Summer in the Psalms
Psalm 150: Pure Praise
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
9-12-2021
Manna Media - Psalm 150
Earworm
Have you ever got a song stuck in your head? There’s a name for that - it’s an “earworm.” You hear it for the first time and you immediately love it. Then you hear it again and it becomes your jam. Then you play it loud in the car, sing it louder in the shower, and sing it at the top of your lungs while walking the dogs around the pond. Or is that just me? (By the way, that song for me right now is “Alright” by Danny Gokey.)
Music is magical. It gets into your soul.
Worship leader David Crowder writes,
“One note can express a hundred emotions, depending on its context. A single note of C can make you weep or smile or slam your hands together repeatedly according the chords and rhythms placed around it.”
The Jewish people didn’t have Pandora or Spotify but they did have the Psalms. That was their playlist. And none got put on repeat more than the song we will study this morning - Psalm 150.
What an amazing summer we’ve had studying the Psalms together! We dove deep into ten Psalms over these past weeks - Psalm 1, 15, 19, 20, 40, 42, 95, 96, 131, and 139. If you weren’t able to be here for some of these sermons, you can watch them on our YouTube channel or our website. This morning, we are going to be finishing our series with Psalm 150.
Turn there.
Prayer
Background on Psalm 150
No author is listed for Psalm 150 but most commentators believe it was probably David.
Remember that the Psalter is divided into five sections, or books, and each of these ends with a command to praise God.
The first half of the psalms has a lot of laments. There is a lot of sadness and confusion and fear.
But the last section ends with five Psalms (146-150) that bring the entire psalm book to a crescendo of adoration and worship.
We began this series with a study of Psalm 1 where we learned that God blesses the man that honors with his lips and by the way he lives his life.
In Psalm 150, it is man that blesses God for all that he has done in song.
The outline breaks down simply to
What are we commanded to do?
Where are we commanded to do it?
How are we commanded to do it?
Why are we commanded to do it?
And who is commanded to do it?
Praises Rising
[Slide] Praise the Lord (v. 1a)
The psalmist starts out with a command for his reader - praise the Lord. 300 plus times in the Bible are we told the praise the Lord. In this psalm alone, we are told thirteen times to praise the Lord.
You know this Hebrew word. It’s in our English dictionary. And it’s in the Spanish, Germany, and Chinese dictionaries.
It’s made up of two words that mean to boast or brag about God.
[Slide] Hallelujah! (Or as Madea would say it, “Hallelujer!”).
The Talmud tells us that as the Jewish people would bring the sacrifices to the feasts they would sing Psalm 146-150.
Psalm 146 begins:
“Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life, I will sing to my God as long as I live.” (Psalm 146:1-2)
Psalm 147 begins:
“Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing to our God, and how pleasant and fitting to praise Him.” (Psalm 147:1-2)
We’ll look at Psalm 148 in just a minute.
Psalm 149 tells us to sing a new song in praise to the Lord:
“Praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise in the assembly of His faithful people.” (Psalm 149:1)
The English word “praise” comes from the French and Latin and it means “price,” to value highly.
We are commanded to lift up, to exult, to worship, to adore God and Him alone.
The Ten Commandments begin with a call to worship God exclusively:
“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex 20:3)
Moses describes God as One that is jealous for his glory:
“Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” (Ex 34:14)
And Isaiah describes God as one who will not tolerate praise being given to other gods:
“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” (Isaiah 42:8)
Where should that happen?
Where?
[Slide] “Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.” (v. 1b)
The writer of this psalm lists two places that that God’s praise should be lifted up - his sanctuary and in the mighty heavens.
The sanctuary was where the redeemed gathered on earth to worship God.
The mighty heavens is where the heavenly worship takes place.
Psalm 148 describes this worship.
“Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above. Praise him, all His angels, all His heavenly hosts. Praise Him sun and moon; praise Him, you shining stars, Praise Him, in the highest heavens and you waters above the skies.” (Psalm 148:1-4)
Basically this means from north to south, from earth to heaven, from humans and angels and the moon and stars, God’s worth should be taken serious and praised by His people.
You can worship in your car, in the shower, on a walk, with your family. You can even worship God at the Olympics with the whole world watching.
[Video of Fiji team]
But this psalm is pointing us toward corporate worship where we lift our voices together in worship and Scripture says that God inhabits our praises.
Let me ask a question, Why do we gather on Sunday mornings? We gather to worship the King of King and Lord of Lords who died on the cross to rescue us from hell and was resurrected to prove that the check cleared!
What about the sermon? My job is to help you understand this clearly and the more you understand all that God has done for you the more your heart will want to explode in praise to Him.
Hebrews 10:25 is a verse that should direct our Sundays:
“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another - and all the more as we see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25)
I’ve had people say to me that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian and I tell them that’s exactly right. But you don’t have to spend time with your wife to be married. But the longer you spend apart from her, the more trouble you will encounter in your relationship.
If you unhitch from your purposes in local body of believers, it won’t be long before you start to unravel.
