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 great way to stay free is to take time to praise God for what He's done our lives. Whether we write our own songs, poems, or just sing to the Lord in our hearts about the things He has done for us, we can "refresh" the freedom He's already given us and it will give us the boost we need to go forward. (Message: Eric Elder; Music: "Blessed Be Your Name" written by Beth and Matt Redman and led by Eric Elder; Running time: 31:13) Lesson 15 - Take Time To Praise GodWatch The Video
Read The Transcript ERIC: Hi, this is Eric Elder, and welcome to The Ranch. Tonight we're going to take a look at another way that we can stay free. And just to give you a sneak preview before we sing our song here, the lesson that we're going to take out of this Chapter 15 of Exodus tonight is that God wants us to take time to praise Him. Take time to praise Him. And it's going to be a critical thing we'll see in the life of the Israelites that they take time to praise Him, and it's also critical for us as well, that we need to personally take time to praise God. And that actually has great staying power for us to be able to stay free from the things that could bring us down otherwise. So we're just going to start off with a little praise tonight, too. We're going to sing "Blessed Be Your Name." If you want to join us, feel free to join in. This is Blessed Be Your Name. (Worship song.)
All right. Let's open our Bibles and we'll take a look at Exodus Chapter 15. You'll notice that in Exodus Chapter 15, this is a song. We're going to look at Verses 1 through 21, and there's a song here that Moses and Miriam sing, and they lead all the people in singing this song. We've just gotten the Israelites free; they've just come through the Red Sea and the waves have crashed down over the Egyptians and all the officers have been killed and their bodies will show up on shore later. And so it's a huge defeat for the Egyptians and a huge victory for Israel, even though all that Moses did was stand firm and then take action by raising the staff when it was time to raise the staff. But as the Israelites saw this -- and we'll see at the end of Verse -- Chapter 14 -- at the end of Chapter 14 it says,
So all the Israelites are now back on board with Moses; they think he's the greatest; they think God is the greatest because He's finally brought them through all this trouble. But the key then we're going to look at tonight is that God, I think in order to help us stay free, God wants us to take time to praise Him. It's part of reminding ourselves of what God has done for us. And specifically in this case they start singing a song that is very specific about what God has just done for them. So why don't we take a look at Exodus Chapter 15 and read through this. If a couple of you guys want to read, that'd be great, starting with Verse 1 all the way through Verse 21. ROB: 1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:"I will sing to the LORD, DEE: 17 You will bring them in and plant them 19 When Pharaoh's horses, chariots and horsemen went into the sea, the LORD brought the waters of the sea back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. 20 Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. 21 Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the LORD, ERIC: Thanks, guys. So what we see in here is that the Israelites sing this song to God about some very specific things that they've gone through. It says here in Verse 4 -- what does it say happened in Verse 4? DEE: Pharaoh’s chariots and army was hurled into the Sea. ERIC: Right. It just says right out, here the chariots and the army are hurled into the Sea. Sometimes we sing songs these days about some of these events that happened back then and we have no idea what we're singing about. But they were actually specific events that happened back in these days and those songs help us remember even today what happened. How about Verse 8? I love this imagery here, what they described happened and how this whole water got split. How do they say it happened? ROB: "By the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up. The surging waters stood firm like a wall; the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea." ERIC: Right. So they just talk about how God's nostrils, just the breath of God even, just dried up the ground, made these walls of water. That's what we talked about last time. This is not some three-inch deep tide that happened to split enough so they could get across. This is a wall of water on each side and they sing about this here. Verse 10, what does it say happened to the Egyptians there? DEE: Then the Sea covered them. They sank like lead. ERIC: Right. They just dropped to the bottom of the Sea, just totally. It's a very specific song about what happened to them. And then they take a new refrain and they start singing about what's going to happen in the future. Look at Verses 13 through 18. You can just read this on your own here again; just take a glance at that. What is the hope that they have for the future? What are some of the things that they're looking forward to God doing? ROB: To guide them. ERIC: They have hope that God's going to guide them. ROB: In a sense, saying the nations will hear and tremble, anguish will grip the people of Philistia, the chiefs of Edom, of Moab, the people of Canaan. So basically to go before them against their enemies. ERIC: Right. They're already looking to the future, and they say they're going to hear about this and they're going to tremble because they had just seen what happened to the Egyptians. And then some other things happen, Verse 17 and 18, that they're looking forward to, meaning the Israelites. ROB: He's going to plant them, plant them on the mountain of your