Voice of the Nazarene 3-8-26

Voice of the Nazarene 3-8-26

Transcript

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Coming to you from North Central Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Nazarene, a week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our pastor, Reverend Ray Lassau, and the Voice of the Nazarene.

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Come, we talk about partnership, membership. And if you never were to join this church, it really doesn't matter. We're just glad to have you. You really kind of get into the church and the kingdom by being born into it. But uh we share about the church and and uh our history and where we're going as a church and give you a little up-to-date what some of our concepts of the Bible happen to be. And if you want to join us tonight, I would encourage you to stop by the Welcome Center, though, and and sign up uh just so that we have enough workbooks to give out to everyone. I want to go off of what I was on last week with your permission, and that's Ephesians 5, 18. Be not drunk with wine, where into success, but be you filled with the spirit. Catch this. He said, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Did you catch that? It's not about all the other guys. You better get healthy yourself. You need to speak to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 20, a gripping, outstanding verse. Giving thanks always for all things unto God. You got a lot to be grateful for and thankful for. I mean, if you're in debt and can't even pay it, just thank God that you're not your creditor. I'd like to make three quick statements, observations about this thing called praise. And first of all, is the fact that you were made to praise God. I don't know why I'm here. Well, I can help you with that. You're here to praise God. Did you ever notice Isaiah chapter 4, verse 21? This people have I formed for myself. He said that they shall show forth my praise. God wants you going around sharing praise and showing it to the world that you believe in Him. Now I know that God made all of us different. And I'm not going to blame all of you on God. I know there are introverts, and I know there's extroverts, and I've met a few perverts. But we're all made differently. And we all respond differently. And I believe that we praise God kind of on the basis of our personalities. How we're made up, but there ought to be something in every one of us that ought to want to share praise and thanksgiving unto God. And I believe God makes us that way. Some people are very outgoing and they just got both hands in the air, and some got one hand in the air, and some whatever. But God made us all. Did you know there's seven different words in the Hebrew for praise? Why would there be seven different Hebrew words for praise? Because all of us praise God a little differently. But let's be sure that we're praising Him. That's why He made us. And my second observation is spirit-filled people want to praise the Lord. You say, Well, I'm not really into this thing called praise. Well, look and see what the Bible has to say. Speaking to yourselves and psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And then it goes on and said, make melody in your heart. And it keeps right on going and said, giving thanks, thanksgiving. And if we're filled with the Spirit of God, we're going to want to praise Him. Now, don't tell me you're filled with the Spirit if you don't have any desire to praise God. And the third thing, observation that I just want to, and then I'll move on. The more you praise Him, the more of Him you'll experience. The more you praise Him, the more of Him you will experience. Pastor, I don't get much out of church. Well, let me tell you why. You don't put much into church. I'm talking about the church up the street. Are you still with me? We need to maybe start by just getting active in the church. Now, if we're going to praise God for all eternity, just a thought, then surely you can endure just one hour on Sunday morning praising God. And if you're having a problem with just one hour on Sunday morning and heaven's all about praising God, you need to get real. You say, Who are you talking to? Well, if your phone's ringing, pick it up. Now, here's all I'm going to say: the more you praise him, the more of him you're going to have in your life. Now, where do you get that? I get it out of Psalm 22, verse 3. Thou inhabitest the praises. That's where God dwells. If you want God in your life, you need to create a little atmosphere. If you think God's going to show up when you're murmuring and grumbling, complaining and gossiping and being naked, God's not showing up in that atmosphere. That's not who God is. And so if you create a little atmosphere, God will show up. It always happens that way. And incidentally, 50 times for every time prayer is listed in the Bible, praise is mentioned. More praise than it ever said about prayer. And incidentally, when we leave this earth and go to heaven, your last prayer has been answered and it's over, so you won't need to pray anymore. You better be in the praise business. And I'm just suggesting some of us need to get into that mood. Now, when they dedicated Solomon's temple and they started praising the Lord, and when they started praising the Lord, this is what the Bible said, 2 Chronicles 5, verse 13, it came even to pass as the trumpeters, and the singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord. And