As far as possible, let’s commit to this next year to never miss a Sunday!
We are going to come back to verse 2. Next, the psalmist answers the question how we should worship.
How?
[Slide] “Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.” (v. 3-5)
Obviously this praise will include instruments of all kinds. David lists eight instruments that the Jewish people would use.
Each one of them would take them back to specific memory, much like music does for us.
Kenny Chesney has a song called “I Go Back”:
“So I go back to a pew, preacher and a choir
Singin' 'bout God, brimstone, and fire
And the smell of Sunday chicken after church
And I go back to the loss of a real good friend
And the sixteen summers I shared with him
Now "Only The Good Die Young" stops me in my tracks
Every time I hear that song, I go back, I go back.”
Trumpet - this would be the shofar that would call people to the feasts. This would be like church bells. This would be blown by the priests.
Harp and lyre and tambourine - were used in celebration of joy, especial military victories. These would be played by the Levites.
Strings and pipes and cymbals - were associated with the sacrifices. The lay people would play these instruments.
A couple of observations:
These instruments were not meant to be played quietly. These instruments were meant to make loud noise! This is public, unashamed praise.
I remember the first week that we started a praise band at our old church. After the service, I walked up to Bernice, a spunky 80 something year old that Maxine and I loved, and asked her what she thought.
With a twinkle in her eye, she said, “It is good. But promise me one thing for next week. TURN IT UP! Our God is worthy of praise! It needs to be louder!
In order for this worship to be done well, it would take people gifted in playing these instruments.
“Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes.” (Gen 4:20-21)
We continue to pray for God to bring more musicians that love Jesus and want to use their talents to praise the Lord to our church,
The psalmist, or the Bible, really doesn’t tell us how to put these instruments together so that worship will be done “the right way.”
That means that you can praise God with the electric guitar just as much as with the cello, or with the organ [by the way, when the organ was first introduced in church people got up and walked out because the organ was a bar instrument] just as much with the accordion.
Orchestras, Southern Gospel groups, quartets, electronica music, tijuana brass bands, and rock bands can all praise Him. And some groups use their voices as their instruments to praise Him.
* It seems that the posture of your heart during worship is much more important that what actually instruments are used.
Paul wrote to the believers at Colosse:
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.” (Col 3:16)
Martin Luther stated,
“Whoever despises music, as all fanatics do, with him I am not content. For music is a gift of God, not of man. It drives away the devil and makes people joyful. Through music one forgets all anger, impurity, pride, and other vices. Next to Theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the Saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.”
I skipped one element so we could look at on its own - dance. Psalm 150 is very clear that dancing can be used to praise God.
Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that “there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” (Ecc 3)
We see Miriam leading the praise after the the Lord lead the Israelites through the Red Sea on dry ground:
“Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.” (Ex 15:20-21)
And when the Ark of the Covenant was brought back into Jerusalem, David danced in his underwear!
“Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.” (2 Sam 6:14-15)
His wife, Michael, was watching out the window “And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.” (2 Sam 6:20)
And when David returned home, she confronted him:
“How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”
David’s respond is one on my favorite in the entire Bible:
“I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” (2 Sam 6:21-22)
While corporate dancing isn’t mentioned in the New Testament, I’ve seen worship dance that literally made me weep.
At Rich Maier’s wife’s funeral, their niece wasn’t able to attend but she sent a video of worship dance that stunned us all with its beauty, simplicity, and adoration for God.
All of this worship, assigning weightiness to God, is just practice for the main event of spending eternity praising the name of God with people from every tribe, tongue and nation.
This brings us to the question of why we praise Him.
Why?
“Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.” (v. 2)
First, we worship God because of His “acts of power.”
David sings of this in Psalm 145:
“One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty— and I will meditate on your wonderful works. They tell of the power of your awesome works— and I will proclaim your great deeds. They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.” (Psalm 145:5-7)
I asked my Facebook friends what might acts that were thankful for?
One of my former students, who is now a teacher, wrote that God’s creation continues to amaze her:
“I was telling students the other day that I think geometry is my favorite math because you can find so many geometric shapes in nature. Everything from a spider’s web, to a honeycomb, the back of a turtle’s shell, one single snowflake, the sections of a grapefruit, the rings inside a tree. It’s all so intricate and amazing that I’m in awe of it.”
For others, it was God’s redemption that overwhelmed them:
“That He loves sinners like me…our reconciliation to him through mercy and grace…that He sent his Son to die for my sins…for His healing power in my life…”.
We will never exhaust our ability to be in awe of God’s works:
“Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord or fully declare his praise?” (Psalm 106:2)
I would like to stop right now and remind you of some of God’s amazing acts that we have witnessed over the past three years at Chenoa Baptist Church:
Let’s start with the church itself:
Outdoor lighting was put in to keep the kids off our roof!
A new boiler was bought and installed
We received a $15,000 grant and that enabled us to redo the pastor’s office, the administrative assistants office, (and we hired Kim!), The nursery, two and three year old room, and four a five year old rooms.
