DUNCAN/For the Lord’s renown!
If you have your Bible, I’d invite you to turn in them with me to Psalm 135. One of the enemies of praise is ingratitude. If we are not sufficiently grateful for who God is, our praise will be anemic and weak. And that is why all true worship is buttressed by truth. When we apprehend who He is, then we honor Him as we ought. And the exhortations of this psalm are designed to encourage true believers in true worship by setting before us things about our God and what He has done for us that motivate us to praise His name.
The Lord is Good to You
First, the psalmist urges us to praise the Lord because the Lord is good to you. Look again at verse 3. “Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good; sing to His name, for it is pleasant!” “Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good.” Do you believe that? Do you feel that down to your bones? You know, that is a constant refrain in the psalms. The very first temptation of the evil one against humanity was designed to promote a doubt in our souls that the Lord is good. And so, it is not surprising that the beginning of true praise is in the full embrace of the goodness of God.
To believe that He is good in any and every circumstance is one of the great challenges in life. But you know there are challenges in both good and bad circumstances. In good circumstances we are tempted to take our delight from the circumstances and not the One who gave us those circumstances. In bad circumstances we are tempted to doubt the goodness and the wisdom of the God who has put us in the middle of those circumstances. Job himself announces those battles in his own experience. Job doesn’t question whether God is in control; Job questions whether he can see the goodness of God in His control. And so here the psalmist urges us to praise the Lord because He is good.
The Lord Chose You
Secondly, he urges us to praise the Lord because of His election. Look again at verse 4. It is a staggering thing, my friends, to think that the Lord has chosen you for His own possession and His own heritage. I can tell you, were you to draw near to the Lord in heaven tonight and were you to say to Him, “Lord, why is it that You did all this? What did You want out of the sending of Your Son into the world? What did You want out of His perfect life and His experience of the curse of sin and the pouring out of Your wrath on Him and His death and burial and resurrection?” The Scriptures, and this passage here, says that the Lord will look you in the eye and say, “What I wanted was you. I chose you to be Mine. You’re the possession I want. I’m going to give you everything in Christ, My Son, but what I want is you.” The psalmist is saying we need to praise God because He first loved us. He chose us and we’re to praise the Lord.
The Lord is Sovereign Over Everything
There’s a third thing here. You’ll see it again in verse 6. We praise the Lord because He is sovereign over everything. “Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” Have you ever heard in one sentence a more sweeping declaration of the sovereignty of God than that? Do you know what the phrase is that is repeated more than any other phrase in The Westminster Confession of Faith? “It pleased the Lord.” Over and over the Westminster divines emphasized that the Lord did what He pleased. Where did they get that idea? Well, from all of Scripture but one of the important places is right here in Psalm 135 verse 6. He is sovereign over this world and that leads us to praise Him. The psalmist knows that what God decrees is always for the good of His people. And so, he calls on us to praise the Lord because He’s sovereign.
The Lord Saved You
Fourth, he calls on us to praise the Lord because He’s saved us, and he speaks of this dramatically in recounting the redemption of the children of Israel from Egypt in verses 8 through 12. And then in contrast, he says in verses 15 to 18 “Understand that the idols are nothing.” And he makes a very, very important statement that you need to dwell on for a few moments. “Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them!” The psalmist is saying who you worship determines what you become. You either worship the true God and you know Him in all His glory, His goodness, and His sovereignty, or you worship a God you’ve made up with your own mind. You may have never gone out and taken gold or silver and fashioned an idol and bowed down before it, but if you have created a god of your own invention, you are no less an idolater than those spoken of here. Only the true God is worthy of praise. We go to Him, we go to His Word, we learn who He is from His Word, and we worship the true God, not a god of our own invention.
The Importance of Encouraging One Another to Praise God
And then the psalm ends with these antiphonal exhortations. Do you see them in verses 19 and following? The congregation of Israel, the Levites and the priests and those who are attending the house of the Lord are all exhorting one another to praise the Lord. Do you understand the importance of our encouraging one another to the praise and worship of God because our hearts are sluggish, my friends? We don’t praise Him as we ought.
We need to encourage one another to worship. Any time a brother or a sister tells you the good news of God’s providential provision for him or for her, it ought to be an opportunity for you to encourage that brother or sister to praise the living God. It’s a psalm not just for the Levites, the priests or those who are officiating in the house of the Lord. It’s a psalm for the whole congregation of God’s people. Bless the Lord. Praise the Lord. For He is good, and He has chosen us, He is sovereign, and He saved us. Look at Jesus’ words from John 13 to John 17 in the Upper Room. He would remind His disciples of those truths on the night of His betrayal to encourage them. “In this world, you have trouble, but do not fear, do not be afraid, let not your heart be troubled, for I have overcome the world.”