DUNCAN/Everything that lives and breathes

If you have your Bible, I will invite you to turn with me to Psalm 150. This whole psalm consists of praise and calls to praise. It has an opening and closing command to praise, like we’ve seen in the last four psalms before it in the Psalter, it tells us who must praise God, where God should be praised, the modes of His praise, and then it calls us again to praise God. It’s very interesting; Psalm 1 begins with instruction on how a person who fears the Lord, who holds Him in reverent, loving awe, ought to live, and Psalm 150 ends with exhortations to praise the God with whom we live and with whom we walk. 

Where We Praise God 

And the first thing I want us to see is where the praise of God is to occur. Where do we praise God? Verse 1 tells us. “Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty heavens!” Where is God to be praised? Below and above; on earth and in the heavens; in the earthly sanctuary by His pilgrim people here, in the heavenly sanctuary with the church triumphant and the elders and the beasts; we are to praise Him and the Lamb. He is to be praised everywhere — In heaven above and on earth below; all creatures here below, above all ye heavenly host. 

Matthew Henry once said, “We should never begin a work without prayer, and we should never end it without thanksgiving and praise.” Why? Because God is to be praised everywhere. And he goes on to observe that because of that principle, that we should never begin a work without prayer and we should never end it without thanksgiving and praise, that is one reason why Christians are so concerned to end their lives in praise. Just as the Psalter begins by pointing us to the Word and leading us in prayer, so it ends in praise. How do you ready yourself for glory? In praise. 

Why We Praise God 

Then, in verse 2, we see why to praise God. “For His mighty acts and for His majesty.” For what He does and for who He is. For the deeds that he performs and for the perfection of His person. So, the psalmist says, “What are we to praise Him for? We’re to praise Him because of His mighty deeds." In the Old Testament, the people of God looked back to the redemption of Egypt when they’re brought out of the house of slavery, out of the land of bondage, and into the Promised Land. They are recounting the deeds of God’s redemption and His providence over them.

Ask yourself, what are the great deliverances of God in my life? For those who trust in Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, the greatest redemption that we have is Christ at the cross. Wherever you’re from, whatever you’ve been through, whatever you’re going through now, whatever you will go through, the greatest deliverance of God for all of us is at the cross. This truth should fuel our praise. But then in every one of our lives there are manifold and there are varieties of displays of His unique providence in our lives. How He had us at the right place at the right time to meet the one that we would spend the rest of our lives with. How He spared us and our parents and our children at unique places and times in our lives, perhaps in dangerous illnesses or in accidents. How He enabled us to make it through in the loss of a life of someone who was dear to us. How He blessed us with blessings that we could not have anticipated and that we wouldn’t have dared pray for. We are to praise God for His mighty acts in redemption and in providence. And that means there is literally an inexhaustible supply of things to praise God for.

But we not only praise God for what He’s done but we praise God for who He is. God is not a means to a greater end — He is the greater end. And so, the greatest thing that we can praise Him for is that in His redemption He has brought us to Himself. All of the redeemed will sing with all of our might speaking of the truth of who God is forever and we will never exhaust His worthiness of praise nor tire of giving it to Him! He not only gives all blessings — He Himself is blessedness. From Him is everything that is blessed. 

How We Praise God 

Third, how do we praise God? You see it in verses 3, 4, and 5. And what the psalmist does here is he gives a catalogue of instruments. And we’ve talked about this a little bit last week. When you look at these instruments, they touch on various aspects of the corporate life of Israel. For instance, the trumpet blast, the blowing of that curved horn that was used to announce the Year of Jubilee, is associated with great national occasion. On the other hand, the timbrel and the dance is associate with great and joyous victory occasions. And then the pipe, the flute, the lyre, and the harp, these were instruments that would have been used by everyday folks in Israel in the common situations of life. They might have been used simply on a regularly weekly basis to provide music for some party or gathering of people. They might have been used on the occasions of weddings and other situations. But these instruments encapsulate the situations and events of life in Israel and point to this great fact — That we need to praise God with everything we have. We need to throw in the kitchen sink to praise Him with everything we have.

Let Everything Praise the Lord

And then finally, who is it? Who is to praise God? Everyone and everything. “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!” because we were made to praise Him. The oldest lie ever told to the human race was told by the serpent to Eve and Adam. And what he told to Eve and to Adam was that God was not worth living for, that He was not worthy of your worship. And so, the Psalter says — How is it that you begin to live life, the blessed life, the happy life? You begin by being devoted to — By delighting in God’s Word. You start listening to God’s Word, not to the lie of the serpent. And how is it that you end life? With a confession that we ought to worship God and with the activity of worshiping God, declaring that He is worth living for, that He is worthy of our praise, that there is no satisfaction, no joy, no treasure, no delight, no fulfillment outside of Him — That He is what we were made for. We were made for His praise.