Praising God!

Praising God

Psalm 150

August 26, 2018

Since today is the last Sunday I’m preaching on the Psalms, I thought we would look at the last of the Psalms, Psalm 150. This psalm is all about praising God. It’s all about recognizing who God is in our lives so that we can praise Him.

It’s all about corporate worship, what we do in here on Sunday mornings, but it’s also all about what we do when we leave here on Sunday mornings. Praising God is a state of being. It’s not something you turn on and off like a light switch, and it’s not something that someone else does for you. You are the one who must be active in worship . . . praising God is not a passive, inactive activity.

Of course, it doesn’t mean you have to jump up and down and clap your hands, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t jump up and down and clap your hands. There is so much that goes into praising God and worshiping Him, that it can be super complicated. But ultimately, it’s really more about our heart, spirit, mind and body.

It’s about what we bring to this building on Sunday mornings. Even if we’re struggling with physical issues, or dealing with loss, with mental issues, with family drama, with work or school issues - - - yet we come into this building for the express purpose to worship the Lord. What does that mean for us when we’re really not happy with life? How do we worship in those moments? How easy or difficult is it to praise God when we want to yell and scream at God for our situation in life?

Those are loaded questions, and I’m not sure I’ll get to all of that today, but I want to. I want to touch on these because it’s vital!

So, let me read Psalm 150 for you, it’s only 6 verses ~

1 Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty heavens!

2 Praise Him for his mighty deeds; praise Him according to his excellent greatness!

3 Praise Him with trumpet sound; praise Him with lute and harp!

4 Praise Him with tambourine and dance; praise Him with strings and pipe!

5 Praise Him with sounding cymbals; praise Him with loud clashing cymbals!

6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

What’s interesting about the Psalms is that Psalm 1 starts out with God blessing us. Psalm 1:1 starts with ~ 1 Blessed is the man . . . Now, the book of Psalms ends with you and I blessing and praising God.

As we read through the Psalms, we’ve seen Psalms of celebration and victory, Psalms of despair and lament, Psalms of forgiveness and need. As you read through the Psalms, they touch our hearts because there is a sense of realism and vulnerability by the writers and by God. Now, we come to the end. In a sense we come to the end of the symphony. And the music builds as we prepare for the climactic end.

In verse 1, the psalmist proclaims ~

1 Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty heavens!

When the psalmist says Praise the Lord, it’s the Hebrew word Hallelujah! Hallelujah is really 2 words . . . Hallelu meaning praise and Jah which means the Lord. So, when we say this word, it’s an exclamation to praise the Lord. What I find interesting is that in Hebrew, the word hallelu - - not only means praise, but also means to boast or to rave, or to act like a mad man!

Literally it does, only a couple times though. But in a sense, that’s what worship is about. That’s what praising God is about. It’s about boasting back to God His glory and splendor. It’s raving about God’s goodness and maybe on occasion acting like a mad man, but in a good way!

The psalmist tells us we are to praise God in His sanctuary. That’s where we’re at. For the Jewish people, the temple was the focal point of worship. That’s where they traveled to so they could meet God in that place.

In our world, it’s changed. The church building for so many people is no longer the focal point of worship. In fact, for so many people, worship does not occur at all. Because we believe, and correctly believe that God is always with us, that if we believe in Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit and wherever we go, the Spirit of God is with us . . . which is all true, so some people, in fact, many people do not believe they need to go to church to worship. They believe they can do it in isolation - - if they do it at all. But that is far from being true and healthy.