Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1902
“I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day will I bless You; and I will praise Your name forever and ever.” Psalm 114:1,2.
IF I were to put to you the question, “Do you pray?” the answer would be very quickly given by every Christian person, “Of course I do.” Suppose I then added, “And do you pray every day?” the prompt reply would be, “Yes, many times in the day. I could not live without prayer.” This is no more than I expect and I will not ask the question. But let me change the enquiry and ask, “Do you bless God every day? Is praise as certain and constant a practice with you as prayer?” I am not sure that the answer would be quite so certain, so general, or so prompt. You would have to stop a little while before you gave the reply and, I fear in some cases, when the reply did come, it would be, “I am afraid I have been negligent in praise.” Well, then, dear Friend, have you not been wrong? Should we omit praise any more than we omit prayer? And should not praise come daily and as many times in the day as prayer does? It strikes me that to fail in praise is as unjustifiable as to fail in prayer! I shall leave it with your own heart and conscience, when you have asked and answered the question, to see to it in the future that far more of the sweet frankincense of praise is mingled with your daily oblation of devotion.
Praise is certainly not at all so common in family prayer as other forms of worship. We cannot, all of us, praise God in the family by joining in song, because we are not all able to raise a tune, but it would be well if we could. I agree with Matthew Henry when he says, “They that pray in the family do well; they that pray and read the Scriptures do better; but they that pray, read and sing do best of all.” There is a completeness in that kind of family worship which is much to be desired.
Whether in the family or not, yet personally and privately, let us endeavor to be filled with God’s praise and with His honor all the day. Be this our resolve—“I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day will I bless You; and I will praise Your name forever and ever.”
Brethren, praise cannot be a second-class business, for it is evidently due to God and that in a very high degree. A sense ofjustice ought to make us praise the Lord. It is the least we can do and, in some senses, it is the most that we can do in return for the multiplied benefits which He bestows upon us. What? No harvest of praise for Him who has sent the sunshine of His love and the rain of His Grace upon us? What? No revenue of praise for Him who is our gracious Lord and King! He does not exact from us any servile labor, but simply says, “Whoever offers praise glorifies Me.”
Praise is good, pleasant and delightful. Let us rank it among those debts which we would not wish to forget, but are eager to pay at once. Praise is an act which is pre-eminently characteristic of the true child of God. The man who does but pretend to piety will fast twice in the week and stand in the temple and offer something like prayer. But to praise God with all the heart, this is the mark of true adoption! This is the sign and token of a heart received by Divine Grace! We lack one of the most sure evidences of pure love to God if we live without presenting praise to His ever-blessed name.
Praising God is singularly beneficial to ourselves. If we had more of it, we should be greatly blessed. What could lift us so much above the trials of life; what could help us to bear the burden and heat of the day so well as songs of praise unto the Most High? The soldier marches without weariness when the band is playing uplifting strains; the sailor, as he pulls the rope or lifts the anchor, utters a cheery cry to aid his toil—let us try the animating power of hymns of praise! Nothing would oil the wheels of the chariot of life so well as more of the praising of God. Praise would end murmuring and nurse contentment. If our mouths were filled with the praises of God, there would be no room for grumbling. Praise
would throw a halo of glory around the head of toil and thought! In its sunlight, the most common duties of life would be transfigured! Sanctified by prayer and praise, each duty would be raised into a hallowed worship akin to that of Heaven! It would make us more happy, more holy and more heavenly, if we would say, “I will extol You, my God, O
King.”
Besides, Brothers and Sisters, unless we praise God here, are we preparing for our eternal Home? There, all is praise! How can we hope to enter there if we are strangers to that exercise? This life is a preparatory school and in it we are preparing for the high engagements of the perfected. Are you not eager to rehearse the everlasting hallelujahs?—
“I would begin the music here,