Praise the Lord

Yesterday I spoke of praising God in the dark…in the hard times, but I was again reminded of the need to praise Him continually in the last of the five psalms I read today. In Psalm 135 we find such a call to praise.

Calvin said, “The World is a theatre for the display of the divine…and the Church is the orchestra!” I love that thought…God created this world to display His glory and the center point of His creation was man and woman…we were created to bear His image, to worship Him, to show His glory in our actions, to praise His glory in our words, and to sing of His glory and to love Him with all that we have, but we fell and we constantly need to be reminded to praise the LORD!

That’s what we find here in verses 1-2, The Reminder to Praise.

Praise the LORD!

Praise the name of the LORD,

give praise, O servants of the LORD,

who stand in the house of the LORD,

in the courts of the house of our God!

What a shame that we have to be reminded. Plummer said,

“It is a sad fact and affords proof of a very fearful alienation from God that inspired men call upon us so often to do this work, to which we are criminally indisposed. Surely the holy creatures in heaven require no such perpetual call this this work.”

And yet we must be constantly reminded to “praise the LORD.”

Three times in these verses the psalmist says, “Praise the LORD! Praise the name of the LORD, give praise,” the three-time repeated word is the root of the word hallelujah, but it what does that mean. Ultimately, the idea of praising God is to boast in God, to brag on God, to make much of Him. What is the central focus of your boasting?

Audit your life…your Social Media, your Money, your Thought Life…what is the central focus of your boasting? Is it a team? Is it pleasure? Is it politics? Or is it centered in the true reason for praise? Is God the center of your praise? Is He the center of your decisions, your thoughts, your love, your life? That’s the call we find here in our psalm and it will be repeated over and over again throughout the rest of the book…praise the LORD…give praise to Him. We praise Him…we boast of who He is, and we boast of what He has done. We boast of what He is doing, and we boast of what He has promised to do. That’s the reminder…praise the LORD.