Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 150 | Date: April 3, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Background and Introduction

All right, just by way of background, I decided about a year ago, or maybe a little less than that, that I would like to begin a series of messages from the Psalms, and that launched into an in-depth study. I have, in the last, oh, eight months or more, read virtually everything I could find on the Psalms. I’ve just loved the study. It has been spiritually enriching for me. I’ve learned so much from it.

It really kicked off though when I found online some lectures by Dr. Bruce Waltke on the Psalms. Dr. Waltke is—it’s not overstating—something of a legend in Old Testament studies. He started teaching the Psalms in Hebrew from the Hebrew text in 1958. That’s the year I was born. He’s had a focused study on the Psalms and the Proverbs, as well as Old Testament studies broadly, but Psalms in particular have been one of his focused studies for all of these decades. And he’s still living; he’s 91.

And I contacted him—we’d had acquaintance from some other things that, some other connections that we had—and so I contacted him about the lectures that I’d heard and said this needs to be published in a book. Would you like to work together and produce a book? And he was thrilled with the idea. And so that launched into the in-depth studies of my own part and based primarily on his lectures, but then it branched into much more than that. And I wrote the book, I sent it to him, he went back through it and checked it all and gave some more input, and then I would get back to him again, and on the process went until finally this past week we sent in the manuscript. It will be published this time next year.

And anyway, all of that to say a couple of things. One, much, much of what I will be teaching, particularly in these evening messages over the next few months, I have learned from him. In fact, I’ve learned so much from Dr. Waltke from this. I’ll pause at the beginning of every lesson and remind you that I’ve learned from him so much. It’s just been a wonderful experience. If I forget to mention it, just remember it now that I’ve said it. It’s just been a wonderfully enlightening time of study for me, and I hope it will be for you.

I’d like to begin this evening with Psalm 150.

“Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance. Praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals. Praise him with loud clashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”

Let’s bow for prayer.

Our Father, as we begin this series of studies in this wonderfully beloved book of your word, we pray that you will give us the heart of the psalmist to pursue you, to praise you, to bring all of life before you. We pray that this would be a time not only of learning, but through that, a time of spiritual enrichment for us all. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Popularity of the Psalms

I have on your outline, first of all, just some notes about the popularity of the Psalms. I don’t know how to begin and how to end talking about the popularity of the Psalms. The Book of Psalms was popular in its own day. It was popular in New Testament times. The Book of Psalms is the most represented Old Testament book in the New Testament. It is the most represented book in the Qumran literature, if you’ve heard of that. The Jewish sect around the time of Jesus, the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries in 1948—there’s a wealth of literature that was found there. The most represented book of the Old Testament there was the Psalms.

Every New Testament book, except for 2nd and 3rd John, 1st Thessalonians, and Philemon, quotes or alludes to the Book of Psalms in some way. Jesus and the Apostles perhaps had the book memorized. If they didn’t have it memorized, they had it learned very well. And we can say that because as we read the New Testament, both in discussions offhand in the Gospels and in the Epistles, Jesus and the apostles seem just to breathe the Psalms. They are able to just come up with the Psalms and recite them at a given point and apply it to an area of doctrine or some incident in the life of Christ or some area of theology or whatever.

And that popularity of the Psalms that we see already in the New Testament has continued through all the centuries of the church. In early monasteries, the monks memorized the book of Psalms. In fact, a kind of a humorous story: Jerome translated—Jerome, the author of what we know as the Vulgate—translated the Psalms and the monks memorized that. Some time later, he gave another translation of the Psalms. This is from the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew, and they memorized that. Some time later, he translated the Psalms now from the Hebrew, and the monks rebelled and said, “We’re not memorizing a third version of the Psalms. We’re not going to do that.” And so they continued with the other. But that shows something of the popularity of the Psalms even in the earliest centuries.

Interesting factoid that I came across—I think I learned this from Dr. Waltke—that Marco Polo, this would be in the late 13th century, in his travels came across some people who did not have, in his words, Buddhist idols or Zoroastrian fire. They didn’t have that kind of paganism. They presented him with a copy of the Book of Psalms, and they referred to themselves as Christians. That goes way back.

