The things you set your mind on, affect your happiness in the Lord. Your thoughts affect your mood. Mike Sheeks exhorted the elders and deacons last Monday night to be strong in thankfulness. And he said our thankfulness as leaders affects the atmosphere of the whole church. In Psalm 89 God calls us to set our hearts and minds on certain themes that produce joy. Our happiness, individually and as a church family is found in being centered on him!

“Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord. They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength...”.

Acclaim means to praise enthusiastically, to cheer, to applaud, to speak highly of. There is a special blessing for you if you learn to speak highly of the Lord. There is a special blessing for us as a church if we speak highly of the Lord, if we praise him enthusiastically, and cheer him and applaud him. The word blessed includes being happy so we could say happy are those who have learned to worship this way.

What are the dominant thoughts and themes that run through your mind most of the time? A man by the name of David Brooks said the dominant mindset we are living under today could be labeled “The Big Me”. (iPhone, iPad, iCulture) We live in a culture that encourages self absorption, and self focus. We tend to be taken up with, “How I am doing? How are things working out for me?”. Of course, we are aware of our circumstances, our own pain and disappointments, but we were never made to set our minds completely on ourselves! That can only lead to bad moods and grumpiness, or much worse! Paul set the mind set on the flesh is death! But the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace!

God created us to be taken up with him, to enjoy him, to celebrate him, to praise and thank him, all day long! And to the degree that we do NOT do that, we are killing our own ability to be happy. We desperately need a God-focus to displace our self as the center of our lives! GK Chesterton said, “How much larger your life would be, if your self could become a smaller part in it”.

We are going to talk this morning about the church as a place of celebration, praise and worship. We need to be God-conscious people. We need to be a God-conscious church. We need to be taken up with his goodness, and grace, his loving-kindness and greatness, his awesome power and holiness and all that he has give us with Christ. He is what we need to think about, to talk about, to sing about.

Our theme for the next several weeks is: The Spirit Filled Church. The church is the place God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:22 says, We “are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives, by his Spirit”. We don’t really have church at all, unless God lives among us, in a present, active sort of way. Church is God coming among us (to saturate our lives, and our fellowship) by his Spirit.

AS the Spirit dwells among us ONE of the primary things we will do, is sing and talk about how good and wonderful God is. In Ephesians chapter 5 a command was given to the church at Ephesus, “Do not get drunk on wine, instead be filled with the Spirit, talking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. When the church was filled with the Spirit at Pentecost, they were speaking in tongues, “declaring the wonders of God”.

THIS is to be the dominant mind-set of our lives! This is to be the theme of the church! In a Spirit filled church we speak and sing of God’s wonders. Not how crummy or pathetic our lives are! Sure we can be honest about our problems and griefs, but we are not mired down in them forever. We give thanks to God in all things, in the name of Jesus. We do this because that’s what people touched and filled by the Spirit do! The Spirit is transforming us from people of grumbling, and negative, hopeless perspectives, INTO people of thankfulness and praise.

AS A CHURCH, together we praise and celebrate God.

The Lord laid on my heart a group of verses from Psalm 89 for this topic this morning. It is really a revolutionary truth that is revealed here! It has the power to overthrow long held attitudes, that need to go!

Let’s read this again: “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord. They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength...”. Some translators have said this is an outburst of wonder and should be translated “Oh! The blessedness of those who know the joyful sounds of worship!”

Other translations of this verse are:

“Blessed is the people that knows your glory songs.” Aramaic Bible. IE blessed are the people who are familiar with singing songs of glory to God! That is the kind of songs they know and are experienced at singing them to God! O how happy these people are!

“How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!” NASB

“How happy are the people who can worship joyfully.” ISV

“Happy are the people that know the joyful shout.” Holman Translation

“Blessed are the people who know how to praise you!” God’s Word Translation

I like the NIV here, “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you”, because the word acclaim incorporates all of these! How blessed are those who have learned, or come to know in personal experience what it is to celebrate God.

Does your heart know the sound of joyful worship? Or is that something your heart is not acquainted with? Are we a people who know what the joyful shout is? Do we know the glory songs? Do we know what it is to go around saying how good and wonderful God is? Do we speak well of God? It’s something we should learn, because that is where the blessing of God is found.

There is a subtle warning here too. IF we are blessed in speaking well of God, THEN we are NOT blessed if we do not learn this. The sad reality is that those who do not worship, miss out on much. Zechariah 16 speaks about the end time battle of the nations against Jerusalem and the king of kings. But it says something very interesting about worship. “The the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do NOT go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord, Almighty, they will have no rain”.

Hunger, drought, even the plague, is the portion of those who don’t go up to worship. Don’t let your hearts become hearts become hardened against praise and worship. Don’t let your hearts become cynical and hardened against joyously celebrating God. Blessing is upon the worshipers! Remember that!

There is more to this verse! “….who walk in the light of your presence, Lord”. Or “for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord”. Or NASB, “They walk in the light of your countenance”. The ESV says “who walk in the light of your face”. Albert Barnes translates this, “They shall live in Thy favor and enjoy Thy smiles”. People who enthusiastically praise God enjoy God’s approval!

Now I believe that God is smiling at us in Christ. I believe that he is pleased when he sees you as a son or a daughter in Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ brings us acceptance and peace with God. God has reconciled us to himself through Christ! But unless his goodness and grace becomes the topic of our thoughts and our talk, we miss out on the present enjoyment of our blessings in Christ!

