1 Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. 2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars; He gives to all of them their names. 5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure. 6 The Lord lifts up the humble; He casts the wicked to the ground. 7 Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!
It is often in the so-called little things where we don’t thank God enough for His goodness toward us. A Christian blogger by the name of Christine Hoover wrote on her website recently, “When was the last time you savoured a bite of food? Took a walk in the woods? Listened to a bird’s call? Held a child’s hand? Smelled fresh-cut grass? Stood under falling rain without an umbrella’s covering? Looked someone you love in the eye and really noticed them?
Life isn’t all doom and gloom. Certainly, there is pain. Certainly, mundane tasks require our attention, and, in general, we navigate uneventful days. However, let us have eyes to see and ears to hear. The invisible hand not only paints the invisible artwork of soul redemption but very visible beauty as well. Let us be people who still ourselves so that our senses come alive, for we must think in order to be thankful. And we must be thankful in order to experience joy. The greatest tragedies of our age are our constant motion, our overscheduled lives, and our obsessive attachment to smartphone screens. We tend to believe we’ll be robbed of happiness if we fail to match the world’s pace step for step when, in fact, the pace robs of us of the simplicity that displays beauty, which in turn leads to thanksgiving and, after thanksgiving, joy. Paying attention to the small gifts of everyday life helps us see and savour and, in turn, makes our distracted, numb hearts beat with thankfulness. Thankfulness will lead to joy, because when we’re still, we understand: This is what we’re made for.”
God has blessed us beyond measure. Unfortunately, because of our selfish nature, we tend to focus on the negatives and the bad things in our lives. This means that we far too easily overlook the countless ways that God blesses us, both as individual believers, and as a Church family. Generations have come before us, and until such time as Jesus returns, there will be others who will be blessed in and through the worship, work and witness of Upper Umgeni.
God has given us so much more than we deserve, and He continues to bless us in ways that we simply cannot see or measure in human terms. This is why we would like to take a moment today and thank God for all He is and all He does for us, and in particular for how He has blessed us through this congregation of His people.
Psalm 147 is just one of many psalms which calls us to worship and thanksgiving for the goodness of God, and it begins with the opening verse. “Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.”
When the psalmist writes, “Praise the Lord,” in the original Hebrew text, this is not so much an invitation as it is an instruction or a command. He is expecting the people to worship. What this means is that an attitude of worship and praise is not meant to be optional for Christians. Rather, it should be expected. There are countless reasons for us to worship God, among which is that He has given us so much.
This alone makes Him worthy of our praise.
The psalmist also writes “It is good to sing praises to our God.” I mentioned at our Wednesday Bible study last week that while our faith in God is very personal, it is never meant to be private. This is why as the redeemed we gather each week to praise God, and as Psalm 147 reminds us, this is a good thing. There is nothing quite like Christians, those saved by grace, corporately lifting our hearts in worship to the Lord who redeemed us from sin and has given us eternal life.
God is worthy of our worship and thanksgiving, and as we worship together, it lifts our spirits and draws us closer to Him. Through worship we exalt the name of God, we point others to Christ, while our joy in God is renewed at the same time.
Now of course, there are times when we just don’t feel like praising and thanking God. You don’t need me to remind you that life can be really hard at times, but this is probably an even greater reason to worship God together. It is when we come together for worship that we are able, even if only for a brief time, to lift our hearts above our current circumstances, and be reminded of the goodness of God.
Verses 2 and 3 of Psalm 147 say, “The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
The context of this psalm was just after a long time of captivity and exile for God’s people. They had just returned to Jerusalem, and the temple was being rebuilt. This had been a particularly hard time for God’s chosen people, so the psalmists reminds them that God had not forsaken them. We might not have been enslaved physically, but before coming to Christ for salvation, we were in a worse position, through our enslavement to sin.
As Paul reminds us though in Ephesians 2:4-7, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
When we become aware of what God has rescued us from, and what He has rescued us for, that should spur us to an attitude of thankfulness and praise. We were all bound in sin, slaves to our own depravity, but in His mercy and grace, God, through Christ delivered us from the bondage of sin and purchased our redemption.
As we’ve seen during our series on the Gospel of John, the Bible proclaims that salvation is through Christ, and Christ alone, something which singles Christians out for a lot of criticism and persecution, but instead of feeling guilty or somehow responsible for the hatred of the Gospel, we should be thankful that there is a means of our salvation in the first place.