when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets, cymbals, instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, Now what happened, Pastor? Let me tell you. For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. That then the house was filled with a smok a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. May I just say we need the house filled with his glory? You say, Pastor, what are you? You a Presbyterian? Are you Methodist? Are you Pentecostal? Are you a Baptist? You a Nazarene? No, none of those. Now don't get mad. I try to just be a Bible. I don't even know that God started all the denominations. And I know everyone's got their little string and they're plucking the string, what they believe. But really, we just need to be in the Bible. And what's the Bible teaching us? More than anything else, God made us to praise Him, and we're doing very little of what we ought to be doing. So you say, well, my problem is I don't know how to praise Him. Well, let me help you out. It's Revelation chapter 4, verse 8. The four beasts and each of them six wings about Him. They were full of eyes within it, and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come. I believe this may be the quietest world we'll ever be in. And I doubt if anybody sleeps through a service in heaven. Now I don't know how many times parents have come up and they held their baby out in their arms and sound asleep, said it went to sleep when he was preaching. Marvelous, isn't it? Some big babies too. So what's going on in this context? They're saying, holy, holy. And you know that's the very same thing when for a moment God unlocks heaven, pulls back the curtains, and we look into the glory world with Isaiah chapter 6. He said, In the year that King Uzziah died, that was his second cousin, he said, I saw also the Lord sitting on his throne high and lifted up. When he got his eyes off of grieving and looking at uh at his the king who had died, and his hands are lying still, and his voice is gone, and his eyes are unseeing. He looked up and saw the King of Kings. And he said, There were seraphims all around that throne saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. And I like what he says right here. Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come. You say, I I don't know what to praise him about. Well, you start by praising him for the past, which was. God who which was. We've all got a past. I don't remember anything out of my past to praise him for. I do. I remember when I was just a little boy, mom and dad were as dark as heathens. Mom was bored out of her mind, her marriage had messed up, she's remarried. My brother and I were not there, they're gonna get us a little bit later. But a church advertised in the paper about a revival. And when mama told dad there's a revival going on, why don't we go there tonight? We've been everywhere else. He said, them bunch of holy rollers. You don't hang around that church crowd, they'll hypnotize you. And that night they must have got hypnotized because when the invitation was given, mom and dad gave their heart to Jesus Christ. Now, you may not have anything to praise the Lord for, but I was on my road to hell when God got a hold of my heart and turned me around, washed me in the blood of Christ, and I'm on my way to heaven. I can praise God for something right out of my past, but said, which was and is. Why don't we learn how to praise him for the present? The present. Snoopy, it was a Christmas or Thanksgiving day, and Snoopy stood right outside the house. He wasn't invited in, he had his little doghouse. And he looked through the window, and there was this great big brown roasted yellow turkey, and potato salad, and baked beans, and casseroles, and uh sweet potatoes, and mash potatoes, and noodles, and cherry pie, and apple pie, and he said, All I've got to eat is dog food. Nothing to be grateful for. Then a thought hit him, but he said, I'm glad I wasn't born a turkey. And all of us ought to have something that we're grateful for. You got a roof over your head, you got shoes on your feet, you got clothes on your back, and you got people in your life. So we can be grateful just in the present, but what about the future? I mean, there's a lot to be grateful for. So what does praise do for us? Are you ready? Got your pencil ready in your brain? What does praise do for us? First of all, praise kills the enemy inside of you. The greatest battles you'll ever fight are not from somebody else. You're gonna fight them from on the inside. Your greatest struggles in life, look it over. It's not with somebody else. You're struggling from with things within, insecurities and other problems you got in your own mind and in your own life. Your biggest obstacles, biggest troubles, will be that person that you're looking at every morning when you look in the mirror. Now, there was a man in the book of Genesis, chapter 29. His name was Jacob. Jacob had a bad start because he was a bad guy. He deceived his dad and cheated his brother, had to run for his life, and he traveled 500 miles trying to spare his own life. And he came across a great sheep farm, met a man by the name of Laban. Laman had two daughters. One was pretty, and all I'm gonna say the other one wasn't. I better not say any more than that. I'm in enough trouble this morning. Bible describing Rachel as having a beautiful figure and a lovely face. And Jacob took one look and his heart jumped out. Love is a feeling