EXTOLLING GOD

Meditations in Psalm 138

THE ACTION OF PRAISE

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"I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; before the 'Gods' I will sing your praise"
Psalm 138:1

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THE MOMENT we start reading in this Psalm we are conscious that David is filled with praise for God as the whole Psalm is an expression of this. Such is David's enthusiasm that we can not help but be infected with it, and long to have the same praise of God in our hearts. Enthusiasm is infectious and this is perhaps the purpose of this Psalm. If we are to capture the same praise we must capture a comparable experience and knowledge of God as David had. The purpose then of our meditation is to seek to enter into the experience and knowledge of David in God which he expresses in this Psalm.

THE SOURCE OF PRAISE

David commences the psalm with the words "I will praise you, O Lord". The source of the praise that bubbles up in his heart and mind is God himself. It is the knowledge of God which he has proved in his experience. As we progress through the Psalm David mentions the many ways God has acted in his life, which the remembrance of now fills his hearts with praise.

True praise is never an academic exercise where we list in our mind various things we know about God and then say that we praise him for them. That the knowledge we may have of God tells us he is worthy of praise, and should be praised, goes without saying, but praise cannot be turned on as a duty. Praise can be stimulated as we experience genuine praise, and so we can find that praise growing within us, and this is what meditation on this psalm is meant to do. On the other hand just to be told that we should praise God cannot produce real praise. We may go through the motions; and we may seem to be praising outwardly; further our words may be words of praise; but this is not real praise. Praise comes from experience of God in his greatness in our lives. We see the Lord and behold his goodness and action and praise rises within us.

David plainly had a real experience of God. We must seek also a real experience of God. A real experience of God commences in conversion where we come face to face with God and his character deeply influences our lives. Without the meeting with and knowing God through conversion there is no possibility of true praise. We cannot know God in any real way until we are reconciled to him through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have several examples of this in the Bible. There is the meeting with God which Isaiah had recorded for us in Isaiah chapter 6. First he sees the Lord in all his glorious holiness and he is filled with shame for his sin and is afraid, though deeply sorry for how far short he had fallen from God's glory. Then he experienced the touch of God, not in judgement and death as he had feared, but in the purging of his guilt and sin. From fear came the sense of God's forgiving love. This experience of God left an indelible impression on his heart which showed itself in a change within him which was seen in that he became the prophet of the Lord to Israel whatever it cost. Paul had the same converting experience when the Lord Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and his life was turned around in the same way. Whether conversion is dramatic like these two examples or quieter like most of ours, the experience is the same of God's gracious forgiving love which fills our hearts with love for him. This is the first and continuing source of praise.

Then we have the example of Stephen at the moment of his martyrdom. He was granted a vision of Jesus and of heaven which filled his consciousness with untold joy, and even at the moment of great pain and the end of his physical life, he had to pour out his heart in praise. We can read this in Acts 7:55,56.

Then there is the experience of Paul which he recounts in the third person in 2 Corinthians 12:1-6 where he was privileged to have an experience of the spiritual realm and the presence of God which is extremely rare. God blessed him with the sight of his glory in paradise. This was a deeper sense of the experience of eternal life, which is dwelling with and in God, which went with it. No doubt he never ceased to praise God for this so uplifting experience and taste of heaven.

In a word, praise is found in our experience of God. We come to know God when we experience conversion, and we increase in our experience of God as we walk with God in fellowship and love throughout the rest of our lives. This is how David was filled with praise. We have ever increasing desire to praise as God deepens our knowledge of his love to us in all that Jesus did to save us. We find our hearts filled with praise as God constantly intervenes in our lives for good, and we mark his hand of love upon us. From all this we see and experience more of the glory of God which is the source of continual praise.

Praise however is a tender plant. It must be nurtured by constant seeking the Lord and walking in fellowship with him. We must be constantly refreshed with a vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

THE ACTION OF PRAISE

David writes "I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart". Here is the action of praise. It is something that rises out of the heart. The heart is the seat of our affections and will. When David says he will praise with all his heart, he indicates that his praise firstly comes from the depth of his being and life. God has so touched his heart and filled him with his glory that the depth of his being has been effected, and so his praise is with the deepest of him and all that he is. Praise must never be superficial. It is not something we just exercise our mind upon. Praise must issue from a heart touched by the hand and presence of God.

