Praise As A Regular Christian Discipline
Scripture: Acts 16:16-34.
Exegetical Big Idea: Praise must be a regular Christian discipline for us that demonstrates our submission to God’s will, offers our sacrifices of thanksgiving to God, and shows that we see the glory of God in our lives.
Introduction
Our passage of reflection this morning is Acts 16:16-34. This passage narrates one of Paul’s many hard experiences during his second missionary journey. From this passage we learn three important things about why we should make praise a regular discipline in our Christian lives.
First, the passage shows us that our praise to God demonstrates our submission to God’s will for us. Second, it shows us that our praise to God offers sacrifices of thanksgiving to God. Third, it shows us that our praise to God indicates that we see the glory to God.
By the word praise we are referring to the act of expressing to God, through our words and our music our gratitude, our sense of awe for Him, our worship of Him, our admiration of Him, and our utter respect for Him.
So, let’s go into the passage now to see how these 3S’s from this passage show us the importance of making praise a regular discipline in our Christian lives.
I. Submission to God’s Will (Verses 16-18 & 25-28)
1) Verses 16-18 narrate how Paul and Silas were arrested, severely beaten, and imprisoned in Philippi after casting out an evil spirit of divination from a slave girl whose trade had brought great profit to her owners.
2) Let’s think about the condition of the two men in prison for a minute. From verse 22 to 24 we have read that they had been attacked by a mob, their garments had been torn off their backs and they had been severely flogged. Their backs are bleeding, their eyes are puffed shut, their lips are swollen, they’ve lost a tooth or two, they have suffered fractured jaws and limbs. They are in a great deal of pain – physical pain no doubt, emotional and psychological pain, almost certainly.
3) But listen to verse 25 (KJV): Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises unto God: and the other prisoners were listening to them. Paul and Silas, in their great physical pain, were not only praying to God but they also chose to sing and praise God! What an extraordinary response!
4) How would you and I have responded? Why did Paul and Silas respond in this extraordinary way to their awful situation? I submit to you that it was because they were demonstrating their utter submission to the will of God! We know this because earlier on in this chapter, from verses 6 to 10, we read that Paul and Silas had come to Philippi to preach the gospel and plant a church there in specific obedience to a vision that Paul had received from the Lord during this second missionary journey. They knew therefore that they were in Philippi according to the will of God for them and not because of a whim of their own!
5) Verse 26 tells us that the other prisoners were listening to the hymns of praise that Paul and Silas were singing. Think about this: They had been thrown into the inner cells of the prison and their feet have been fastened in the stocks. The two men were in the inner cells, in solitary confinement, a distance from the other prisoners. If the other prisoners heard them it means they were singing loudly and exuberantly.
6) Their exuberant and joyful hymns of praise evidently prevented them from sinking into depression, bitterness and self-pity. It also prevented them from hearing both the complaining voice of their flesh and the taunting voice of Satan that would have wanted to say to them such things as: You must be out of the will of God! Or: God has failed to protect you! Or: God is not as loving, powerful and caring as He is cracked up to be! These voices would have discouraged them from submitting to the will of God in future if it threatened pain and misery.
7) By singing and praising God in that prison cell that night Paul and Silas demonstrated that their praise to God was a regular discipline of their Christian lives that did not depend on their circumstances. This is why this first S from the passage shows us why we too need to make praise a regular discipline of our Christian lives – to show our on-going submission to the Lord’s will for us.
II. Sacrifice of Thanksgiving (Verses 26-34)
1) One dictionary definition of the word sacrifice is: the act of giving upsomethingvaluedfor the sake of something else regarded as more important orworthy. A sacrifice, in other words, costs you something. Example: Forgoing sleep on Sunday morning to come to church! It cost you something!
2) In this passage you and I almost expect Paul and Silas to show some bitterness, discouragement, or at least some measure of disappoinment with God. Their response of praise cost them these natural responses. In other words, they offered a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God instead of indulging in bitterness and resentment against God. Their praise to God cost them something. It was a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
3) Psalm 50:14-15 reads as follows: Sacrifice thank offerings to God and call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me. This Psalm ends in verse 23 with these words: He who sacrifices thank offerings honours me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.
4) The Bible of Paul and Silas was the OT. We know that Paul and Silas took their Bible seriously because in 2 Tim. 3:16-17 Paul writes that all Scripture, meaning the OT, is inspired by God to teach us, to correct us, and to train and equip us to live godly lives. This means that as Paul and Silas sang those hymns of praise to God in that prison cell in the midst of their pain they saw themselves as obeying these words we have just read from Psalm 50. They saw themselves as offering sacrifices of thanksgiving to God as they called on God in their day of trouble. They saw themselves as honoring God and preparing the way for God to show them His deliverance.
5) Paul and Silas were putting into action their faith in God and His Word. This means that in addition tobeing inspired by Psalm 50 they must have been inspired by the story of King Jehoshaphat who in 2 Chron. 20 sent a praise team singing praising to God ahead of his army as they faced a hostile coalition army of five countries and saw God’s powerful intervention on their behalf. Paul and Silas were also probably must have been inspired by the story of Joshua and his choir singing praises to God by blowing their trumpets in Josh. 6 as they circled the walls of Jericho and saw the high and heavy walls fall before them. Verse 26 records the result of Paul and Silas’ faith in God and His Word. It says: Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. Was this a co-incidence? No, it was God honouring His Word that when His people offer to Him sacrifices of thanksgiving by praising Him in their day of trouble they honour Him and they prepare the way for Him to deliver them.