The first book published in the Gutenberg Press was the Book of Psalms. In 16th and 17th century England, now as printing is becoming more of a big thing, the Bible now is being brought to the people, and the Psalms was the most widely translated and the most widely published book of all books during those centuries. As Christian ministry advanced, as the gospel made its advance around the world, the Psalms were often, often through the centuries, the first or one of the first books to be translated into the common languages.

Still today, I think it’s right to say that the 23rd Psalm is probably the best known piece of literature in the entire world. I don’t know what would rival that. The popularity of the Psalms has just been immense. For centuries, the church sang only the Psalms. We have many Psalms to sing in our hymnal. Most hymnals anymore do not, but for centuries, that’s all the church sang. There are still churches and church groups today that believe in Psalms-only singing. And in even those churches that do not hold to the tradition of still singing Psalms, the hymns that they have are just—the language of the Psalms was just pervasive in it. And I think I mentioned this last Sunday morning, certain Psalms we still sing. We sang Martin Luther’s hymn this morning, “A Mighty Fortress.” That’s Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” “Jesus Shall Reign” is Psalm 72. And we have others like that that we sing very often still today.

Probably the most common book read by Christians—I don’t think it’s probable, I think it’s all but certain—the book that is most commonly read by Christians today in their daily Bible reading would be the book of Psalms. We all just love it. It would be difficult, I think, it would be impossible to measure the popularity, the impact of the book of Psalms that has had with Christians throughout the centuries.

I think if we were to take a brief informal survey of people in the congregation, what passages of scripture have you memorized? I would guess that Psalms would be some of the most, if not the most, common references. Psalm 23, Psalm 1. I memorized that when I was just a little boy. My parents had me memorize that. “Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners.” So I could quote it in my sleep. Psalm 1, Psalm 23, Psalm 90 is a common one that’s memorized. Psalm 91. Psalm 121, passages from Psalm 139 about God’s omnipresence and God’s omnipotence and God’s omniscience. These are popular passages that Christians share in their memory bank very easily. It’s just impossible to measure the impact that the Psalms have had. And so when we come to the book of Psalms, we’re coming to something we all have some familiarity with, some love for already. And I think all of us share something of that.

Why are the Psalms so popular? I think there are several answers to that. One is they’re theologically rich. We’re going to see much of that. They are devotionally rich. We’re going to see much of that. But I think there’s another level to their popularity, the reason why they’re so popular and so beloved, and that is because there’s something of a personal aspect to the Psalms that we all can relate to; it kind of resonates with us. Virtually every human emotion is brought to the fore in the Psalms. John Calvin famously said that the Psalms are the mirrors of the soul. I think that’s right. It’s a right characterization of it, and I think that’s why, at least one of the reasons, why the Psalms are so popular.

And yet, the Psalms, the book of Psalms, it’s a very complex book. We have a variety of genres in the Psalms. We have some narrative Psalms. We have lament Psalms. We have praise Psalms. We have wisdom Psalms. We have some that are directly about the king, some more indirectly. We have Messianic Psalms. We have Psalms of Ascents, and we have all kinds of these different types of psalms that we will look into.

And these various psalms were written over the centuries, a period of about a thousand years. The earliest psalm, the Psalm of Moses, Psalm 90, would be around 1400 BC. And then some are evidently exilic era, maybe even post-exilic era. Some of them seem to reflect that, although the great bulk of them are in the Davidic or the monarchy era. But with all of that variety, you wonder, what is the context of each psalm? Is there a setting in the Psalter? Is this psalm related to the previous one? The next one? Where does it fit in the larger flow of the book? What kind of context do we have with the psalms?

All of these questions come up because it’s a rather complex book. Is this just an assortment of various songs that were sung? We call this the hymnal of ancient Israel, the hymnal of the early church, and there’s something about that that’s right. It was their hymnal. There’s something about that I’ll need to tweak at another time, but it was the hymnal of the church. And yet, does each psalm have any connection with the others? Are they only to be considered individually?