Secondly, because it issues from the heart, praise comes from deep feeling. Praise fills us when we have been touched with God's great love for us, and his love fills our hearts with love for him. A cold heart or an unemotional heart rarely is moved to much praise. If we are to be praising Christians we must seek that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, praising from the heart is a product of a life touched with the greatness of God's goodness and protection and action in our lives. It is through this experience of God that the greatness of God is seen, his majesty and glory. Praise pours out of us when we have been amazed at the way God has dealt with us for good. This Psalm is full of this experience of God and is the food for David's praise. The Christian life is not just believing doctrine, but knowing the Lord and walking with him in our daily living. It is a constant encounter with God of knowing his leading and his intervention in care and protection. It is the experience of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, constantly with us, so that at the end of each day as we look back, we can say God has been with us for good. At the end of each day, as we remember the hand of God upon us, we are moved to praise.

It is important, if we are to be praising Christians, to mark and remember all the experiences of God we are given, and the evidence of his action towards us. We must not be those who take God for granted, and when he answers our prayer and we are satisfied, we then forget that he has blessed us. Praise grows with the cumulative effect of the blessings of God upon us.

THE REASON FOR PRAISE

David continues in this beginning of his psalm by saying "before the 'Gods' I will sing your praise". This is a peculiar phrase, and we must not use it to imply that David believed in the reality of other Gods, or that other Gods exist. By this expression David acknowledges that even though there is no other God but Jehovah, other nations and peoples believed that there were other Gods, and believed that their own particular deity which they worshipped was stronger and better than any other. These nations thought of Jehovah, the one true God, as just another god in a pantheon of gods.

In this expression David has one great desire and that is to extol God as the one true Almighty God, high above all principalities and powers in heaven and earth. The reason or purpose of praise is to extol God and show forth his excellent greatness. Thus praise, although is expressed in song, also is an expression of our whole living, as by our lives we set forth God as worthy too be praised and the one all creation should honour.

David had a deep sense of the greatness and majesty of God. He had a great sense of God's love and goodness towards him. To David there was no one to be compared to God - God was high over all. He saw the pitiful apologies for a god which the heathen worship and wanted to extol the greatness of the Lord. He felt the disregard and despising of God that characterised so many peoples lives, and he wanted to lift God high so that this dishonour may be exposed. In a word, so great was God to him, that there was no other way he could express his heart toward God than in praising him.

Again we become conscious of the source of praise which is the knowledge of God. How we need to live in the presence of God more and more in our living.

THE WAY OF PRAISE

Lastly, David says how he praises God in the words "I will sing your praise". It is doubtful if real praise can be kept silent within us. It is true that we can praise God with words not audibly uttered when we pray, but when praise for God really fills our minds and hearts, it must come out and be expressed audibly.

This aspect of Christian experience is exemplified so obviously in David's life when we see all the psalms he wrote. These were songs to be sung, and most of them to be sung at public and private times of worship. When we read the psalms, there are so many which extol God, but even the ones which are prayer and even complaint are an expression of praise, because by them we see how David extols God as his only refuge and source of help and comfort, and that it is in the hands of God alone that come all the issues of life.

Singing to praise and worship God must be, therefore, an integral and essential part of our worship in church. Such singing must not simply be a time when we enjoy a good sing, and are emotionally moved by a tune or the uplift of a congregation singing; rather it must issue out of the service where God has been lifted up before us so that we can't help saying in the words of the song 'I really want to praise you, Lord'.

Although our expression of praise is done in song, the essential thing about David's testimony is that his praise was audible. We have not really begun to know praise until we audibly share God with others. Because of this every setting forth of God by word, in witness or teaching or in sharing what the Lord has done for our souls, is worship. When we witness to the saving that is in Christ, we are extolling God and thus showing forth his praise. The more God fills our lives, the less silent we can be.

The progression from this is the praise of God in our lives. We so live that all see that God is our God, and that we live for him, hold him high, set forth his goodness in all we do. Our lives should be an action of praise to God. We must not be ashamed to show that we are the Lord's in all we do. This does not mean that we are outwardly pious like the Pharisees. Such self expression of piety is not extolling God, but only ourselves. If our life is hid with Christ in God, it will effect and colour the way we work, the habits we form, the way we treat people, the things we like doing. In this we set forth the praise of God in our lives. Often this praising living is the source of people enquiring why we are like we are. Peace and joy, trustworthiness and love, are perceived, and people ask concerning the source. We can then praise God by witnessing to his love and goodness.

CONCLUSION

How good it is to praise the Lord. What experience of joy do we know when we engage in praise. How comforting is the experience which true praise engenders that we are the Lord's and he is ours. Let us desire to praise God more, and thus seek him daily with all our heart.