- What’s the use of praising God as we do each Sunday in the divine service?
- Have you ever noticed what happens when you experience something good, such as a beautiful sunset, family Christmas dinner, the birth of grandchild, falling in love, or a overseas holiday.
- You want to tell others about it and how good it is.
- You can’t keep it to yourself but need to share it with your family and friends.
- The more you speak about it, the more you enjoy it.
- You discover how good something is and appreciate it properly by praising it.
- Praise goes hand and hand with enjoyment.
- The more you enjoy, the more you praise.
- The more you praise, the more you enjoy.
- Praise sharpens your appreciation of something good and enhances your enjoyment it
- Psalm 148 invites us to praise the Lord so that we can enjoy Him and His goodness as we live in the afterglow of Christmas.
- It is true that God does not need us to praise Him.
- He does not show off and brag about His achievements, as we do, so that we will flatter Him by saying how great He is.
- He is not a megalomaniac who feeds off human flattery to bolster His sense of importance.
- No, He is modest and quite happy to be unnoticed.
- But He does want us to enjoy Him and our life with Him in the good world that He has given us.
- That’s why He wants us to tell ourselves and others about His goodness and greatness in speech and song.
- So when we praise Him, we don’t usually speak to Him but about Him to others.
- It differs from thanksgiving and adoration which are addressed to God.
- We benefit from it because it opens our eyes to His goodness and our hearts to receive that joy that he provides as the giver of every gift.
- This psalm says that we have two good reasons to praise the Lord our God this Christmas season.
- He has raised up His Son Jesus from the dead and enthroned him as His right hand man, His co-regent.
- The psalm says: He has raised up a horn for His people.
- In ancient Israel the horns of a bull were placed on the crowns of their kings as a symbol of the royal power that God gave to David and his successors to save His people from their enemies and protect them from disaster.
- So, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, speaks about that when he says:
Praise be to the Lord the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
from the house of his servant David.
- Through His Son Jesus God gives us access to Himself here and now in the service of worship.
- Jesus brings heaven down to earth for us: brings God the Father to us and us to God the Father
- Since Jesus is our mediator, we are near to our heavenly Father through Him.
- We are the people who are near to Him, nearer than anything else in all creation.
- This psalm tells us that God has set up two huge choirs to proclaim Him and His goodness to the whole of His creation
- He has set up a heavenly choir with its singers and musicians.
- The singers in that choir are the angels and all the heavenly hosts.
- They stand before God in heaven.
- There they sing:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
- They are joined by all the creatures in the sky above us.
- Sun and moon, stars and everything else in sky
- You can’t hear them sing, because they don’t have any mouths and tongues.
- Like deaf people, they use sign language
- They are like a works of art or stringed instruments that communicate with us by sight and sound.
- They praise God by obeying His command, the word by which God created them, the word by which God has set them in their place within His created order and still determines what they do.
- By their very existence and orderly movement they praise their Creator.
- They move in harmony with the angels to the rhythm and order that God sets for them.
- All speechless creatures in heaven and earth accompany that song, like dancers that move together as a group in step with the music of a dance.
- So Psalm 148 says:
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for He commanded and they were created.
He set them in place for ever and ever;
He gave a decree that will never pass away.
- God has also set up an earthly choir to join the angels in their song of praise.
- That choir consists of all creatures on earth, great and small.
- The sea and all the fish in it.
- Thunder and lightning, hail and snow, rain clouds and stormy winds
- Mountains and hills, fruit trees in orchards and huge trees in the forests
- Wild animals and domesticated livestock, birds and little creatures like insects and reptiles.
- Like the sun and moon and the stars, they all praise their Creator by obeying the laws of nature.
- They do what He gives them to do, and are what God has made them to be.
- Even though they can’t speak and sing, they stay in tune with the angels and keep in step with their Creator.
- That choir on earth is led by God’s people, you and me, all the members of His church around the world.
- God the Father has made himself known to us by name through his Son and his Holy Spirit.
- He has sent his Son Jesus to set us up as his choir on earth.
- Jesus teaches us to praise our heavenly Father by giving us His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of praise.
- Jesus is our conductor, our praise leader.
- By becoming one of us, God’s Son unites the choir of angels in heaven with the choir of people on earth: single choir with one song of praise.
- So when Jesus was born the angels appeared to the shepherds and invited them to join them in their song of praise:
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace
among those with whom he is well-pleased.
- We therefore invite the people around us to join us in praising the Lord.
- All nations and all their rulers
- Young men and women in the prime of their life
- Old people and little children
- We call them to join us and the angels us each Sunday in praising God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- Psalm 148 tells us why we are called to do this:
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For his name alone is exalted,
his splendour is above the earth and the heavens.
He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise of all his saints,
the people of Israel who are near him.
- Well why is the praise of God so important for us and all people on earth?
- Praise of God goes hand in hand with the enjoyment of God and His many gifts for us.
- We can do that perfectly only in heaven.
- There you will praise God forever as you enjoy life together with him and the angels and all the people of God.
- But God wants you to enjoy him and his blessings already now here on earth.
- He wants to increase your capacity for enjoyment by praising him with your hearts and hands and voices.
- So God prepares you to enjoy life with him already here and now by encouraging you to praise him with all your hearts.
- We find that hard to do.
- We are ready to criticize but slow to praise anyone except ourselves.
- We need God’s help to become people of praise.
- So God sets up congregations like this as places of praise with praise- singers and praise-sayers.
- Here Jesus and the angels teach us how to praise, just like a group of singers who teach us to sing a new song by singing it for us and getting us to join in with them.
- We help each other to praise God more fully and wholeheartedly by singing our songs of praise.
- Best of all, we have a foretaste of heaven when we lift up our heart and voices in praise.
- We experience a little of the joy of heaven as we rejoice in the presence of Jesus with us.
- My dear fellow praise-singers, since you are near to God here and dear to Him, praise Him here together with all the angels and all the church in heaven and earth as we do later in this service when we sing:
Holy, holy, holy Lord,
Great and ever-present God.
Earth joins heaven as we sing;
Praise to our triumphant king.
In this place let us proclaim
Christ who comes in God’s own name:
Join with angels as we sing;
Glory to our holy king.
Holy, holy, holy Lord.
Great and ever-present God.