And what I want to do in this introductory series, and particularly now this evening, is try to narrow the focus on that. What I’d want to do in the series is provide a setting for the psalms. I want to try to give us lenses for reading the Psalms. How can we read them with a clearer understanding of what they are about? I think I mentioned before that I think very often what we do when we read the Psalms is we read through it, and “I don’t quite understand that verse, and I don’t quite understand that verse. Okay, I get that verse, and that’s a good one.” There’s great profit in that. I’m not belittling it. But surely there’s a better way to read the Psalms that’s more profitable for us. And that’s the point then of this series of lessons in the evenings: to give us some lenses for understanding and reading the Psalms.

And this evening in particular, I think we could liken it to the way that I like to read a book. When I get a book to read—you know, with my work with Books at a Glance, the publishers are throwing their books at me all the time because they want to see the publicity for it—and so I get the new book in my hand, and I typically, for years I’ve done this, follow the same process. I look at the title. I look at the subtitle. I look at the author. Who is this? I flip it over on the back. I’ll see more about the author. I’ll look at the dust jacket or on the back, some brief descriptions about the book. I’ll look at the endorsements that are on the back. Who is saying what about this book? And then I’ll open up to the table of contents and I’ll see the chapter titles. I might glance through the preface, see what the author has to say or the introduction. I might even thumb through the book a little bit so I get to see some of the subheadings through the chapters and so on.

And so before I ever start reading the book, I’ve narrowed it down and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what this book is about. And that’s what we’re doing this evening. In a way, that’s what we’re doing in this series of lessons, but particularly this evening now: to narrow our focus and see what the book of Psalms is all about.

Title

So next on your outline, I have Title. What is this title? Psalms. Actually, the Book of Psalms does not have a title in the Hebrew text, which is interesting. The Pentateuch books are named after the first words of the book, so Genesis is “In the beginning.” Exodus—”as these are the names”—the first word of the book is the title. When we get to the prophets, those books are named after the author. But when we get to Psalms, there’s no title that’s given to us.

You might know that in rabbinic circles, in Jewish circles still today, the title is Tehillim, which means “praises.” The word that’s translated psalm in the Hebrew does not mean praises; it just means a song to be sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. That’s the definition of what a mizmor, a psalm, is. It’s a song to be sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument.

Now, because the Book of Psalms has such a dominant note of praise, the Jewish title makes great sense—to call it Tehillim, praises. That particular title is used only in Psalm 145. I pointed that out a few weeks ago when I was preaching for that psalm—or that was in Sunday school, I think it was. It’s the only psalm that has that in the title, but the word praise is everywhere throughout the Psalter, and so I think it’s a fitting title for it.

There are praise psalms that are specifically given to praising the Lord. There are lament psalms. We have these two different ways of approaching God: lamenting and complaining about our situation, and then there are praise songs. But that division between those two is a little bit too clean, because even in the lament psalms, what we find regularly—and we will see this when we get to lament psalms—a standard component of the lament psalms is praise. And so praise does dominate throughout the Psalter.

The word psalm that we have in English comes to us actually from the Latin, which comes from the Greek, the Greek psalmos, and then in Latin we have something of the same, and it just refers to a song that is to be sung. It finally took the idea of a praise song that is to be sung, and we even have it as a title of many of the psalms. Psalm 3, verse 1—or I mean the superscript—”A Psalm of David.” Psalm 4, superscript, “A Psalm of David.” Psalm 5, superscript, “A Psalm of David.” Psalm 6, superscript, “A Psalm of David,” and on through “A Psalm of David.” And it has to do with a song that is to be sung, a song that’s to be sung.

And so our title Psalms comes to us from the Latin and then from the Greek, and it’s a translation of the Hebrew. It just means a song that is to be sung. And that in turn points to the background of the Psalms, that they were used originally in association with the temple. These were not just, and they should not be understood simply as, the result of private devotions of some pious man in Israel writing these for his own use, but they were written almost entirely with reference to the temple and use in the temple. And you find, and we will see much of this as we go along, the liturgical background of the temple and the various things that they did in the temple, and they were accompanied then by psalm singing as we saw last time.

