PRAISE GOD WITH OUR WHOLE HEART
October 8, 2006 - PENTECOST 18 - Psalm 138
Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Blessed Saints in the Lord:
As we heard this Psalm this morning, we probably picked up already the overriding theme of praising, giving thanks and worshipping the Lord. This is the meaning of Psalm 138. As we read the Psalms, we find that theme going through many of them. You may remember that the Old Testament hymnal was made up of the Psalms. Very often the Psalms were just like our hymns of today. They are filled with thanksgiving and worship and praise. The point was not just for the people of God to be able to worship and give thanks and praise the Lord, but to also be reminded that the Lord their God is the Lord the only true God.
The worship, thanksgiving and praise that the Old Testament people offered and the New Testament people offered and you and I offer today, we are reminded of the praise that is due to the Lord our God. We hear time and again there is no god like him, and we see that in our lives. The Lord reflects this sentiment through the prophet Isaiah when he says: "I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8). So we have gathered together today, because we are not going to give the glory of the Lord to someone else. We are not going to give the praise of the Lord to idols, but to God who deserves it. With that in mind, we want to look at Psalm 138, considering that theme:
PRAISE THE LORD WITH OUR WHOLE HEART - Why??:
I. Our Lord is faithful and,
II. Our Lord preserves us
I. OUR LORD IS FAITHFUL
As the heading says, this is a Psalm of David. We want to remember David briefly. David was the youngest son of a family that was made up of a lot of sons. When the Lord wanted a new king to replace King Saul, David was the chosen one. But David was out in the fields as a shepherd because he was the youngest son. Still, God chose him; and he took him from the field and from being a shepherd over a flock of sheep to being a king over the sheep of Israel. So he went from the humility of being a shepherd to the glory, but really for him the humility, of being God’s chosen king over God’s people. We see that in that in the Psalms of David and we see that here. Even though David was king, and in the Old Testament times kings were looked upon as gods, David realized he wasn’t a god; but the Lord God was God.
In verse 1: "I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; before the ’gods’ I will sing your praise." He didn’t want the people to come and worship him. He didn’t want the people to come and sing praise to him; but instead he says, "I will sing your praise to you and before the ’gods.’ That could mean a number of things. Certainly, David as king and ruler would associate with other kings. He would stand as an example and worship his God before those kings and before their gods. He wouldn’t worship their god but God. We also are reminded that sometimes kings of other nations especially considered themselves god. Remember Pharaoh who was the god of Egypt, not just king and ruler. People worshiped him as a god. David says, "I, as king, who worships the true God am going to still praise God before the ’gods.’ Those ruling people thought they were also gods for their nations.
He tells us how he is going to do that: "I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word." David didn’t want people to come before his throne and bow down before him. He didn’t want people to come there and praise him for his love and faithfulness. Instead, David would go to the house of the Lord and bow down before the Lord God Almighty. Here the king, the leader, is going to lead by worshipping God with his whole heart. He is going to praise the name of the Lord because of his love and faithfulness. Time and again, David had experienced God’s love and faithfulness. The name of the Lord--the people of Israel understood it. Israel believed in the name of the Lord as the Savior and Redeemer. The very name of the Lord from time to time had great effect upon the nations surrounding the children of Israel. When the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness and when they defeated their enemies, people believed that Israel’s god was the true God. When they left Egypt, Pharaoh briefly admitted that Israel’s god was the true God. Pharaoh finally hardened his own heart. Still God exalted his own name above all other names. David knew this, and David came to worship and praise the Lord God, because the Lord God was faithful.
Remember David was a great ruler and king, and in the history of the children of Israel it is hard to rate him whether he was first or most well known king yet today. His son was Solomon. Both kings are quite familiar to us today. So in that time of history King David was known among other nations. Other nations respected him, because he ruled with justice. He ruled with the power of God on his side. Again and again, not for his own praise, but he says in verse 4: "May all the kings of the earth praise you, O LORD, when they hear the words of your mouth." When are the other kings of the earth going to hear the words of the mouth of the Lord? When foreign rulers visited Israel they did not go into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day to worship God. But when David would visit with foreign rulers in their kingdoms or when they would come and see David and consult with him, they would see David go to the house of the Lord. Certainly, when David would visit with them, he would tell them of the power and miracles of God and his deliverance. David, by his words, would express to them God’s faithfulness to him. They would hear the words of the Lord through David’s words and actions as he praised the Lord with his whole heart.
Verse 5: "May they sing of the ways of the LORD, for the glory of the LORD is great." They would see the glory of the Lord as he blessed the children of Israel. They would see the glory of the Lord on this kingdom, on this nation as God blessed David. Great was the faithfulness of God! Great was the glory of the Lord! David realized his faithfulness, and by his words he would speak of the glory of the Lord, the faithfulness of God. By his actions he would reveal it to those who were kings in other nations, and they could see because David praised the Lord with his whole heart. We also know that David had shortcomings that we will examine shortly.