Right now, the downstairs is being painted and the new flooring will go in a couple of weeks from now.
New windows were ordered and installed.
A new generator was purchased and installed.
New AC units were bought and installed in the education building.
We upgraded our internet through the building.
We bought new computers for the sound booth and the sound system received a much needed upgrade.
We bought new flat screens for the auditorium so the crosses will be visible.
We bought a really nice keyboard that has really added a lot to our worship
We were able to buy a really good camera and the sermon is now posted on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter
We have a functioning website.
The parsonage received a facelift and we are thankful to live in such a wonderful house.
And we are getting a roof put on for $500!
Teams:
We now have a children’s ministry team that has written policies and procedures, recruited and trained teachers, and are excited about the future.
We now have a sound booth team that has been trained and runs the sound for us each week.
We now have a missions team that streamlined the missions budget and we added a missionary couple, Dan and Christie Ucherek. We’ve had multiple outreaches at the pool, supported the Hope Pregnancy Center’s baby bottle project and collected items for the Food Pantry.
The deacons have had training and we are looking forward to our deacon retreat in October when Pastor Mike Baker, senior pastor of Eastview Christian Church, will be here to work with this team.
* We’ve had multiple baptisms, multiple weddings (including one next weekend), and several people have indicated that they have either accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior or rededicated their lives to Him!
GATHER:
We have survived COVID, (many small churches didn’t), and have grown from about 30 to 60. We have broke the 100 mark for special occasions! We have added an online presence and there are people that join us from all over the world.
We have two adult Sunday school classes and our Wednesday morning bible study has about 20 people who attend.
* We have added several small groups and will be adding more
We’ve had five membership classes and this morning we started the sixth one.
We would like to add a Wednesday night element for children and adults.
We would like to upgrade our streaming platform to reach more people
We would like to add a Sunday school class that would study the Attributes of God
Grow:
Over the past three years, I preached through So far, I’ve preached verse by verse through The Beatitudes, Old Testament Heroes series,The Fruit of the Spirit, The Lord’s Prayer, Revelation 1-3, Habakkuk, Jonah, Galatians, The Five Solas, Esther, three different Christmas series, The “I Am” statements from John, a series on Prayer, Discipleship Matters, A mini-series on Ephesians, Titus, and 12 different Psalms.
Coming soon in the next 18 months - the Life of Joseph, Colossians, The Ten Commandments, Nehemiah, Jude, Marriage Matters, Romans 8, Another Summer in the Psalms series, Becoming an Emotionally Healthy Church, and the book of Hebrews.
If you take into account the Bible study I lead, you can add to this list the book of I John, Ecclesiastes, James, and the book of John verse by verse.
I promised to preach the cover off the Bible and in this next year we are going to continue to let the Word of God ring out!
GIVE:
The members of CBC have been hilariously generous over the last three years and we have been able to meet budget each time
We have received multiple large financial gifts in the last three years. Just this past month, we received $12,000 gift from someone who went to this church 70 years ago!
The Mercy Fund has been able to bless many people and help our community.
We want to continue to be faithful with what we have been given. Remember, people don’t tithe and gift money so we can have a nice bank account. CBC is not a for-profit organization. When money is given it will be used wisely for ministry and reaching our community.
GO:
I’n so excited that 9 people have expressed interest in going on our first mission trip to Mexico on April 21-26, 2022!
But in order for us to go to their ends of the earth, we have to love our community first.
So, here’s the symbol for this. [Show new logo]. First Chenoa is going to put Chenoa First. Over the next year, we are planning multiple events aimed at getting our people out of the four walls of the building and taking the love of Jesus to the streets!
So we praise Him for his mighty acts but we also praise him simply for who He is. The Hebrew is strong and reads “the muchness of His greatness.”
We praise Him for His attributes - He is infinite, self existent, omnipotent (all powerful), omniscience (all knowing), omnipresent (everywhere), eternal, sovereign, holy, righteous, just, loving, merciful, and faithful.
Who is it that praise him for what He has done and who He is?
Who?
“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.” (v. 6)
What do you do about 18 times a minute, 1080 times an hour, and over 25,000 times a day? You breathe.
Who is it that is commanded to praise God? Everything that has breathe. That would be you and me!
Now we know that not everything that has breath praises the Lord, right? There are those that use their breath to curse God, his people and His ways.
A missionary went into an area where a remote tribe lived. When trying to figure out their language, he discovered that they didn’t sing. So he decided to teach them Bible stories with songs.
Soon, a small group of the tribe had committed their lives to Christ. The rest of the tribe had a nickname for them. They were called “the singers.”
We sing because we have something sing to about - Our God loved us so much that He sent his only Son, Jesus, to live a perfect life that we couldn’t live, and die a death on the cross we couldn’t die, in our place to pay the penalty for our sins, to set us free to sing at the top of our lungs that God is GREAT and worthy to be praised forever and ever!
Let’s do that right now!
[Extended time of worship]
