Year 2, Day 286: Psalms 149-150

Psalm 149

Today we finish up the psalms.  As I read the last two psalms, I was confronted with two more psalms about giving praise to God.  These psalms are very celebratory.  These psalms make you want to get up and move and dance.  These psalms make me want to go into a congregation and join others as they genuinely lift up their voice – not in some traditional manner of fulfilling a rite but rather in a genuine attempt to give praise to God and His name.

That’s one of the neat things about psalms of praise.  I find that the psalms of praise reach deep down into a spiritual core.  When I hit psalms like these two that we find here I feel as though my soul is directly tied to the divine.

This is one of the things that I really love about contemporary praise music.  Contemporary praise music hits me with a feeling unlike I get from traditional hymns or my beloved Christian Rock music.  The hymns make me feel like I am making a bold confession of faith.  My beloved Christian Rock always challenges me in a discipleship focus.  But contemporary praise songs let my spirit cry out to God in a spiritual means like no other music can do – for me.

I think that this sums up the point of the psalms really well.  The psalms uniformly are an invitation to come into the presence of God and find relationship.  Sure, the psalms all take different approaches.  Some are psalms of praise that bring a deep spiritual connection.  Others are psalms of lament that bring peace and mercy from God to us.  Others are psalms pleading for God’s presence in an urgent need.  The psalms are all different; but they all uniformly attempt to draw us into relationship.

As I thought about this thought, I also began to focus on the message of Psalm 149:4. God takes pleasure in His people.  Here’s the neat conclusion of the thought I put forth above.  God loves us, so he calls us into relationship with Him.  When we respond, we find relationship with God. As we find relationship with God, His pleasure in us increases.  We are drawn even more deeply into a relationship with Him.  His pleasure increases.  We are drawn even more deeply into a relationship.  His pleasure increases.  We are drawn more deeply … well, you get the idea.  God’s pleasure in us and our relationship with Him is the stimulus for a greater and greater relationship.

Without His pleasure, relationship would not have even been possible.  Logically, this is true.  When sin was first committed in the Garden of Eden, God should have stopped humanity in its tracks right then and there.  God should have punished sin on the spot.  But God desired relationship more than absolute justice because He knew than mankind was unable to adhere to absolute justice apart from Him and Christ!  God took great pleasure in the relationship, so he made life continue to be possible.  Mind you, life was different because of sin – it always is!  But the reality is that all of us deserve judgment.  But God desires relationship more than absolute judgment.  Now there is something about which we can truly give praise to God!

Then we get to Psalm 149:6-9.  We hear a bit of a battle cry.  We hear a bit of an overstated nationalism.  We hear a bit of the confidence in the belief that God has chosen His people to rule in this present age.  While I might not agree that God has called us to be rulers in this world, I do think we can take a much more generic message out of this psalm.  We can hear how the followers of God will not be overcome by the world.  We can hear how the Word of God will be superior to the might of this world.  We can hear how the person who is found in God is never defenseless.  While I may not believe that God has called us to rise up and suppress the nations by force, I do believe that the true people of God are always stronger than the people of the world.

Psalm 150

Then we get to Psalm 150.  What a wonderful psalm.  This psalm brings me back to where I started this blog post.  In this psalm we get the sense that giving praise to God should be full of life and vigor.  It should be exciting to come into God’s presence.  It should bring about an incredible passion to come into His presence.  We should want to beat on the drums, pluck the strings of instruments, clap our hands, and even dance!  We should want to have worship be a time of excitement and fulfillment!  Our worship should be a place where we come and feel energized and mobilized.  Our worship should be a true expression of the faith that God has placed within us!  We shouldn’t need to hold back.  We shouldn’t need to feel reserved.  We should want to take our love for God, pour it out, lay it at the altar, and then let God fill us back up.  That’s what worship should be!

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