Alexander MacClaren put it this way, “The people who are sure that they have their King in their midst, and who feel that He is looking down upon them with tender pity, with loving care, with nothing but friendship and sweetness in His heart, these people, says the Psalmist, are blessed”.

Verse 16 says, “They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness”. These people do this ALL DAY LONG. There are times when we are spiritually dry and weary, and can’t seem to find our joy, but God’s normal plan for us is to rejoice in his presence all day long, every day. Alexander MacClaren asked, “Is it possible for a man to go through life carrying this atmosphere with him constantly with him?” His short answer is “yes because we may always carry God with us wherever we go”. He goes on to say “I know that an absolute attainment of such an ideal is perhaps beyond us, but we can approach nearer to it than any of us has done yet!”.

The key is to rejoice in HIS name. We rejoice in HIM! Trying to find this happiness, this blessed life, in ourselves, with our failures and imperfections, and weaknesses, is just such a dead end. Lack of worship and thanksgiving make us very self focused and self conscious and therefore very unhappy. But when we celebrate God, we free ourselves from a multitude of problems that come with self focus.

AB Simpson “It is a great deliverance to lose one’s self. There is no heavier millstone that one can be compelled to carry that self consciousness. It is so easy to get introverted and coiled around one’s self in our spiritual consciousness. There is nothing that is so easy to fasten on as our misery….until it becomes almost a settled habit to hold on to our burden, and pray it unceasingly into the very face of God, until our very prayer saturates us with our own misery, instead of asking for power to drop ourselves altogether, and leave ourselves in His loving hands and know that we are free, and then rise into the blessed liberty of His higher thoughts and will, and His love and care for others. The very act of letting go of ourselves really lifts us into a higher plane, and relieves us from the thing that is hurting”.

That is exactly what worship does for us. Thinking of own success and significance, or thinking of our own shame and insignificance and failure, can both lead to a preoccupation with self. But God calls us up and out of that and into worship.

The next verse goes on, “They celebrate YOUR righteousness”. Our righteousness does not reach a level, that can make us right with God, but 1 Corinthians 1:30 tells us Jesus Christ has become OUR righteous and holiness.

And Romans 3:21 says, “But now a righteousness FROM GOD apart from law, has been made known...This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe”.

God’s righteousness, given to us, credited to us, imparted to us is always something for us to celebrate. When you get up in the morning, instead of focusing on YOURSELF and your flaws and failures, begin to proclaim how righteous the Lord is, how pure and faultless he is, and how in his amazing grace he has credited you with HIS righteousness. AND focus on how God will enable you through his Spirit, to to his will today.

Then verse 17, “For you are their glory and strength and by your favor you exalt our horn”. God is your glory! He is the most glorious thing about you. If he is your glory, you can get off the treadmill of seeking glory from other people or feeling the need of others approval. You can get off the treadmill of seeking glory in your beauty or intelligence or success.

“God is our strength”. When you are weak and don’t feel you can take another step God is your strength. You have the option to despair of your weakness, or in your weakness you can see God as your strength.

Through out this whole passage we see the focus on God! They rejoice in YOUR name all day long; they celebrate YOUR righteousness. YOU are their glory and strength.

This Psalm was not written by David. It was written by a guy named Ethan, Ethan the Ezrahite. I don’t know anything about him, but he really had worship figured out! In verse 1 he said, “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever…..with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations….” Verse 2, “I will declare that your love stands firm forever…..you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself”…..Verse 5, “The heavens praise your wonders, Lord, your faithfulness too….. For who in the skies above can compare with the Lord?… Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you”.

Do you think Ethan had any problems? Or do you think he is some guy in some situation where everything just happens to be going right? NOT AT ALL! If you read the rest of the Psalm you will see that he lived some time after David and saw the problems of bad kings that came out of David’s line. He saw his nation in decline. He experienced the mocking and taunts of the nations over Israel.

But he had learned the blessing of praising the Lord and that’s the way he ends this Psalm. “Praise be to the Lord forever!” It is like he said, things are REALLY bad...but I know how to be a blessed person, a happy person. I’m gonna praise the Lord FOREVER!!!” I have chosen PRAISE to be the theme of my heart forever! Being a person who acclaims the Lord is a choice. It is something we decide in our heart to do.

“Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, Lord”. Blessed is the church that has learned to to acclaim the Lord. Again, acclaim means to praise enthusiastically, to cheer, to applaud, to speak highly of.

How do we do this?

*Utilize the words of the psalms as a pattern for our own hearts and thoughts. It does no good to just read a Psalm. They are guides to worship. You take what is there and make them your own prayers and praise to God.

*Listen to good worship music, or read good devotionals that point you to God.

*Practice saying good things about God as a matter of routine throughout the day. “The Lord is good and his loving-kindness is everlasting.” When I go to the mail box I say that! I went through a season many years ago when I got a lot of bad mail. And I began to practice declaring the Lord’s goodness to calm my fears.

*Go to the gospel. Remind yourself that you were a sinner, without God, and under the judgment of God, but God came into the world in Christ, and took all your sin and condemnation upon himself. That he gave you his own righteousness. And you stand in God’s love and favor forever. He has poured out his Spirit into your hearts and set you free from yourself to love others.

*Read Psalm 145 and use it to declare good things about God!