you feel, you're gonna feel a feeling you never felt before. He felt it. He was scratching for it. He rolled his eyes at her and she picked him up and rolled them back. He was in love. But Rachel had a sister. Now, she didn't have it going for her. She looked like she fell out of a tree and hit every limb on the way down. Pastor leaned over to me when I was a kid evangelist. I was single, and a gal came in, big gal, and he said, I think she came, he said, I've never seen her before. She must have come because she heard there was a single evangelist. And I took a look at her and I said, I'm not worthy of all of that. But anyway, her name was Leah. And uh Jacob decided he wanted to marry Rachel and he made a struck up a deal with uh Laban. And he said, uh, I'd like to marry your daughter. And he said, if you work for me for seven years, you can have her. And uh the Bible said that the seven years went by, he was so in love that he it wasn't anything to it, it was just a joy to work the seven years. And they had that wedding night, and the next morning when he pulled the flap on the tent back, it wasn't Rachel. That old deceptive father-in-law had given him Leah. Now, can you imagine the tension in that on that farm? The resentment. Can you imagine how much Rachel must have hated Leah because she thought she had her man and Leah got the man? And Leah's over there. I got him, and you don't. I may not be as pretty, but I got him. And uh he didn't want her, and you know the story. But he worked seven more years than he got Rachel. But she couldn't seem to have any children. Leah didn't have a problem. She was a baby factory. Just boom, boom, boom, assembly line. But she wasn't loved. Everybody wants some kind of love, do they not? He didn't love her. She had that first boy and named him, and she said, now, now maybe he'll love me. Maybe he'll notice me now. But he didn't. She had a second child and said, Maybe, maybe I'll be loved now. Maybe he'll care about me. Maybe he'll not be resentful toward me. But he didn't. Child number three was born, and again she wept and said, Maybe he'll love me. Most people would give anything just to be loved in their marriage. Talk too kindly. Things couldn't have been worse. I think that uh she's like a lot of people. She wanted her validation by what others thought of her. And all of us want our self-esteem because of what people think of us or how they look at us, and that's the way she felt. So every time she encountered something that was confrontational, she'd get combative. And she thought, nobody's got a good opinion of it. But you know what? When you know who you are, you don't have to impress people with what you do. When you know who you are. She had those three children. And she's consumed, not by what vertical, but what was going on horizontal. That's why we spend money that we don't have to impress people we don't like. And get things we don't even need and then have to refinance. But something happened. Maybe he'll love me, but he didn't. But you had a fourth son. And there in Genesis 29, verse 35, she conceived again and bare a son, and she said, Now will I praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. She didn't say maybe he'll love me now. She said, From now on, I'm just gonna praise the Lord. I'm not gonna worry about this thing horizontal, what everybody else thinks, and how they're impressed and what they have to say. I'm gonna be concerned vertically with what that one up there thinks. I'm simply saying praise will kill the insecurity on the inside of you. Praise will kill that enemy on the inside of you that you're battling with. When you realize you're a child of God and blood washed and God's got a good plan for you and you've got a future, you can quit worrying about the crowd. You just please Him. But a second thing, praise kills the enemy in front of you. And I want to tell you something. You'll always have enemies in front of you. You'll always have them. There'll always be enemies. Every morning when you get up, you don't know what you might face. Enemies. But I've learned that praise will kill the enemy in front of you. Now we get busy trying to work out our problems. We manipulate, we maneuver, and we try to get through life, and we get all scuffed up and bruised and banged, and and uh you can't beat life to the draw every time. Even Matt Dillon couldn't do that, and Roy Rogers and the rest of them. Life is tough. There are things that you'll never win, but if you'll turn to him, begin to praise him, it'll kill that enemy in front of you. There's a guy in the Bible, his name was Jehoshaphat. Now, if you haven't been amanning so far, you're gonna have a big problem with that big word Jehoshaphat. He had three armies come down against him. You've got three enemies too, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It's the story is there in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. He's about 35 years of age. He's got a little army, and three great armies, the Moabites and the Amorites and the Mount Seer crowd are all coming down against him. And there in 2 Chronicles 20, verse 12, he said, I don't know what to do. I don't know which way to turn. I guess I'll just keep my eyes upon the Lord. Listen, there'll be times in life when you won't know what to do. What would you recommend, Pastor? Get your eyes on God. There'll be happenings in your life, big issues that'll hit you up front. It'll blow you out of the water, and if you