inheritance. So He's going to be the one that's going to place them where He wants them and -- so that they would be firm in where they're at, not necessarily just existing there but to be firm where they're at. ERIC: Right. They're to be firm there just like a tree, they're going to be strong and God is going to reign over them forever and ever. So as they wrote this song, they wrote about the specific things that had happened to them up to that point, and then they talk about their future hope and what God's going to do for them in the future. And they get out their tambourines and start singing here and have a great party in singing. Sometimes this is just a spontaneous thing that happens, that people just feel inspired when big events happen or something big happens in your life, and they just almost spontaneously combust and say, "Wow, I have got to pour this out into something. I want to write a poem, or I want to write a song, or I've just got to tell people, or somehow we have to celebrate this event". But I think the lesson for us is that sometimes we need to deliberately take time to praise God. We need to deliberately sit down and write about what our God has done or sing about what our God has done. Or as we're driving in our car down the highway and God has just done something incredible, just go ahead and raise your hands in the car and roll down your window and get your hands out there and just start praising God. You can't do both at the same time, I guess, but just start praising God for what He's done. And I remember various times in my life where I'll just be sitting in my car and just be able to just spontaneously combust into song and just sing, "Oh, God, you know, You are so incredible, the things that You're doing and the things that You're going to do, we just praise You for these things." I sort of want to encourage you guys here as well as the people watching on the Internet later. I'd like to really give a specific encouragement, if God is doing or has done something powerful to set you free, that you would consider becoming a poet for a day and really writing down maybe even a poem of what God has done for you so far, and what you're looking forward to God doing in the future. Now, some guys feel very awkward being poets, but so many of the Biblical authors were poets. So many of our songwriters today that are just incredible lyricists are men who can write from the depths of their heart, and they write some of the most powerful songs that we sing on the radio or we sing in our churches or we sing in different places. It doesn't have to rhyme necessarily, but it can give some structure to what you're writing. But what my encouragement is, is to go ahead and try to write down some of the things that God has done for you and put them to words, put them to music, and allow that to then remind you and continually remind you of what God has done. If He's hurled the officers into the sea, then say that. If He's built up a wall of water on the side, then say that. If He's delivered you from demons and depression and drugs and alcohol and whatever else has been in your life, just say it. Just say very specifically what God has done in your life and then what you pray and hope that God will do for you in the future. I would say that even saying this, it might fall on deaf ears, that some people will say this is just hokey, I'm not going to do this, no way, I'm not interested in doing that. But there may come a point where you're ready to spontaneously combust, and I would say capture it down on paper. I'm not particularly a poet, but when I was in college I got to work on an Apple Lisa, which was the forerunner of the Macintosh. It was the first graphical user interface that Apple put together and they put it on this machine called a Lisa. And I was working on it and I was dating Lana at the time, and it was the coolest thing because I could actually type some words and draw a picture at the same time. So I wrote a poem to Lana, this love letter that started something like "I love you Lana, you don't look like a banana," and then I drew a banana. "Your hair's so curly but you're not at all squirrelly," and I drew a little squirrel. It was great; she saved it still to this day, has that letter, stupid as it was. But it not only got me sold on computers, because I thought, "This is great, you can actually express yourself with these things. They're not just running bank programs or something like that." But it also got me inspired in writing poems and writing poems for my wife when I wanted to really express to her what I was feeling. And somehow by the taking of the process and the time of writing out a poem, that can really touch someone else's heart as well as really touch your own heart, because you have to think through what you're really trying to say. You don't always have the right rhyme to make it work or whatever, so you need to really work on it to get it to come out just the way you want it to say. You can buy a card at Hallmark for their birthday or their anniversary or Christmas or whatever, but to write down from your own heart even four lines or eight lines or the whole page or a couple pages worth, whatever can come out of your heart that you can write means infinitely more because it means that you spent time working on that. It's the same as writing songs or poems to God. It so blesses the heart of God when we would sit down and write a song to Him or that we would stop in our car and just start praising Him spontaneously. Thank you, God, for getting me through a day at work. Thank you, God, for giving me breath. Thank you for giving me a job. Thank you for giving me a wife. Thank you for giving me whatever you've given. Thank you for being who you are even though I don't have anything. Whatever it is, when you can praise God, that can really help us to stay free. Does this make sense? Are any of you guys poets? I don't know if you're a poet or singers or songwriters at all, but have you ever written a poem in your life? DALE: Oh, I've written poems, but – ERIC: Written poems? 