A Sacrifice of Praise?

When I was working as a Campus Minister at Kansas University, we had devotionals every Friday evening. To some that seems like exactly the night you would not want to do such a thing, but it worked for us. It gave the students something wholesome to do on a Friday evening.

A big part of devotional night was singing. We would spend a good half hour to forty-five minutes at it. One of the devo songs’ lyrics reads as follows:

We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.
We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.
And we offer up to you the sacrifices of thanksgiving.
And we offer up to you the sacrifices of joy.

I’m sure many of you have heard that song, and possibly sung it. It may be stuck in your head even now. I don’t know where the song originated, but I do know Maranatha Music has released a recording of it.

The very simple lyric is based on Hebrews 13:15.

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
– Philippians 4:8, ESV

Praise is a Sacrifice?

How is it that praise is a sacrifice? That strikes me as rather incongruous. A sacrifice is something that costs me. Let’s say a family wants something but they cannot afford to purchase it. In the family meeting dad may say something like, “Well, if we really want this, we’re just going to have to make some sacrifices.”

It’s going to cost them something. They are going to make a sacrifice, to give up things so they can fulfill the other desire.

Sacrifices are often considered painful and, if not painful, certainly intrusive. Otherwise, we respond to the situation saying, “Meh, it’s no great sacrifice on my part.”

But praise isn’t typically painful or intrusive. Praise is something that springs from a heart filled with awe and gratitude. Joy builds within us to the point that it can no longer be contained, and it bursts forth from us in the form of praise!

How is that a sacrifice?

In other arenas, we praise accomplished athletes or musicians. We feel good doing so. “Oh, she’s so good at what she does.” For example, I don’t know that I have ever witnessed a more highly skilled dancer than Vera Ellen. Every dance she did was executed with such awe-inspiring precision, she made her dance partners look like amateurs.

It was not painful or costly for me to write that. It’s the truth.

Just last evening, Alean and I watched an Amazon Prime documentary, The Blue Angels. It was pretty amazing. If you enjoy precision flying where the jets are eighteen inches apart in difficult formations while moving at four hundred miles per hour, you might also enjoy this program. The skill of these pilots calls forth our praise and admiration. It’s not painful or costly to us in any way for us to grant that.

How is that a sacrifice?

We praise our children when they work toward a goal and accomplish it. We praise the efforts and productivity of an industrious coworker. We praise the loyalty of a faithful pet. None of this is difficult for us.

And we praise God because he is good, loving, generous. He cares for us, meets our needs, blesses us, and loves us. It is easy to praise God in this way.

Praise is a Sacrifice!

But consider the times when it is not easy to praise, those times when, seemingly, God did not bless us, at least not the way we thought he would or should.

The time when the medical diagnosis was cancer. The time we outlived one or more of our children. The time our home caught fire and not everyone escaped. The time we got that call from the highway patrol telling us, “There’s been an accident, and it’s not good.” The time we learned that our spouse had been unfaithful. The time the bank telephoned to tell us they were calling the entire outstanding balance on our home mortgage.

These are not times we are inclined toward praising God. Rather, these are times we see God as distant, possibly uncaring, or we speculate that he simply does not see, or has forgotten us.

Praise?? No!!

Instead, we may lash out at God. We may cry out, “Do you even care?” We may temporarily ponder whether we even believe. Maybe it’s all a sham. Or maybe we are just experimental rats in a devious maze.

In such circumstances, praise can be a sacrifice. We’re going to have to give something up. It will require us to lay all of our anger, doubt, and bitterness down, to set aside the whirlwind of confusion and our lack of understanding, lack of insight. This is the time we offer a sacrifice of praise to the holy God. We choose to proclaim that, despite our turmoil, we know and declare that God is good, and faithful, and true.

We continually offer a sacrifice of praise. It is less of a thing we do and more of a life we live. It is less an expression of our lips and more an outpouring of our hearts.

This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
– Matthew 15:8, ESV

The sacrifice of praise cares nothing for circumstances. It is an unending flow from the deepest inner man and inner woman. It is Paul and Silas singing to God at midnight as they sat in prison with their feet in stocks (Acts 16). It is the disciples, having been beaten at the order of the high priest and the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus (Acts 5). It is Job exclaiming, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15).

The sacrifice of praise is borne of a heart that can see beyond the circumstances.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
– Psalm 51:17, ESV