don't keep your eyes on God, you're not going to make it. Things that you can't fix. Now here's what God told him to do. He said, You've got these enemies coming down against you. Now it's in the 20th chapter, verse 20. And they rose early in the morning and went forth into the wilderness of Tokoah. And as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, ye inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established. Believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper. And when he had consulted with the people, now didn't he have a strategy? Well, look at what he did. He appointed singers unto the Lord. Make a melody in your heart. Remember that? Speaking to yourselves, the psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. He appointed singers unto the Lord. He didn't have a New Testament and a whole schematic of things, but He got it. He got it. He appointed singers unto the Lord that they should praise the beauty of holiness. Let me tell you something. God's a holy God. Just praise his holiness. It's beautiful in his origins. Holiness is beautiful when it works. It's beautiful when it works in the home. Holiness is beautiful when it works in the church. And they went out before the army and say, Praise the Lord for his mercy endureth forever. Now, some guy standing over here has got his sword. He said, What am I supposed to do? Jehoshaphat said, put the sword up and start praising the Lord and start shouting. Just praise the Lord for a little while. You say, Well, Pastor, I've got enemies in front of me. I'm sure you do. What would you recommend? Praise the Lord. You might as well put your sword up. You're not going to win with it anyhow. Just begin to praise the Lord. And look at the next verse, verse 22. And when they begin to sing and to praise the Lord, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount of Seir, those three large armies, which were against Judah, and they were smitten. Now what happened? When they begin to praise the Lord, God put ambushments out there, and those three armies turned on each other, and Israel just stood there and watched them kill each other. Now, what really happened, Pastor, what really happened, you want my opinion? This is what's cell theology. You can throw it away if you want. I believe there's a bigger battle going on than just you and I. I believe there's a battle between God and the devil. And I believe that when you create atmosphere, God's going to dwell on that atmosphere. There will be times when you need God so desperately and you can't pray to pass, you can't obey it to pass, you can't sing it to pass. But there's one thing that has always worked, and that's praise. Why? God dwells in an atmosphere of praise. And when you create atmosphere, God's going to show up. And when we draw nigh to God, the enemy is going to flee. And when God came, the devil left. They were without any leadership and they killed each other. And you have a battle in front of you. You've got a struggle maybe going on at your house. It could be physical, it could be relational. Some of you may be fighting the greatest battles financially you've ever faced. It might even be your child. You say, Well, Pastor, what do you recommend? Praise the Lord. You're going to have to praise your way through it. And Jehoshaphat realized something that most of us have never realized. And the secret is in 1 or 2 Chronicles chapter 20, verse 15. Be not afraid, neither dismayed by reason of the multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Did you know by the way, did you remember King David? Before he was king, he was 17. All he had was a slingshot. And his brothers made fun of him. He was not a trained fighter, he was a sheepherder. He brought some cheese to his brothers, and they made fun of him. And there's a roaring giant down there named Goliath. And do you remember what David said at 17 years of age? Well, let me read it to you. I'm not making all this up. He said, and it's 1 Samuel 17, 47, all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands. And I believe God sent me here this morning to say to you, some of you, you've got a battle going on right now, and you just think the end of the world has come, but you need to understand this is not your battle. It's God's battle. And you need to turn it over to God and begin to praise Him in spite of all the opposition and whatever thing appears to be, and begin to believe Him, and God will show up. And when you praise the Lord, it kills the enemy on the inside of you, all that insecurity. When you praise God, it kills the enemy out in front of you. And may I hasten to a close. Praise kills the enemy that binds you. May I ask you a question? What's binding you? What are you all bound up by? What are you confronting? What's controlling you instead of you controlling it? What are you confronting? What's holding you back? What are you bound by? Maybe nobody else knows, but you know who are you bound by and what are you bound by? Well, look at the word of God. It was another day, another time, another crowd. It was two guys out preaching on a little tour. And the crowd in that city turned against them. Their names was Paul and Silas. It's Acts 16, 25, and the multitude rose up together against them. And the magistrates rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. They're in prison. Circumstances could not have been any worse. Is that the way it is in your life right now? The future looked bleak. So what did they do? Verse 26. And at midnight, that's generally when things are falling apart, and I'm rolling and tossing on my bed. Are you? It said at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. And the prisoners heard them. Somebody else did too. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundation of the prison was shaken, and immediately all the doors were open, and everyone's bands were loosed. What's binding you? When they began to praise God, God shook up the prison. Elvis didn't even get a chance to do his jailhouse rock. God rocked the place. And God broke loose those things that were binding them. And here's what I want to say: don't let what's wrong with you keep you from praising what's right with God. Don't let what's wrong with you, Pastor. I'd praise God, but I I got to get my life perfect right now. I'm not in a place where I can praise him. You better start praising him anyway. You never will get it all figured out. You never get it all cleaned up just right. Start in it, just come to him as you are. That's why I like that song, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood is going to cover me, just as I am. And so there you go. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from praising what's right with God. People are bound by their past. People get bound by public opinion. People are bound by guilt. People get bound by strongholds. People are bound by decisions they have made and got them in a jam. Men and women are bound by lust, and others are bound by addictions. It controls them. They're just bound. Well, what's the hope, Pastor? Praise kills whatever binds you. That's the answer. And you may have great loss in your life. You may have a marriage that you've lost. It may be a health issue that you've lost. It may be finances that you've lost. A business failed. People experience loss in a lot of ways. You may be bound by the loss of a loved one. You say, well, they can get through it. I'm not sure you can get well from it. But I do believe you can get through it. I don't know that you ever get over it. There'll always be that doll ache somewhere back there in the background. I'd driven down the many miles from Be Cyrus to see my mother in Brazil, Indiana. She was almost 90. And I went to leave, and we were sitting in a restaurant. I said, Mama, I need to get you home, and I've got to drive back to Beirus. She said, Could we go by the baby's grave? I said, What was that, Mom? The baby's grave. I said, What baby? Then it dawned on me. I'd had a little baby brother, a little bit older than I, about a year older, that had died. Six months old. And had a croup. And Mama didn't know God, didn't have a clue. She didn't know God from a turkey. But about that time, that little boy threw his arms out and set up. And threw his arms up and laughed and he was gone. And Mama couldn't forget it. Mama couldn't bear it all those years. Now she's 90. Because we go by the baby's grave. It's always slurking. But I do believe you can get through loss. Sometimes I think we grieve the child we thought we had and fail to enjoy the child we do have. You can tweet that if you want to. We're all bound. We're bound by relationships that didn't work out. Oh, Pastor, before you close, can you help me? I don't know what it's like to lose a child. I almost lost my boy. You some of you know he had cancer. And you you live with me through it. Thank you. They burned him up with radiation. Poisoned him to death nearly with chemotherapy. School kids didn't know what to do with him. It was awful days. Almost lost him. I buried him a hundred times or more in my mind, though. I don't know how you get through it. But I do know there was a man in the Bible that lost ten kids. What would it be like to follow the hearse? There's ten of them. And then they're all yours. And suddenly you realize I have no legacy anymore. I have no one to follow me. I'll live and die. His name was Job. Mary 10. Well, this is what he did. Then Job arose, read his mantle, shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and he worshiped it. He said, God, I love those children. I watched them as babies. I watched them grow. I came into this world naked, didn't have anything. Then I had those kids. Thank you, Lord. I had them. But I guess I'm going to leave this world naked just like I came. Naked shall I return. Lord, those babies brought me joy. You gave them to me. Everything I've ever had, you gave to me. I would have liked to have had them longer. But the years I had, you gave me. I wish that marriage had worked, but it didn't seem to work out. Some good things came out of it, but it's gone. And he wrote, The Lord, giveth. And the Lord taketh away. I'm not going to be bitter. I can't live with hatred. So blessed be the name of the Lord. You say, preacher, I don't feel like praising the Lord. I'm certain you don't. There's times when none of us feel like praising the Lord. That's why the Bible says in Hebrews 13, 15, offer the sacrifices of praise. It's a sacrifice to praise when you don't feel like it. When everything's going wrong and your heart's crossed and your will has been crossed, and to still praise him. God sees us praising him when we're offering it as a sacrifice.

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Thanks for being a part of the Voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9 a.m. with BNC's pastor Ray Lastal. For more information regarding BNC, visit EusyrusNazarine.org.