3rd grade English? ROB: No, actually junior high and senior high. ERIC: It can't be worse than my squirrelly banana one. ROB: No. I wrote short stories, though, I have written things like that. ERIC: Writing these things down or saying them out or somehow expressing what God has done for us I think is a real key. When I was preparing for this study during the time that I was fasting and praying and going through Exodus and writing down my notes, we had just finished the "Week of Hope" here in town. And it was our first attempt at really trying to give many people a chance to share their testimony of how they'd had hope from the Lord and give them a chance to share in the community the hope they have. And we talked about writing a theme song that we could use on the radio stations and some other things, and I talked to our worship leader at the time and he actually came up with a theme song for this Week of Hope and we used it every night that we opened up for the Week of Hope. And he wrote it with a couple other people here in the church. It just said -- here's a few words from it. "Lord, may you hear us now, And so it's just a song just dedicating to God this "Week of Hope," this season of change, this time that we were dedicating to giving other people hope. But I was actually surprised, another lady in town, she came up to me and she said, you know, I wrote a song -- a poem for the "Week of Hope." And I hadn't really thought that other people would just spontaneously combust like that, that they would think hope is a good topic, let's write about this. And here's just a couple stanzas from her poem that this woman wrote. A week of hope to dispel fear, And she goes on just to talk about what the Bible says about hope and how we can have our hope and put our hope in Jesus. And I thought that was amazing. But then another man came up and he said, you know, "I wrote a song for the "Week of Hope" and I wonder if I could sing it." He came to one of our prayer meetings and he had written it up, printed it up, passed it out to everybody in the room and had this whole song. And his words started something like this -- I won't go through it all. The Week of Hope and not despair, And as he sang that song and we went through that, it really was a springboard into some of the things that I was talking about and that were on my heart to share, that, you know, we're not just looking for a week of hope but a whole lifetime of hope. If you add up your week of hope and another week, and it turns into a month, it turns into a year. You see where's it all going. But I was amazed that I sort of threw it out there that we were going to do this event, that people just started writing. They just wanted to express it somehow and bring it to light. And I think it's a great technique; it's a great tool that we can use and a good lesson that we can learn that if we'll take the time to write down what we're feeling, to express what we're saying or thinking at home or in a song, then it can bless us as well as bless the heart of God. One other reason that I think it's interesting that we just happen to be studying this this week. Several years ago a guy wrote me on the Internet and he said he had heard my piano music and he wondered how I went about writing piano music. And I said to be real honest with him, I just started, I have no idea what I'm doing, I just like to play. One day a friend of mine was watching me play the piano and I was using a song book and he walked up to the piano and he just closed the book up and he said now play something. And I said "I can't, I can't play something without the notes in front of me or without the words. I've never learned how to do that. I played for years, I played the piano all my life." I had no idea how to just sit there and play something from my heart. I sat there I don't know how long, half an hour, 45 minutes, while other people were praying and I just sat at the piano, and I'm like, I wouldn't know where to start. I wouldn't know what to even do. This just baffled me, that here I could play Beethoven or Mozart or these other things, but I had no idea how to just express what was on my heart. And so I was telling this, it was a high school kid out in Arizona, and I was telling him how I just sat down, I came home from that experience, and I was having some quiet time. I felt like God said I want to you write me a song, just write a song. So I sat at the piano and I didn't know what to write about, but I was praying about a friend who was struggling with sexual issues in his life. And I just started pouring out what was on my heart for this friend to the piano and to God. I just started messing around with the keys and just started singing what was on my heart and just pleading that this guy would trust me, that what I'm telling him was true and right and even though he hadn't read the Bible for himself and didn't know Jesus personally, that he could trust me, and if he would just follow me and just listen to my words, I knew that we could get him on the right path. And so as I expressed that in a song called Trust Me, it just came out and I got through the whole thing and it became a whole song. It was like priming the pump in my life to where a few weeks later I was able to sit down and think about another song and just start writing it and playing it, playing and writing, playing and writing, until I had enough to put on a CD and put it on the Internet and people could listen to it. And I was