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Worthy of Praise!

Psalms 145-150

Well, today we come to the end of the Psalms.  What a ride!  These last five Psalms finish this glorious hymnal with a crescendo of praise for the only on worthy of our praise.  You know, there is a great deal of angst in this world today.  People seem lost.  They are looking for purpose.  Some are depressed and hopeless because they don’t see any point to life.  Others dedicate their lives to helping the poor or saving the environment or fighting cancer and the like in order to give purpose and meaning to their lives.  These self-contrived pursuits of purpose are noble and may even provide some level of satisfaction but somewhere deep inside it is not enough.

You see, we are made, hard wired if you will, to praise God.  That, in fact, is our purpose.  We were made to have a loving relationship with our Creator in which we praise and glorify His name; non-stop.  We have to praise God if we want to have fulfillment.  Since some resent the necessity to praise God they fight it.  The problem is you can’t remove this need.  If you don’t praise or worship God you will worship something else.  Some praise and worship Humanism, Marxism, Capitalism, Sex, Money, Rock ‘n Roll, food; the list could go on and on.  Nothing on God’s green earth, however, can fill the God sized hole that exists when we forego praising and worshiping God.  That’s why people get more and more frantic in their obsessions; there is never enough to fill the hole.

We need to praise and worship God if we want a fulfilling life of purpose; a life with meaning.  Did you know that God takes pleasure in your praise?  Did you know that He is pleased when your hope resides in His love for you?

Psalm 147:11

“but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,

in those who hope in his steadfast love.”

I wish I were adequate in my efforts to express to you the incredible pleasure that God takes in you, His child through the shed blood of Christ.  I can’t even express to you the pleasure I take in my own daughter when I see her showing compassion toward someone who is hurting or when she treats others with generosity.  If I am exceedingly proud of my daughter when she does that which she should do, how proud do you think God is of you when you tell someone about Christ?  How proud of you is He when you help those who are hurting or in need?  What pleasure does He take when you live the victorious life Jesus died to give you?

As we learned yesterday, God knows everything about you.  He knows what you’ve done.  He knows what you are doing.  He knows what you will do.  He even knows what you are thinking.  He loves you anyway.  He wants you to be happy and for you to be happy you need to praise Him; not just on Sunday but every day, every moment.  Not for His sake but for yours.

As is typical I found J. Vernon McGee’s comments on these last few verses of great interest so I will leave you with his comments which begin with a discussion on Psalm 145.

McGee, J. V. (1997). Thru the Bible commentary (electronic ed.). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

“This is the last psalm that mentions David as the author. He may have written some of the psalms that do not name an author, but we cannot be sure. This psalm is an acrostic, which means that each verse begins with one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Immediately we run into a problem which the critics have latched onto—there are twenty-two Hebrew letters and only twenty-one verses in this psalm. The psalm begins with Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, and ends with Tau, the final letter in the Hebrew alphabet; the missing letter is Nun. Some critics say that Nun was left out by some transcriber. I don’t think that is the case at all. I believe it was left out for a very definite reason. From Psalm 145 to 150 we find that every one of them is a hallelujah psalm. It is an increasing crescendo. Why would one verse be left out of Psalm 145? I think it speaks of the fact that our praise is imperfect. I like what F. W. Grant has written relative to the omission of this one letter: “I cannot but conclude that the gap is meant to remind us that in fact the fulness of praise is not complete without other voices, which are not found here, and that these missing voices are those of the Church and the heavenly saints in general.” You don’t get all of the hallelujahs until you get to the nineteenth chapter of Revelation: “And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God …. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever …. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth (Rev. 19:1, 3, 6). There is the missing hallelujah. The praise in this Psalm 145 is not quite complete—nor is it in any of the psalms. At the occasion of the birth of Jesus, the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest …” (Luke 2:14). Why? Because Jesus was born in Bethlehem and there would be peace. But there hasn’t been peace. We have never been able to sing the Hallelujah chorus perfectly yet. But there is coming a day when Christ will return to this earth. The day that He comes forth will be a great day, and then the Hallelujah chorus will be sung correctly and completely.”

Brothers, fill that God sized hole inside you with hearty and heartfelt praise for the lover of your soul, your Creator, your King, your God for He is worthy to be praised!

Have a praise filled day!

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!