“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! Psalm 150:1–6
Here we have the last psalm of the Psalter and it answers four questions about worship leaving us with a clear understanding about worship as it is the last thing talked about. This tells us, along with so many other passages, that worship is central and foundational to the believer.
First question: Where should we praise God? Answer: Everywhere, in heaven and on earth.
Second question: Why should we praise God? Answer: We praise Him for everything God is and for all He has done.
Third question: How should we praise God? Answer: With everything we have mind, body and soul!
Fourth question : Who should praise God? Answer: Everything and everybody. “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! (v. 6).
This is exactly what will happen. In this present time, we see God insulted, blasphemed, denied, and ignored. We see Christ rejected. But one day “every knee [will] bow,” whether willingly or not (Phil. 2:10). As far as the saints are concerned, the apostle John wrote in Revelation: “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 ever!’” (Rev. 5:13). What a great choir! What a great song! What a great privilege! It will be ours as well since we have responded in faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who has indeed taken away the sin of those who trust him.
We often read through the psalms consecutively as our Call to Worship and Confession of Sin and forgiveness. Often we have gotten to the end, to only go back and start again. In this NEW Year this should be our practice, if not at Church then definitely in our homes. If we have actually come to the place where we have echoed the praise of that great heavenly choir that sings “to Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” and if we are repeating the final words of the Psalter that cry, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD,” we will want to go back to the first psalm and seek ever more intently the blessing that comes from meditating on and delighting in God’s Word. “Blessed is the man . . . [whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:1–2). And also consider Revelation 1:3- “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.”
We cannot praise God without meditating on His Word, for we will only praise God as we come to know Him, and the only way we will come to know Him is through His self-disclosure in the Bible and by our meditating on it.
It works the other way too, for we cannot miss seeing that the Psalter begins with Bible study (Psalm 1) and ends with endless praise (Psalm 150). It doesn’t even end with a doxology, though it could. It does not end with an Amen. It ends with a call to praise God, which is itself our great doxology to which we add our own sincere and loud “AMEN!!!.”
“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!”
God bless y’all.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
