Praise Ye the Lord
“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!” (Psa 150:6a)
Psalm 150 is the final psalm.149 reflections precede it. 149 poems, songs, and laments describe the wide variety of experiences of walking with God. They describe God in unique ways. We know Him through the psalms as a fearful God, a strange God, a wondrous God, a tender God, a gentle and loving God, a ferocious God, a faithful God. The Psalms are the variety of the experiences of God.
So the psalms give us a knowledge of His glory unlike what we find in most other places in Scripture. Here we meet God through our fellow believers. This is the truth about God, but filtered through the experiences of God’s people, delivered to us by the Spirit. This is true knowledge of God’s glory.
The only thing it lacks is volume. God wants the whole earth to be full of the knowledge of His glory. (Isaiah hears the Seraphim sing, “The whole earth is filled with His glory!” But the problem, then, is simply that it is not well known, or known well.)
Filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory: that’s what Psalm 150 is about!
The psalm says, “Praise God everywhere! Praise God for everything! Praise God with every instrument, in every way! Praise God everyone!” Fill the earth! Let the knowledge of this God fill every ear and then every mouth.
Psalm 150 describes where all this is going. One day, Paul says, “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:10-11) In other words, everything that has breath will, one day, praise the LORD. Scripture invites us to know that joy right now.
But Psalm 150 also describes what the people who are full of the knowledge of the Lord do: they call on all things to praise God. (The following observation was provided by Kyle O’Brien.)
Notice something here: Here we see the psalmist, a man renewed by the knowledge of God, exerting dominion over all things by calling them to praise the Lord and using them in praise (via the instrumentation). This is what Adam and Eve were created to do. Their job was to have dominion over all things and to fill the earth, and so to fill it with the knowledge of God’s glory. (Gen 1:28)
So Psalm 150 depicts a fully alive, properly functioning, human person. It is a glimpse backward to Adam and Eve, and forward, into what could have been, what will be. It is what the Spirit, in the psalms, is at work to produce in us. It’s what should have been, yes, but it’s what can be too today, by the work of the Spirit.
Today, are you breathing? Do you have breath? Do you know things about God that deserve to be praised? Are there things about Father, Son, and Spirit, that you find glorious? Has God done things for you that were mighty in your life? Have you seen Him do great things in an excellent way?
Then praise the Lord. Praise Him in the places you find yourself. Praise Him in the places to which your wandering thoughts go. Praise Him for what He has done for you. Praise Him for cool things about Him. Praise Him with instruments and hand claps, with tools and utensils, with baskets and bags, with pages and pens, with clicks and swipes, with body, with heart, with soul.
Let every nook and cranny of our lives be alive with the knowledge of His glory. Let all our wind and all our dirt and all our dreams be to the praise of the Lord.
May the light of the knowledge given to us in Scripture fill our hearts, and may all the darkness, sin, fear, worry, and pain be subdued by and filled with our praises.
Praise ye the LORD.
Photo by Aubrey Odom on Unsplash
