Long Story Short

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

The first song of the first church service

He leads the worship himself for a long stretch — praise, a prayer line for the sick, another song — pushing back on the idea that it is mere noise: "It would be really easy to just walk in here and say, for somebody that didn't know — not us, we know — 'Well, that's just emotionalism. They're just doing it because the music sounds good.' But I wonder if there's anybody here with a praise on their lips that says, 'It doesn't matter what the drummer's doing. Doesn't matter what the song leader's doing. I choose to praise Him. I choose to magnify Him. I choose to exalt the name.' Would you look back over your life and remember where He brought you from?... 'Brother Phillips, I don't have nothing to shout about.' I want you to take one breath right now and recognize that's enough reason to shout... He didn't have to save me. He didn't have to change me. He didn't have to fill me. But here I am in my right mind. God has been good to me." Then the choice: "The way I see it, we can go home, or we can preach... 1 Chronicles chapter 16. Begin reading in verse one." He honors the leadership and the saints, and reads: "'So they brought the ark of God, and set it in the midst of the tent that David had pitched for it. And they offered burnt sacrifices and peace offerings before the LORD.' For the sake of standing tonight, I would that you would skip down to verse 7. 'Then on that day David delivered first the psalm to thank the LORD into the hand of Asaph and his brethren: Give thanks unto the LORD. Call upon His name. Make known His deeds among the people. Sing unto Him. Sing psalms unto Him. Talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.'" The subject comes out of a Southern idiom: "Where I live in the South, there's a common term that people use when they have a lot to tell you and not enough time. And they'll just say 'long story short' — and then they'll tell you the long story anyway. Y'all got anybody like that up here? Don't look at them. Well, I'm not going to tell you the long story tonight, but I am going to preach: Long story short."

Scriptures: 1 Chronicles 16:1; 1 Chronicles 16:7-11

Everything you need is in His presence

He will not romanticize David's era: "I hear preachers say things like, 'Well, I would love to go back and live in the days of David.' Not me. I'll be honest, I don't even want to go back to brush arbors. I like air conditioning and padded pews... How terrible would it be to live in a world where the presence of the Lord was only something that you experienced externally — like a coat, you could put it on and get God's presence to touch you. But I'm thankful to proclaim on this Sunday night, it's real. It's real down in my soul. It's not just something I feel on the outside, Pastor Parker, but it's something that's living on the inside. As a seven-year-old boy, God filled me with the gift of the Holy Ghost, evidence speaking in other tongues. And let me just tell you, I have never been the same... I wouldn't trade this Holy Ghost for the nicest house and the nicest car and the most amount of money. You can take this whole world — just give me Jesus." David's moment is the pattern: "Thousands of oxen, gallons of blood spilled in reverence of the box that was the only physical representation of God. And it is in this moment that David lines up the band and writes a song. And while doing so, he sets a precedent for what we should do and how we should do when we get into the presence of the Lord. We know that God is omnipresent — He's everywhere at the same time; He fills all time and all space. But there are special times that He visits His people. His divine presence takes over, like in Matthew chapter 18 and verse 20, where it says, 'Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them.' It's not just My omnipresence, but it is My divine presence that comes down and dwells with man when I get two or three gathered in My name... David recognized at this moment the most valuable thing in his world. Again, it was not gold or silver. It was not the throne or the crown on his head, but it was the presence of the Lord. Can I tell you tonight that we need a Davidic revelation of what His presence is, and what it can do for us? In Psalm 16 and 11, he said, 'Thou wilt show me the path of life. In Thy presence is fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' I'm telling you tonight that you need to get the revelation that everything you need is in the presence of the Lord... I know oftentimes I'm guilty, just like you, of misquoting Psalm 16 and 11 and skipping the first part of it. We get straight to 'in Thy presence is fullness of joy... pleasures for evermore.' But he also said, 'Thou wilt show me the path of life.' Boy, I don't have time to preach all that. We know in Your presence there's fullness of joy, but it's also 'Thou wilt show me the path of life.' When I don't know what to do, but I get in Your presence, You are downloading something into my spirit... You might be a business owner in the making right now, that God's wanting to download something in your spirit while you're in His presence. You can get anything while you're in His presence. You can get joy. You can get peace. You can get your marriage put back together again. You can get a business idea. God can bless you. And it all happens when we get in the presence of the Lord. That's why in Psalm 51:11, David said, 'Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.'" And attendance is not presence: "Getting in His presence doesn't just mean you come to church. Because you can be present and not in His presence. You can be in the church and not be in the kingdom. You can be in the vicinity of what God is doing without getting touched by what God is doing. Listen, you already came to church. You already put on your suit and tie and your Sunday-night dress. You might as well do what it takes to get in His presence. Shut out the distractions. Turn off the noise. And get in the presence of the Lord."