And I think it’s helpful to remember that the psalms were originally composed to be sung and not just read. We have all experienced something of the power of music, its influence, our emotions, and even the way we think. And the Psalms were written originally to be sung, not just read. And often in the Psalter you’ll find notes, musical notes: Selah; “According to the Lilies”—that’s the title of the superscript of several of the Psalms. It’s a tune title of some kind. We don’t know exactly what that is. You’ll find it, I think, in 55 of the Psalms: “To the Choir Master.” Many of the Psalms will start out calling us to sing to the Lord, sing aloud to the Lord, shout to the Lord. It’s this idea of singing and making music. Play loudly, bring in the musical instruments. Keep in mind the atmosphere of the Psalms as we read through them, that these were sung in public worship in ancient Israel.

Now, when it comes to the Psalms, then, we have various genres, as I’ve mentioned. We have some that are titled psalms. Some are called a miktam, which is maybe a psalm to teach. I don’t quite understand yet that title, a psalm to teach. They are all to teach. But that’s one class of psalms. We have prayers. Some of them are titled that. Some are laments. We have psalms of grateful praise. We have imprecatory psalms, we have royal psalms that are directly about the king, we have messianic psalms, and all of these—all of them—were to be sung. And so David writes a lament, and he hands it over to the choir master, and this is for the congregation and for the choirs to sing. The same with the laments as well as the praise. And that’s the setting then of the Psalms.

Authorship and Collection

Next on your handout we have the Authorship and Collection. The Psalms are an anthology. All I’m going to do here is give a broad overview of that. I thought I might look into the five books of the Psalms. We won’t have time really more than to mention that tonight. What you have there on your handout, the various human authors of the book: David, Asaph, sons of Korah, Solomon has two, Moses has one, Haman and Ethan, and then we have a good many of them that are anonymous.

Under David, I have there on your outline 73 or 76. The reason I have that is because Psalm 2 in the Hebrew—and you look in your Old Testament, look up Psalm 2 and there’s no superscript, doesn’t tell you that it’s from David. But we come to the New Testament, David is said to be the author of Psalm 2. We’ll see more about that sometime as well. Psalm 9 and 10 evidently were originally one psalm. They were divided, I think, for liturgical purposes sometime way back. And by the time it comes to us, they’re separated. They’re two psalms. So Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 are by David. Psalm 42 and 43 are the same. Also, Psalm 95—there’s no superscript in it that says from David, but yet there is in the Septuagint in the Greek, and in the book of Hebrews when it’s cited, that is followed. David is the author, and so we have another, so 76.

As a collection, it’s an interesting study, and I may get into this at some point to show you the layout of the book. This is not just a handful of songs thrown together, and however they were assembled, they were assembled. There is some thinking to it. There’s a collection of psalms that there’s a final editing to. The long tradition is that Ezra had a hand in that. Both the Jewish and the Christian communities have recognized that whoever that editor was, that final editor, he was guided by inspiration in doing so.

So this is a hymn book. It’s an anthology of songs. But what you’ll find is that, and we may look at this in some detail, the book of Psalms consists really of five books of Psalms. And many of your Bibles will note that.

• Book 1: Psalm 1 through 41 are Davidic Psalms. It’s called the Davidic Psalter.
• Book 2: Psalm 42 to 72. That’s mainly Davidic, but there’s also some from Asaph and the Sons of Korah as well.
• Book 3: Psalm 73 to 89. That’s primarily Asaph and the Sons of Korah.
• Book 4: Psalm 90 through 106. It’s a fascinating way, reasons for the way it’s placed there that we’ll talk about sometime. In there you have those enthronement Psalms.
• Book 5: Psalm 107 to 150. That includes the famous Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120 to 134, some interesting sections.

There is a logic to it, and I’ve given you some of that. Each book, it tells, reflects some of Israel’s history, and I’ve put that on your outline. I don’t need to go through that. Each of these books, by the way—five books of Psalms—ends with a doxology. That is, each of the books has a psalm at the end of that book that has a doxology, and they’re not just standard boilerplate praises; they are doxologies that are in that psalm, placed there for a reason to conclude that book of the psalm with praise.