6) How long would Paul and Silas have remained in that prison if they had complained and expressed their bitterness and disappointment to God instead of offering to Him sacrifices of thanksigivng? We don’t know. But we can guess that their deliverance would almost certainly not have been as dramatic as it turned out to be! And what a strange earthquake it was! Verse 26 tells us that the earthquake did not hurt anyone but instead it flew open the prison doors and broke loose every prisoner’s chains! A God kind of earthquake, wouldn’t you say? And beyond being delivered from the prison look at the result of their dramatic deliverance; we read from verses 29 to 34 that the Philippian jailor and his entire family came to Christ! This family doubtless became important members of the Philippian church to which Paul wrote his epistle a dozen years later. And we know from that epistle that the Philippian church became one of Paul’s favourite churches. Perhaps some of the prisoners who heard Paul and Silas singing in that prison that night later became part of that church!
7) This is why in all of Paul’s epistles we see him repeatedly calling on his readers to praise and give thanks to God regardless of their circumstances. One well-known example of this is in 1 Thess. 5:18 where he writes: Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. This second S shows us that making praise a regular discipline offers sacrifices of thanksgiving to God that opens the door for Him to intervene powerfully in our tough situations.
III. Seeing the Glory of God (Verse 26)
1) The New Bible Dictionary defines the glory of God as that which denotes the revelation of God’s being, nature and presence. So, for example, when in Psalm 19 the Psalmist writes that the heavens declare the glory of God he is saying that the magnificence and the splendor displayed by the stars and the planets in the sky, especially at night, reveal God’s being, nature and presence.
2) In the New Testament the primary use of the phrase the glory of God is to describe the revelation of the character and the presence of God. For example, in Luke 17:12-19 we read the story of Jesus healing ten lepers of their leprosy and only one of them returning to thank Him. In verses 17 and 18 of that passage this is what Jesus said in the KJV: Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? The NIV translates verse 18 as: Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? The healed leper praised God for revealing God’s healing character to him. He saw something of the glory of God!
3) This shows us that our praise of God indicates that we see His glory – that is, when we praise God, we honor Him for the various ways in which He has revealed His character and His presence in our lives through our salvation, His daily protection, and His daily provision for us. Paul and Silas’ praise of God in that prison shows us that they saw the glory of God in this way in their lives.
4) Not praising God is doing the exact opposite of this. This is what Paul is referring to in Rom. 1:21-25 concerning Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. He writes in verse 21: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. In verse 25, referring to Adam and Eve choosing to obey the serpent rather than God, Paul concludes by saying: They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.
5) In this Romans text Paul is connecting the beginning of man’s rebellion against God with the lack of a praising and thankful heart. Very sobering! Our first parents’ disastrous rebellion against God was a deliberate refusal to see the glory to God all around them. The earth was new, pristine, fresh – no pollution, etc. but they failed to see the glory of God all around them and to praise Him and be thankful to Him for their creation and their preservation!
6) Through their joyful hymns of praise to God in that prison cell Paul and Silas saw the glory of God in a fresh and amazing new way when God showed up to deliver them in the form of that earthquake. This is why seeing the glory of God is our third and final S that shows us the importance of making praise a regular discipline of our Christian lives.
Conclusion
I trust you can see how these 3S’s from this passage help us to see the importance of making praise a regular discipline in our Christian lives.
So, having now looked at these 3S’s let’s take a quick look at a verse in Paul’s letter to the Philippian church that should give us some practical help in our efforts to make praise a regular discipline of our Christian lives.
. In Phil. 4:6-7 Paul wrote: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There are three main points here:
First, regardless of the situation, pray instead of indulging in anxiety and worry. Second, when he says with thanksgiving, what Paul means is that as we pray about the situation that is troubling us we should cast our minds back to all the things that God has done for us in the past and give thanks and praise God for those things. (Remember Count Your Blessings). Third, as we do this, Paul tells us in that the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This is exactly what Paul and Silas did in that prison cell. This is how they learned to make praise a regular discipline of their Christian lives. This is how you and I too can learn to make praise a regular discipline of our Christian lives.
The American Christian leader Merlin Carothers, who passed away in 2013, led for most of his life a ministry called The Foundation of Praise. He wrote a great deal about praise and its impact in the lives of Christians. Among his many books are titles such as Power in Praise and Praise Works. I would recommend that you seek out some of his books if you are not already familiar with them.
In his books Carothers recounts countless testimonies from Christians around the world about what making praise a regular Christian discipline has done in their lives. Let me end by reading to you just one of those testimonies from page 120 of his book, Power in Praise.
May this testimony and our reflections from Acts 16 this morning inspire you to ask the Lord to help you make praise a regular discipline of your Christian life.
Let us pray!
Rev. Canon E. Kwasi Amoafo,
Tigoni,
28th November, 2017.
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