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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends, this is TUESDAY of Thanksgiving Week!
Today let’s look at the second of the “Hallelu Yah Psalms”… Psalm 147.
You’ll notice in each of these five “Praise the LORD” Psalms, the author is quite specific about WHY we should Praise God and WHAT God has done to be worthy of our praise worship. Have you ever had the experience of God inviting you to a God given assignment through Scripture? God used this Psalm 147, in calling Dawn and me to help launch a new church, in a church building which had a history of church splits. Many people had been hurt in that place over the years, yet within one year, hundreds of people experienced the healing power of Jesus Christ and the “Praise of the Lord” filled that place. It was a remarkable miracle of God and we will always treasure those months.
Psalm 147 starts with an invitation to Praise. Do you see it? “How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him!”
Friends… have you discovered the Power of Worship in music? Worship with song and instruments engages our whole body… mind, heart, hands, voice, ears, eyes. Are you amazed, as you watch and listen to an orchestra? Trained eyes looking at paper with lines and black dots with stems. Those eyes send information to their brain which then guides action by fingers and lungs and lips and tapping toes keeping time, and instruments come alive and make beautiful music. When in harmony with other instruments, under the direction of a skilled conductor… oh my! The 1812 Overture or add a choir and rise to your feet with Handel’s Messiah and the Hallelu Yah Chorus!
I wonder how many of you men remember being in stadiums filled with thousands of worshiping men in the “Promise Keeper” days? Or how about the music we are all hearing these days… Christmas Carols? Does your heart rise up with joyful praise to God with the beautiful sound and the powerful significance of the words that we sing in worship of our great God?
Worship my friends is powerful as it engages us with God. It’s powerful in how it drives out fear, loneliness, discouragement, worry, pride, anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness from our lives. This is why, my friends, filing your home and automobile with worship music is so powerful. Satan and his demons hate the worship of Holy, Almighty God and Jesus Christ our Savior! Worship defeats the dark kingdom and drives the darkness of evil away! Have you discovered that? How important is worship in your everyday life my friends? Are you taking full advantage of this amazing gift of God to you…“Praise the LORD!”
Verse 2&3 are remarkable truth, not only in the history of Israel many times, but I invite us to personalize this my friends. Think back… when have you experienced God bringing you back to Himself from a time you were wandering aimlessly in the wilderness of spiritual lethargy or emotional despair or intellectual confusion or financial disaster or medical tragedy or relational calamity? How did God bring you back? Was it the love of a friend? The wonder of worship music? The penetrating power of Scripture?
Look at verse 2&3: “The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” You may remember that’s the story of Ezra & Nehemiah as King Cyrus issued a decree allowing the Hebrew exiles to return and rebuild Jerusalem (Ezra 1). Would you agree my friends, it’s also the story of 1948. God did it again, as the United Nations declared a land for the Jewish people, and millions returned to their God given, ancestral homeland. If you’ve had the privilege of visiting modern day Israel, it is a remarkable experience to walk in the places where the events of the Bible took place,isn’t it?
Now I invite you my friends to look at the ebb and flow of Psalm 147 verses 1 through 11. The Psalmist calls us to praise and then gives us reason for which God is deserving of our praise. Do you see it? Back and forth, Praise and WHY God is worthy of our Praise.
God is worthy because… He gathers up exiles, He heals their broken hearts and binds up their wounds. (vs. 2,3)
God is worthy because… He designed the night sky… (vs. 4) He determined the number and location of the stars, and Isaiah 40:26 invites us to look up and see the evidence of God’s majestic control since each star is exactly where God placed it when He made it.
God is worthy because… neither His power nor His understanding has any limit. That’s what Omnipotent and Omniscient mean. (vs. 5)
God is worthy of our praise because… He manages the ecosystem making sure clouds form and drop precious fresh water rain on the land which causes vegetation to grow which feeds the animals, which feed us humans. (vs. 8,9)
God is worthy of our praise because… as amazing and varied as the animal kingdom is which He created in all its diversity… it is us, the human race, which He designed in His image, it is WE who are His delight, especially when we worship Him and put our hope in Him! Do you see that in verses 10 & 11, my friends?
Now may I stop for a moment and invite you to add to this list. Both with other things you see in Psalm 147 which call us to Praise God… but maybe more importantly, I invite you my friends to add your own personal experiences with God to this list. What are the attributes of God which overwhelm you and awaken in you a deep desire to PRAISE Him? May I help you get your list started? How about God’s unconditional love for you as we see in Romans 8:34-39? Or God’s willingness to forgive us when we sin as we see in 1 John 1:9? Now what else would you add to your list (of God’s attributes or actions which awaken PRAISE in you? I’ll just wait a few moments while we make our lists and thank God. . .)
Now may I draw your attention to the closing two verses of Psalm 147?
“He (God) has revealed His word to Jacob, His laws and decrees to Israel.
He has done this for no other nation; they do not know His laws.
Praise the Lord.” (147:19,20)
Praise the Lord.” (147:19,20)
You’ll notice often in the Old Testament Jacob is a focus when the Bible speaks about the Hebrew nation. Do you know why?
You’ll recall the Jewish nation began with God’s promise to old Abraham & Sarah who were childless (Genesis 12), that God would bless them with a child and from that child would come a nation of people who were God’s people through whom God would bless all peoples of the earth. Abraham & Sarah finally had the miracle son Isaac (Gen. 21), and God reaffirmed that promise through Issac (Gen. 22:18). Isaac married Rebekah and they had twins, Jacob and Esau. God again re-affirmed that covenant promise through Jacob (Gen. 28:13,14).
Jacob, you may recall had four wives and 12 sons and one daughter! (Gen. 29,30) God changed Jacob’s name to Israel (Gen. 35:9-12) and once again re-affirmed His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Each of Jacob’s sons became the head of a family or tribe of Hebrews and thus the Jewish nation is referred to as Israel or the “children of Israel”.
When Psalm 147:19 says “God has revealed His word to Jacob” it means God re-affirmed His covenant promise of a nation of people and a land for those people, to Jacob…and the God did it! God fulfilled that promise, over and over, as He has multiplied that one family into a huge nation of millions of people who have scattered all around the world. He has also fulfilled the promise of bringing those descendants into the land of Israel over and over through the centuries, including now, in our time!
As we read a few months ago, Exodus is that great story of God delivering the descendants of Jacob from their slavery in Egypt, and then in chapter 20 of Exodus, God actually spoke, out loud, the law, the 10 commandments for His people Israel, along with several chapters of other laws. That’s Psalm 147:19 “…His laws and decrees to Israel.” That’s the story of the Hebrew people receiving God’s instructions for worship and holy holidays and the Sabbath and their sacrificial system, as recorded for us in Exodus & Leviticus.
And that’s why Psalm 147:20 says “God has done this for no other nation…” It’s true!
But there’s another great truth… and that is Jesus Christ who came to fulfill the law and to invite us into RELATIONSHIP with Holy God as forgiven sinners, who therefore live no longer under the law but live as adopted sons and daughters of God regardless of our human family tree, our Passport country, our gender, our education, the language we speak or the color of our skin!
The people of God are no longer one race of Hebrews…the people of God are the global Church of Jesus Christ. That’s why Peter writes to all of us: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the PRAISES of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…” (1 Peter 2:9,10).
I link it with how Peter opens that letter to Christians scattered around the world “…who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood.” (1 Peter 1:2) That’s us my friends, and our response should be PRAISE as seen in Psalm 147!! I hope you have a great day praising Jesus today…
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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