Different times when Jesus walked on the earth, men came to him. Those who liked to keep the Law, would say, "Look what we have done! We have kept all of God’s Law." We see how when a rich man came to Jesus and said, "What must I do to be saved?" Jesus said, "You know the Commandments." Jesus listed some of them. With arrogance and pride the rich man said, "I have done all of those." Then he needed to be reminded to love the Lord his God with all of his heart, soul and strength. In order to do that he was to give up his wealth and give it to the poor. That he could not do--the Law of love. With his actions the rich man showed that his heart was more attached to the things of this world than the things of God.
So the Lord reminds us in the first commandment to love the Lord our God above all things, praise him with our whole heart. Sounds easy, but we know how difficult praising God with our whole heart is. We would like a little praise for ourselves; or we would rather praise the accomplishments of our family, or praise the accomplishments of the things we have done. Sometimes we may even forget that God deserves all the praise. Our God is still faithful even when we are faithless, even when we take away God’s praise, when we think to ourselves that we are more important than God. God is still faithful when we act in faithlessness or sinfulness.
Timothy is told this from Paul: "If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Timothy 2:12,13). Paul realized in his lifetime he had been faithless but God would not be unfaithful to his promises. The promise that God made that he would provide the price of forgiveness, he kept. God is faithful even in the midst of our faithlessness.
We know as we talked a little bit last week about our rebellious nature how we like to go out on our own and how it is a struggle, because we are born with a sinful nature. Our thoughts and our hearts are only slanted towards evil all the time. We don’t deserve the grace and mercy of God that he has shown us. But God is faithful even when we are faithless, when we sin against God with the words that we speak in anger. We sin against God when we speak words that harm our neighbor. We sin against God when we have thoughts that are murderous threats against those who have done us wrong or who we would like to get even with. Those are acts of sin and faithlessness. We sin against God daily in our thoughts, our words and our actions. We know what we deserve--not to enter into the gates of heaven, but to slide right down into the depths of hell because of the wickedness that is in us. But our God is faithful. He says he will and does forgive. Our loving and forgiving Lord and God invites us to come back time and again and seek his forgiveness and we will discover God’s times of refreshing.
From Lamentations: "Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22,23). We would say, "Amen." Great is the faithfulness of God in the midst of our unfaithfulness, our faithlessness, and our disobedience. Great is God’s faithfulness and compassion and mercy. That has a great effect on each and every one of us in our day to day living as are living to praise God with our whole hearts. We can do this with our words. Mainly in our day and age we praise God by our actions. People see us and observe us long before they get a chance to listen to us or before they give us the opportunity for us to speak to them, especially concerning salvation. They observe us; and they watch us; and they see our actions. Then eventually in our day-to-day dealings with all kinds of people they also may be willing to listen to us. They listen to how we speak, what kinds of words we use. They are watching to see the light that shines in our lives by our actions. That is how we praise God with our whole heart, not just on Sunday when we sing, not just on Sunday when we pray or pay attention to the sermon, not just on Sunday when we study God’s Word in Bible study. We do this day in and day out. Jesus said in Matthew to his disciples: "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Like David, he didn’t want praise, worship or others to bow down to him. Today, when people praise us or worship us or pat us on the back and say, "What a good job you have done," we realize that it is God who has put faith in our hearts. This faith is the light that shines from us, a light of praise and glory to and for God.
Praise the Lord God with our whole heart, because our God is faithful. As if that were not enough, David says our Lord preserves us. The Lord keeps us going, alive and well and saves us for eternity.
II. OUR LORD PRESERVES US
We see the different times that the Lord had preserved David. He was a shepherd boy who was anointed as king over Israel. Saul was the first king and David was second. As David lived with Saul in the palace and played the harp to calm Saul’s troubled spirit, Saul tried to kill him a number of times. The Lord preserved David. Finally, David was king. You may remember that he commits adultery with Bathsheba and has Bathsheba’s husband Uriah placed in the front of the battle and the men dropped back. Uriah was killed. He commits adultery and murder. Finally, the Prophet Nathan comes to him; and David is preserved. He doesn’t lose his soul for eternity. David sees God’s hand in his life once again. He mentions that here in verse 3: "When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted." In the depth of his disobedience, in the sorrow of his sinfulness, the Lord answered. David simply said, "I have sinned." Nathan said, "Your sins are forgiven." That made David bold and stouthearted, because the Lord had preserved him. The Lord had preserved him through his many battles and campaigns, and the Lord had preserved him in his greatest battle of all--the battle against his own sinful flesh and his struggle against Satan that could have destroyed him forever. But instead of destroying him forever, the Lord preserved him and saved David from hell. He saved David so that he still would be leader of the children of Israel.
David says at the end of our text in verse 6: "Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar." I am sure that it was hard for David to realize that he was king of Israel. He had been so used to being in the field to care for the sheep, being the youngest in the family and probably even picked on by his brothers. But the Lord raised him to be king. All of his life he had to remind himself, "I am king." With those humble beginnings it is hard to distance yourself from that first calling God gives you. He realized that even though he was king, one of the most powerful men in the world, it was the Lord who looked on him, the humble. The Lord looked down on David and oversaw his life.