amazed. So this guy was asking me how I wrote songs, and I shared that story with him. Well, this week, several years later, he's 17 now, he sent me this CD and He said -- he was so thankful for me telling him how I wrote music, that he had never done that before, and he's got 18 songs here that he's got. Some of them are mine that he had learned back then and -- the good majority of it are just songs that he's just written and just sat down at the piano. Some are funny. Here's one called "A Minor, F, C, G," which he says, "This is a simple song that I've recently written. I didn't come up with the chord progression myself but -- those are just chords on a piano, A Minor, F, C and G, so that's the title of his song," and he wrote a whole song about that. And he said, "I enjoy playing it, I've not finalized any of the notes, I enjoy sitting down and playing it for as long as I can stand it." And he said the other CD in this two CD set is this song performed for over an hour. He played those same four chords cords for an hour, just different ways, different styles. But out of that, he has written some really great songs. He's got other songs that are a little more creative in terms of their title. They're all really actually fantastic songs; just amazing technique in what he's done. But this opening song called Daniel's Song; "it's a song that's a tribute to a good friend of mine named Daniel who was killed in a car crash last year. Playing the piano really helped me to get through those tough times and you'll notice parts of the song reflect my anger, regret, and finally closure. It took over a month to finally write the ending, but I performed this song at a concert which Daniel's family was present." So here he was able to tap into what he was feeling and expressing, and gave vent to what he was thinking, just all the emotions that were going through and it turned out to be a song of blessing for the family at this event in honor of this guy. I just share this because sometimes you might say, "This is ridiculous, I'll never do this." But you never know what God might want to do and what He might prompt on your heart to do once you hear it spoken into your life. And you might just say, you know, this might be the way to express to that person I love just what I feel for them. This might be the way that I can express to God what I'm feeling about Him. And maybe it's anger; maybe it's frustration. But hopefully, it will end like many of King David's psalms end, in praise to God even though they start off, woe is me, I am crushed, I am in despair, the enemy's all around me, but by the end of the psalm, almost every one, he ends up with but I will trust in you, I will put my faith in you, I will put my hope in you. Just like the song we sang earlier today was Blessed Be Your Name, comes straight from the Bible that says the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. That's Job, when he was at his worst, and he just continued to say blessed be your name, blessed be your name, blessed be your name. Whether it's good, whether it's bad, I'm going to bless you, I'm going to praise you. And that can have tremendous staying power for you to stay free. I'm going to wrap up here and then just close with a prayer, but I just want to encourage you, take time to praise the Lord. And if you can and want to, do it in your own words and with your own heart and your own voice and the instruments that are around you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for teaching us so many things through your word. God, it must have been an amazing sight to see what the Israelites saw right before their eyes, to see the Sea opened up and the breath of you blowing back the waves, creating walls of water on the right and on the left. And then when they get through, to turn around and look and see the chariots still coming, but to watch you close up the water and to watch those enemies falling like lead to the bottom of the Sea. Lord, I'm sure, how could they not spontaneously combust into song with tambourines, with dancing, to praise you for the mighty power that you displayed.God, there are things you do in our life that are just as spectacular. When you bring a friend who we've been praying for for years into a saving knowledge of you and they receive your word, and they become a Christian, Lord, what a great thing to praise you, Lord. And to write a song about it and to sing praise, Lord. Lord, when we are struggling with sickness and we see you heal and work in that situation, Lord, help to us praise you then. Father, when we see you work in our marriages and our finances and our churches or so many situations, God, when you are constantly acting, help to us praise you. And, God, even when things aren't going well, like the song we sang earlier said even when we're walking through the desert, even when there's suffering all around us, God, help us to praise you still, help us to bless your name. And, Lord, like Ivan, who wrote this song for his friend who died in a car crash, Lord, even though it was a time of frustration and sorrow and anger and grief, Lord, singing praises to you and singing about those experiences and writing about those and writing poems or words about the Lord, we just see how that can bring such a healing and such a closure as well as bless your heart, God, for we know that we always need to continue to turn back to you. God, I pray you would help us be reminded of this this week and this month, in the years ahead. Lord, when we're looking for some way to express what's on our heart, help us to look back to this situation of the Israelites and that we would take time to praise you, too. We pray this all in Jesus' name, Amen. Thanks, guys; thanks for coming. I hope you'll join us again here at The Ranch. |