Salvation is available exclusively through Christ alone, but we rejoice that there are no prerequisites to meet other than faith alone in Him alone. Jesus died for all those who come to Him by faith, which is another reason to rejoice.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” We serve a gracious and compassionate God, who knows where we are on our journey through life. He knows our heartaches and fears, and it is He who brings the comfort, guidance and healing we need. We must never forget that He has provided for our greatest need by sending His own Son to bear our sin and shame on the cross. Why would God stop caring for us now, when He has done this for us?
The psalmist then turns to God’s creation in order to try and understand just something of the awesome power and might of God. Verses 4 and 5: “He determines the number of the stars; He gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure.”
A quick Google search tells us that there are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. (That’s a 2 with 24 zeros…) Of course, that’s nothing more than an educated guess, and we will never have the capacity to actually count them, but verse 4 says, “He determines the number of the stars; He gives to all of them their names.”
Consider for a moment just how fragile our own planet is, and how we depend on the power of God to sustain our lives. The sun is about 150 million kilometres away from Earth. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, a literal fireball of remarkable energy generated by nuclear fusion reactions, producing 10 million megatons of energy per second. If it were a little larger, its gravity would pull us into it. Any smaller and we’d drift off into space. If it were hotter we’d burn up, and any colder would cause us to freeze.
The earth is tilted 23.5 degrees off its axis as it rotates around the sun. This tilt gives us the seasons, but if the tilt were to change by just one degree, the resulting hot and cold extremes on planet Earth would make it impossible for us to survive.
Genesis 1:16 says almost matter-of-factly, “He also made the stars.”
God created each one, placing them exactly where He wanted them, and named every one. We will never fully comprehend His power and His might, but this is the God who is not only worthy of our thanks and praise, but He invites us to do just that, and He delights in our praise.
Even in those primitive times, the psalmist knew that God was mighty beyond measure, possessing infinite wisdom and understanding. He created the infinite complexities of our universe, our world, and all that live in it. His creation was perfect and it works according to His divine purpose. Not only did God create everything, but He remains in control of everything.
The doubters will tell us that the world is spiralling out of control, but God is firmly on His throne, working all things according to His perfect, divine plan. And He has prepared an eternal home for those who turn to Him in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, because He is the God of redemption, as we are reminded in verse 6.
“The Lord lifts up the humble; He casts the wicked to the ground.”
Who are the humble? Those who turn to Him through faith in Christ. Salvation is freely offered to those who seek Him by faith, while judgment awaits those who reject His offer of grace.
In the second phrase of verse 6 comes the stern warning. “He casts the wicked to the ground.” We hear it so often: “How can a God of love send anyone to hell?” But that’s the wrong question. Instead, we should be asking, “How can God save anyone?”
We do not deserve His grace. God has no obligation to save us, nor does He need us. Yet, out of His great love for us, He has provided grace and mercy. Surely there is no greater reason to give Him our praise and thanks?
This is why today, and always, we should respond to the call of Psalm 147:7. “Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!”
Again, this is an imperative - a command to worship. We come before God with our songs and hymns of thanksgiving. He has blessed us more than we could ever deserve, and He is worthy of our praise.
If you belong to Christ, having been saved by His grace, you have every reason to rejoice. Consider all He has done for you in the past, the blessings you are enjoying right now, and the blessings He has promised for the future, both in this life and into eternity.
If you have yet to turn to Jesus Christ for salvation, most of all this will make no real sense, but it is not too late. Consider what God has done for you, even without your realising it. Above all, He has provided for your greatest need: forgiveness of your sins. Because of Christ, you can be reconciled to the Holy God who created You. This is the greatest reason we have to be thankful to Him.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Psalm 147:1-7
The last 7 psalms (and there are many others) are all psalms which call God’s people to praise and thank Him for His goodness and provision for us.
In the original Hebrew text, the call to praise God is more of an instruction than a suggestion.
Why is this so?
Why is it important for us to constantly thank and praise God?
What is the greatest blessing you have received from Him?
What are some of the “unnoticed” blessings you are grateful for, which you may not have been aware of?
Read Psalm 143
As we all know, life can be hard at times, while there are also times when we are doing nothing more than going through the motions in our Christian walk.
What are we to do when we “don’t feel like praising the Lord?”