David adds: "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save." There were many times when God preserved David’s life such as when he went against Goliath. David went out and slays a giant, and he was still a shepherd then. The Lord preserved his life. David was known as the warrior king. This was a time of unrest and unsettled times in the history of Israel as the enemies were great. David went up and took care of them all. David realized that it wasn’t he who had taken care of the enemies of Israel, but it was God who stretched out his hand against his enemies and the people’s enemies. He realized it was God who took his right hand and saved him over and over again. God did this so much that at the end of his life David came to the Lord and said, "I want to build you a temple, because I live in a great palace; and you should have a glorious house of worship." God said, "No, you have slain so many, and there is just too much blood on your hands. Your son will build the temple." Solomon did. The Lord preserved him.
He says: "The LORD will fulfill is purpose for me." At this time David did not know what the end of his life was going to be like. David did know the Lord knew and would always guide him in His way. David says, "Your love, O LORD, endures forever--do not abandon the works of your hands." He knew that God’s love endures, and he was the work of God’s hands. So he adds that little prayer--"Don’t forsake me; don’t leave me. Remember your love and mercy still preserves me." We would say the same.
As we look back in our life and we see the times that the Lord has preserved us in times of distress, in times of sickness, in times of mourning, and in times of visible healings in our life. With his right hand God slaps back the enemies that would attack us. With his right hand he delivers us from the depths of despair and he preserves us day in and day out. He also preserves us everyday. He preserves us in our good times as well. We need to be aware of that, because we might not always think of God’s preserving us in our good times.
One example from the Old Testament is when the Lord preserved Jacob who became Israel, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, when was fleeing for his life. He had cheated his brother out of his birthright, and his brother wanted to kill him. So Jacob left his family all alone and by himself. Back then; this leaving was a very big deal. But the Lord was not going to forsake him or forget him. God gave Jacob this promise, the same promise for us as we journey through this life as pilgrims like Jacob and the children of Israel: "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Genesis 28:15). He made that promise to Jacob. He fulfilled it hundreds of years later to the children of Israel when he brought them to the Promised Land. God makes that promise to each one of us. He says, "I will watch over you. I will take care of you. I will lead and direct you until I bring you back to where I want you." He is going to bring us back to heaven, our true Promised Land. The Lord preserves us. Because of that, we are anxious and excited and privileged then to worship God with our whole heart, and to praise him with our whole heart.
It is good to remind ourselves how concerned the Lord is about us. We discover that God is concerned about us in a broad, general sense, as he has all things work together for our good, all things in this world. Now also in a very specific sense the Lord knows each one of us by name. He knows us what we want and need. Isaiah says that before we even ask him, he answers our prayers. Jesus in the New Testament taught his disciples not to worry and tells them why and he tells us why today: "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Luke 12:7). Imagine that! We are not in the least concerned about the numbers of our hairs on our head. Whether they are getting more or less might be a concern. To know the numbers is not worth the time to worry about them or think about them, but the Lord knows them. That is how much he cares about each one of us. God knows the things about us that we don’t even know, and he is concerned about the things about us that we may not even be concerned about. The Lord preserves us, because he is faithful, and we respond with hearts of praise.
Lastly but not least, we could really say first and foremost, the Lord is concerned about our eternal welfare. Yes, he takes care of us day by day. He blesses year after year, sometimes with greater blessings than other years. God never leaves us or forsakes us. He is faithful. God keeps us in the palm of his right hand, and he provides for us spiritually. Paul wrote in Corinthians: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Our God is faithful. He knows what we are going to face. He provides a way out. God is faithful. He knows the temptations we are going to face. We face temptations that are not any different than our fellow believers also face. God is faithful.
This is just a beginning of reminding us why we praise God with our whole heart. The Lord our God means so much to us in our day-to-day lives. When all around us, the world seems to have abandoned God, to abandon his teachings, then, sadly, they have abandoned his love. But thankfully, purely by God’s divine grace, the Lord has revealed to us his great love for us. God has shown us that he is faithful from the beginning, to the present, to the end. God has shown us his grace and mercy, his glory, that he preserves us day after day, forever. Our response, like the Psalm writer, like David, is to praise him with our whole heart everyday. Our life as believers in this world is a life of worship and praise. It is not just on Sunday in church, but it is everyday. Our daily life of worship is a fitting and privileged response to God’s great love for us. Our life is a life of worship and praise.
The writer to the Hebrews says: "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name" (Hebrews 13:15). Jesus is the only way of eternal salvation no matter what the world might teach or what mankind might say. No matter what philosophers or deniers of the faith might say; it is only through Jesus that we know God’s great love for sinners. Through Jesus we are saved eternally. That is the reason for our worship. That is how we praise God with our whole heart by confessing Jesus with our lips, because he lives in our hearts. Our God is faithful and preserves us. Amen. Pastor Timm O. Meyer
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Pentecost 18 readings: JEREMIAH 11:18-20; JAMES 3:13-18; MARK 9:30-37