In fact, if you would like, look back quickly at Psalm 72. This is a marvelous psalm. It’s a psalm of the king, prayers for the king, and prayers for the king’s success. This is where we get the psalm from Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun.” And we have 19 verses of the psalm, and then look at verse 20: “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” It doesn’t seem like that is a part of the original psalm. What it seems like is an editorial remark reflecting, perhaps, probably reflecting an earlier collection of the Psalms. Davidic Psalms—prayers of David are ended. Anyway, we have various hints of earlier collections of the Psalms, and maybe sometime we’ll see that. And finally, they were collected in these five books, which do reflect something of Israel’s history, as you have there on your handout. That for another time.

Theme of the Book of Psalms

What’s the theme? Well, you might say praise. That’s kind of broad. Praise for what? Let’s say praise to God. Praise to God for what? And as you look through it, you find God is praised because he’s the great king, he’s the ruler over all, because he exercises his reign over all. And I think by the time we’re done, we have to say that the theme of the Book of Psalms is something of the same as the theme for the entire Bible, and that is the kingdom of God—that God is reasserting his kingship and his lordship over the earth. And the book of Psalms reflects that.

It reflects it in the laments. Things seem to go awry. What does that say, and how does that reflect on God’s rulership over the world? Psalms of praise—many of them take up specific enthronement themes: that God is king, or God’s king is king, the anointed is king, and he will rule for God over all of the earth. And that overall, I think, is the point of the Psalter. The nation of Israel is God’s people, God’s kingdom, and God is working through that, and what about the things that are wrong, and what about the enemies? All of this is reflecting God’s rule over the earth, and the Psalms sing that, and it ends up, interestingly, in Book 5 with many, many of the Psalms speaking of the nations giving praise to God as king.

The Value or the Use of the Psalms

Why are they so valuable? In what ways are they valuable? One, just a very practical one, and we noted this many times in our prayer group on Wednesday night when we worked our way through the Psalms, is that we learn from the Psalms; we learn to pray. We learn to lament, and we learn to praise. We learn from the Psalms how to bring everything before the face of God: laments, praises, good things, bad things, complaints, all. We learn from the Psalms how to bring life before God in prayer. We also learn about God and his people. We learn about Christ as king over the kingdom of God, the anointed who will come to reign. Many of the Psalms anticipate that in various kinds of ways and some very directly, like Psalm 2 and Psalm 110.

Some Things to Remember

I am getting back to Psalm 150 very soon. But things to remember when you work through the Psalms, when you read through them:

One, a historical perspective. And I’ll look at this next time. It’s very important to understand the Psalms, and that is the centrality of the king in the Psalms. Many of the Psalms mention the king specifically, many of them only implicitly, but the Psalter is primarily a songbook about the King, the Anointed. It is the Davidic King who is in view, and often beyond that, then it is through the Davidic King, the great Davidic King who is to come, who of course is the Lord Jesus. And they point us ahead to that. So one, keep in mind the historical perspective, and that is the centrality of the King. So when you read through the Psalms, the “I,” the “me,” the “we,” the “us,” has the king in view. If it’s an “us” and a “we,” it is the king as representative of the people. And the “I” and the “me” and the “he,” as you read the Psalms, almost invariably, is the king.

And as we keep that in mind, then your next thing to remember is the canonical perspective of the Psalms. And here we’ll learn from the New Testament how they use the Psalms and that the references to the king, the Davidic king in the Old Testament, those references point beyond him to David’s greater son who will come to reign. So be alert as you read through the Psalms to recognize the centrality of the king. These are songs; this is a nation of Israel gathered at the temple to sing about their king. And that then in turn points forward to the great king whom they anticipate.

All right, as I’ve said then, the goal in this series is to gain this perspective in the psalms so we learn how to read it. We’ll look at the psalms about the Davidic king. We’ll look at the temple setting. We’ll look at the various genres, the praise psalms and lament psalms and the various kinds of psalms, and perhaps even the message of the Psalter as a whole.

