he never gave up.

When he received the Horatio Alger Award, which was given to outstanding American men who fought their way from poverty to success, he said, "My mother, a very poor woman in Columbus, Ohio, taught her kids to pray, read the Bible, to follow Jesus Christ and never to give up."

In the literature of success the theme you will confront most often is the theme of persistence.

The athlete who didn't have a chance, but who by perseverance and persistence became the best.

The Bible is loaded with this theme as well, and one I never saw before is the persistence of Lot.

Two angels came to Sodom, and Lot seeing they were strangers invited them to come to his house and spend the night.

Their response to his hospitality was very definite.

We read in Gen. 19:2, "No, they answered, we will spend the night in the square."

Lot did not know he was arguing with angels or he might have weakened, but he did not take no for an answer.

Verse 3 says, "But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house."

His persistence in showing hospitality led to his being saved from the destruction of the city.

We could go on and on with illustrations of how persistence is the key factor in every form of success.

Never give up, for the wisest is boldest,

Knowing that Providence mingles the cup;

And of all maxims, the best, as the oldest,

Is the stern watchward of 'Never give up!'

Holmes

This morning we want to pursue this theme as it applies to our duty as priests in offering to God the sacrifice of praise.

One of the primary dangers with every new idea is the danger of faddishness.

We jump on the current bandwagon of what is hot, and ride that until we tire of it, and then hop on the next fad express that tingles our fancy.

It is a part of our culture, and Christians are as guilty of it as anyone else.

The church is constantly following fads and promoting some theme as the greatest idea since sliced bread, and then a few months after it is passe and nobody even remembers what it was, for we have moved on to a whole new world of posters, flyers, and promotional gimmics for a new idea.

There is a risk that we will treat praise like this and go through a phase of praise thinking, and then move on to something else and leave praise behind.

It is my prayer that we will not treat praise as a fad, but recognize that the Scripture demands that it become a perpetual part of our lives.

We are to never give up, but be persistent in praise all of our days, and then on into eternity.

To promote this kind of persistence we want to focus our attention on the word in our text-continually.

"Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise."

The Greek word is diapantos, which is used 7 other times in the New Testament.

It is used in the very last verse of Luke: "And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God."

We know the Apostles did not live 24 hours a day at the temple praising God.

The point is, it was their regular pattern of life.

They did not just stop in on the day of atonement to praise God.

They did it persistently, and so for us also, praise is not to be a periodic function of the priesthood of all believers.

It is to be the regular and perpetual duty we are to never forsake.

In Heb.

9:6 the word is used again to describe the duties of the Old Testament priesthood.

"When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry."

The word regularly is the same word as continually.

Just as the Old Testament priests had a ministry that did not cease, so the New Testament priesthood has such a ministry-the ministry of persistence praise.

We tend to have regular times of prayer, but neglect to develop regular times of praise.

If someone asked you if you are in the ministry you would not doubt be honest and say no.

But in your supposed honesty you would, in fact, be lying, for if you are a believer you are in a ministry that never ceases, and it is this ministry of praise.

You can get out of the ministry of preaching, teaching, counselling, and visitation.

You can quit or retire or get too sick or die, and thus, end your ministry, but there is no way out of the ministry of praise.

In Psa.

146:2 we read, "I will praise the Lord all my life, I will sing praise to my God as long as I live."

That sounds like there is an end, and at death you can give up this ministry, but not so, for in Psa.

145:1 he has already said, "I will praise your name for ever and ever."

The only way out of this ministry is by neglect and disobedience.

As long as we walk in obedience we are in the ministry where we are obligated to offer persistently the sacrifice of praise.

What this means is that praise is the link that connects all of life into a unity.

For the praising Christians there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular.

The whole of creation, and the whole of life, is full of things for which we are to praise to God.

Praise is not a Sunday thing, but as Psa.

145:2 says, "Everyday I will praise you."

It is a Sunday through Saturday thing.

It is a perpetual ministry with no days off.

The Psalms tell us we are to look at all of nature, and all of history, and see the providential hand of God in His creative wisdom and praise Him ceaselessly.

If you just tell yourself it is your ministry to praise God, and begin to look for reasons to do so, you will find them by numbers to great to calculate.

I got up one morning and began to praise God for my life, wife, bed, clothes, the parsonage and all who helped build it for the warmth of the heat, for the sink and water, mirror, towels, all the people I love, and I had a good long list of comforts and pleasures of life to praise God for even before I got to the breakfast table.

I was overwhelmed when I realized there are hundreds of things we take for granted and neglect to praise God for.

We think of sacrifice as something we have to give up, and this can be the case, but if you look up the word sacrifice, you discover it also can simply mean the offering of something to God.

It is your gift to God, and it does not mean you have to suffer loss to offer this sacrifice.

In fact, in offering praise to God you actually gain, for there is power in praise to heal, restore, and benefit the one who offers it in many ways.

You gain rather than give up when you offer the sacrifice of praise.

It is important that we grasp this or we will have a problem that will make praise a legalistic work rather than a response of love.

C.S. Lewis, as a new Christian, was offended by the idea that God was like a dictator, celebrity, or millionaire who demanded that people tell them how wonderful they are.

We are all offended at the vain person who is ever fishing for compliments to reassure them of their self-worth.

Is this the kind of God we worship?

Is He one who needs men to be ever praising Him to feel good about Himself?

This is absurd, for God is self-sufficent and needs nothing to be content.

He demands praise, and is pleased with it for the same reason we want our children to learn to be polite and thoughtful.

It makes them better and more pleasant people who will be liked and loved.

God wants us to learn to praise Him perpetually, for the praisers will be the most effective and most loved children.

The Christian who sees the most in life to praise God for is the Christian who will most fulfill his highest purpose, which is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The more you praise God, the more you enjoy Him.

The more you praise God for His creation, the more you enjoy His creation.

The more you praise God for His Word, the more you will enjoy the Word.

Your own happiness is in direct proportion to your persistence in praise.

God does not need your praise for His happiness.

You need to praise Him for your happiness.

When C.S. Lewis discovered this, he wrote in his book Reflection On The Psalms, "I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.

The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read.

The healthy and unaffected man, even is luxuriously brought up an widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: The dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all.

Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible."

In a sentence: The healthiest Christians are the Christians who praise God persistently.

God invites us to praise Him, not for His need, but for ours.

When we praise God and enjoy Him, we find the highest happiness we are capable of experiencing.

This is the paradox of the sacrifice of praise.