Scriptures: Matthew 18:20; Psalm 16:11; Psalm 51:11

Give thanks first

"This is quite literally the first church service of the Bible. And so I think it does us well to have church the way they had it in the Bible... The first words of the first song of the first church service of the Bible is, 'Give thanks unto the LORD.' Hallelujah. Now let me just tell you something: the Bible lets us know it's a sign of the end time that men would be unthankful. And there is an epidemic of unthankfulness that is running through our world today. And dare I say, it's even got its way into the church. What we need is a fresh reminder that when I get into His presence, the first step I need to do is I need to be thankful unto the Lord. You want to know why? For He is good, and His mercy endureth forever. You want to know why I'm thankful? Because He didn't have to save me. He didn't have to change me. He didn't have to pick me up and turn me around. He could have left me alone. But He found me. When I was in sin, He found you, when you were in sin... If He never does another thing, He saved me. And that's enough for me to praise Him." The next line of the psalm is testimony: "'Call upon His name, and make known His deeds among the people.' You know what that was? That was testimony service." His riff on testimony services runs from a self-deprecating confession about dull ones to a mother's specifics — "He was bread when I was hungry. He was water when I was thirsty. He's been my shelter in the time of the storm... I thank You because I got a roof over my head and I got shoes on my feet. I thank You because I got food on my table... I thank You because You gave me health in my body. You gave me a wife and children" — and lands on the order of operations: "'Seek the LORD and His strength.' Seek the Lord. And you want to be made strong. You want to be healed. You want to be delivered. All of that takes place after we thank Him. I'm going to just help you right now. I wonder if we miss a lot of miracles because we pray in faith before we ever give thanks. 'Oh, I believe You're going to do it' — but you ain't thanked Him for what He did yesterday. I'm going to say it again: 'Enter into His gates with thanksgiving.' That's why when we get to the front and we start anointing with oil, it really does work — because we've already been thankful. We've already got a thankful spirit. I'm going to tell you, when God sees somebody that says, 'Even if You don't, I'm still going to praise You,' He puts them first in line for a miracle. Oh, that's cute preaching. No, that's Holy Ghost preaching."

The long story short

"This psalm that David writes here in 1 Chronicles chapter 16 is sent off to the mixers. It's mastered, and it's released in a full album in Psalm 105. And in this psalm, in one chapter, he goes through and he tells a brief synopsis of Israel's history. He starts talking about how God is faithful. Does anybody know Him to be a faithful God? He starts with Abraham, and he goes from Abraham to Joseph, and then Israel as a nation. And he looks back over Israel's history. Do you realize how much stuff is jumped from Abraham to Joseph, and from Joseph to Israel as a nation? Do you know how many miracles happened in between all of that? You know, it's kind of like he was saying, 'There's a lot here.' And can I just say it like this? If I had 10,000 tongues and 10,000 years, I still couldn't tell it all. And so, let me just give you the long story short. As he works his way through the psalm, to Psalm 105, he talks of all of God's goodness and all of God's miracle-working power. And as he gets to his 45 verses, the last four words of the 45th verse is, 'Praise ye the LORD.' There's a lot we skipped. There's a lot that we could talk about that we don't have time to talk about. So just let me give you the long story short: give Him praise. Tonight, if I was to hand this microphone around to everybody here, it would take all night long. And so tonight, we don't have time. I'm sorry, we don't have time for you to tell your story. So what you need to do, when you come to church, is you need to give everybody the long story short. Just give Him praise... You don't have to tell the whole story. Let your dance tell the story. Let your shout be a testimony of the goodness of God. Let your shout be a testimony of His delivering power." The whole Psalter makes the same point: "The book of Psalms as a whole — it's over seven authors from different backgrounds: kings and peasants, unnamed warriors and priests. The book of Psalms spans a 1,000-year span of time, from living in a tent to living in the desert, from living in the desert to living in the throne room. A thousand years of wisdom... We only get 150 chapters to cover a thousand years. And so we get to the end — because it could just keep going on and on and on and on — but somebody gets a long story short in their spirit, and they say to praise Him on the stringed instruments and the organs and the timbrels and with the dance, and all of these wonderful things. But then he gets to the end and he says, 'Let me just put it like this: Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.' He kept us. He delivered us. He saved us. He healed us. He made a way where there was no way. He opened doors that no man could shut. He kept us in the lion's den. He kept us in the fiery furnace. Let everything— I don't have a thousand years. I don't have 10,000 tongues. I don't have enough time."

Scriptures: Psalm 105:45

Praise your way out

The practical close refuses counseling-as-substitute: "It frustrates me, the amount of people that want the preacher to know how bad it's going on in their world, as an excuse. Because here's the reality: me knowing what you're going through ain't going to change one thing. You want to know why? Because I'm not God... We got people that come to church and they ask for a two-hour counseling session, and then next month they want another one, when they ain't done what Pastor Parker said to do in the first place. I'm here to present to you tonight that you can pray and you can praise your way out of anything. Living for God's really not that hard. 'Pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.' If it's good, I praise You. If it's bad, I praise You. If I'm happy, I praise You... I'll praise You because I know, that I know, that I know, that I know, that praise is a weapon. That praise is the key that unlocks the door to miracles." Then the seven Hebrew words for praise, compressed: "There are seven Hebrew words for praise. I don't have time to preach them all. So just let me give you the long story short. They all require two things: they require motion, and they require your voice. Which, if you're going to give Him a biblical praise, then you're going to have to move, and you're going to have to get loud. Do you need a miracle? Then I'm here to challenge you in the Holy Ghost: lift your voice like a trumpet. Lift your voice like a trumpet, and give Him praise." The service ends on a word he says the Holy Ghost interrupted him with: "Hold on. Hold on. I just felt this. I don't know. Y'all back up just a little bit. Come on, right here. Back up. The Holy Ghost just spoke to me. Brother Parker, if you have a prodigal in your family, I want you to get up here as close to this front as you can. And we're fixing to sing and shout one more time. And I want you to start praising God for your prodigal coming home. Listen, it don't matter if it's a brother, a sister, mama, a daddy, a niece, a nephew. If you got somebody that's a prodigal, I want you to make your way to the front of this church. Come on, get as close as you can. They said, 'I'm never coming back.' They said, 'I'm never going to have anything else to do with the church.' But I'm challenging you right now, in the Holy Ghost: start praising Him for a prodigal, and watch God."