Psalm 150

All right, enough of introductory material. Let’s look again now at Psalm 150. I’ve mentioned that the book of Psalms is referred to in the Jewish community as praises, tehillim, praises. In books one to three of the Psalter, lament psalms dominate. Now even in those lament psalms, there’s a component of the lament psalms that are given to praise, and we’ll see how important that is as we go along. But books 1 to 3 are dominated by laments, and then books 4 and 5 of the Psalter are dominated by praise psalms. Now there are praise psalms in books 1 to 3—Psalm 8, Psalm 19 in the first book, things like that. There are praise psalms, but laments dominate, and it culminates actually in the end of book 3 of the Psalter with Psalm 89, which is a horrible lament where the writer laments the seeming collapse of the Davidic covenant. It seems like God’s promise of the Davidic king has failed. Turn the page, you have book four, and you have Psalm 90, and “God is our refuge and strength,” and so on.

But in books four and five, praise now dominates. I think I’ve mentioned that in each of the books, at the seams of the books, at the end of each book, there’s a psalm that’s given to praise, doxology. Book five now, coming to our psalm here, book five ends with a psalm that’s entirely given to doxology. You have it all through the psalm in every way. In fact, book five ends with not just a psalm of praise, Psalm 150; it ends with five psalms of praise—Psalm 146, 147, 148, 149, 150—all are praise psalms. It’s like a grand doxology has been gathered together and collected at the end of the book to culminate the book of psalms with praise.

These are called the Hallelujah Psalms: “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” That in the Hebrew is Hallelu-Yah. Yah, short for Yahweh; Hallelu, that’s an imperative verb—praise, it’s a command. Praise who? Praise Yah, praise Yahweh. All of these Psalms, in fact, you’ll notice it—let’s go back to Psalm 146. By the way, these are not properly chapters; they are songs or psalms. I just said chapter.

Psalm 146, notice how it begins: “Praise the Lord.” Notice how it ends: “Praise the Lord.” Look at Psalm 147, it begins: “Praise the Lord”; it ends: “Praise the Lord.” Psalm 148, it begins: “Praise the Lord”; and it ends: “Praise the Lord.” Psalm 149: “Praise the Lord”; and it ends: “Praise the Lord.” Psalm 150 begins: “Praise the Lord”; and it ends: “Praise the Lord.” In fact, all through Psalm 150, every line of it is given to praising the Lord.

Now in Book 5, as I’ve mentioned, we have often the nations now coming to offer their praise to God, and we have that in Psalm 149, where we have expressions in Psalm 149 of worldwide submission to God, that they have been brought into submission to God. And now they are his. There’s something in Psalm 149 of an anticipation of Philippians 2, verse 11, where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That’s Psalm 149. They’ve been brought into submission to God.

And now in Psalm 150, we have this grand call to praise. It is a fitting climax to the Psalter. The theme of Psalm 150? Well, what do you think? “Praise the Lord, praise God, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” 13 times it calls us in these six verses to praise the Lord. The beginning, “Praise the Lord,” and the end, “Praise the Lord.” These are brackets around the psalm telling us the theme of what’s going on. And everything in between in this psalm is the same. Praise the Lord, laud him, extol him, boast in him is the idea. It is—Psalm 150 is the most thoroughly praise-oriented psalm in the entire Psalter. Every line is given a call to praise. We do have in verse two some reasons for praise. But still, in essence, all through the Psalm, it is essentially a call to praise. And its placement here at the end of the Psalter is to say that, now with everything said, let’s praise the Lord for it.

What’s the progression of thought? In fact, there is a progression of thought in Psalm 150. It is not just mere repetition. Thirteen times it calls us to praise the Lord, but it’s not just repetition. There is some progression of thought. Broadly, verse one is a call to praise. “Praise the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens.” And then verse two gives us the reason for praise. “Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.” And then verses 3 through 6a, we have a call to praise specifying the means of praise. And we’ll see that in a minute. And then the end of verse 6, we have a renewed call to praise.

So let’s work our way through this quickly before we have the Lord’s Table.

