Always Praising Him
Psalm 150:1–6
Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:1

Psalm 150 answers four questions about worship. First question: Where should we praise God? Answer: Everywhere, in heaven and on earth. Second question: Why should we praise God? Answer: Because of everything God is and for all he has done. Third question: How should we praise God? Answer: With everything we’ve got.

Now at last, question four: Who should praise God? Answer: Everything and everybody. “Everything that has breath,” says the psalmist (v. 6).

This is exactly what will happen. At the moment, we see God insulted, blasphemed, denied, and ignored. We see Christ rejected. But one day “every knee [will] bow,” whether willingly or not (Phil. 2:10). As far as the saints are concerned, the apostle John wrote in Revelation: “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13).

What a great choir! What a great song! What a great privilege. It will be ours if we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who has indeed taken away the sin of those who trust him.

At Tenth Presbyterian Church, it is our custom to read through the psalms consecutively. When we get to the end, we just go back and start again. There is a sense in which we should be doing that now. If we have actually come to the place where we have echoed the praise of that great heavenly choir that sings “to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” and if we are repeating the final words of the Psalter that cry, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord,” we will want to go back to the first psalm and seek ever more intently the blessing that comes from meditating on and delighting in God’s Word. “Blessed is the man . . . [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:1–2).

We cannot praise God without meditating on his Word, for we will only praise God as we come to know him, and the only way we will come to know him is through his self-disclosure in the Bible and by our meditating on it.

It works the other way too, for we cannot miss seeing that the Psalter begins with Bible study and ends with endless praise. It doesn’t even end with a doxology, though it could. It does not end with an amen. It ends with a call to praise God, which is itself our great doxology to which we add our own sincere and loud “Amen.”

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.