Verse 1: Where should God’s praise be sung? That’s verse 1. “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens.” Praise him in his sanctuary. Now, there’s some discussion here. Does this refer to the earthly sanctuary? Does this picture the people of Israel gathered at the temple, praising God, and they are called as a congregation, “Come praise the Lord”? And then the last part of the verse, “Praise him in his mighty heavens,” calling the heavenly hosts to praise God? Or is “praise him in the mighty heavens”—is that defining “praise him in the sanctuary,” and so “praise him in the sanctuary” is the sanctuary of heaven, of which the earthly temple is the copy? I’m not sure how finally to decide that. I suspect he’s calling everyone everywhere, including the hosts of heaven, obviously at least, but I suspect it includes the people in the congregation as well, for reasons that we’ll see as we go through the psalm. He’s calling all of creation now to join in the praise of God. So verse 1: where should praise be sung? Answer: everywhere. He’s God over all. Praise God everywhere.

Verse 2: the question is, praise God for what or why? “Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness.” These are the two broad categories of praise that we find throughout the Psalter, and that is God’s greatness—who he is, his being, his attributes—and his works. His mighty deeds—generally in the Psalms, that refers to his works of creation and his work of redemption: bringing people out of Egypt, bringing them into the land, doing mighty works to preserve them, to protect them from the enemies. These Psalms are filled with that: God’s mighty works on behalf of his people, his redemptive works. His greatness—this is who God is, and the Psalms throughout extol God’s attributes, but particularly, as it says here, His excellent greatness, the majesty of God as King and Lord over all that is. He is the King over everything. He is King of Israel’s King. He is the King over all and greatly ruling over everything that is. So praise God where? Everywhere. Verse one. Two, why praise Him? Praise Him for what? Praise Him for who He is and for what He has done. We’ll see that all through the Psalter.

Verses three to five: How do we praise God? And the answer here: we praise him by every possible means. “Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance. Praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals. Praise him with loud clashing cymbals.” That is to say, well, how do we praise God? Praise him with everything that you have, by every possible means—wind instruments, stringed instruments, percussion—all of it brought into joyful celebration and exuberant praise to God. It’s again a familiar note throughout the Psalter; we’re called to give God praise and often in the Psalter we’re reminded: don’t give God half-hearted praise. It is to be loud. It is to be joyous. It is to be exuberant. God is worthy of our most enthused praise. And I think that’s the sense here of verses 3 to 5. Praise Him with everything that you have. I think even the reference to dance here is speaking of that kind of a dance. There might be cultural connotations to it as well, but it’s the dance of excitement and exuberance, like David when he brought the ark to Jerusalem to the tent that he’d prepared for it.

Where’s praise to be sung? Everywhere. Verse one. Verse two, praise God for what? And that is for who he is and for what he has done. Verses 3 to 5, how do we praise him? By every possible means.

And then verse 6, who should praise the Lord? Answer: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” That at least means every person in the Psalter. Also included in that is often the whole created world—trees clapping and the seas roaring with praise and so on—but at least it means every person, everything that has breath, let it praise the Lord. The whole of humanity called to sing praise to God with exuberant praise because he is the God who reigns over all in justice and in majesty and in righteousness.

I love singing with the congregation. I love singing at RBC. I love the enthusiasm when we gather to sing, particularly on Sunday mornings, I think, when the congregation is more full. It just seems to have a more enthusiastic note to it. When I was in college, I was the song leader for a Sunday school class of 700 young men and loved the singing there. I have sung in congregations of several thousand. I think the largest would be 7,000 I’ve sung in. There’s just something about that that’s wonderful. Can you imagine all of creation coming together, and all of God’s people from all of the ages coming together to sing praise to God? There’s something of that anticipation that is built into the Psalter with its calls for praise.

Revelation chapter 5, verses 13 and 14: “And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and forever.’ And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’ And the elders fell down and worshiped.”

And there’s something of that universal anticipation of universal praise that’s built into the Psalter, calling the nations to come to the temple to worship, and calling all that has breath here to praise God. One day that will happen. And then the psalm concludes with a final renewed call to praise: “Praise the Lord.” It is a book of praises for sure.

All right, I have gone long. Let’s be dismissed in prayer.

Our Father, we’re grateful for this book of praises, and we’re grateful for the reminder that you are deserving of our praise. Give us hearts tuned to praise for who you are, for what you have done for us in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.