This is an updated version of a sermon I preached way back when. It was new to HopeWhangarei and had some changes as i reread and wrestled with Psalm 150 .
here is an audio track of the message
here is the script...
We have been looking
at the Psalms for the past three months here at Hope Whangarei, at all three
sites in all four services, we’ve only just scratched the surface, we’ve only
done about twenty of them. The series was called Psalms in the key of life: Songs of Hope amidst real life… 
Today we are finishing off that series in an
appropriate way by looking at how the Psalms themselves finish, by looking at
Psalm 150. The last of the Psalms… we end at the end…The last five psalms in
the book 146-150 form a doxology and conclusion to the whole collection, they
are a series of psalms that start and finish with hallelujah, that call people
to praise the Lord… Praise the Lord for creation, his sovereignty, providence
and his salvation… five calls to praise the Lord at the end of five books,
which started in Psalm 1 with a call to live life seeing the torah, God’s word,
as the only reliable water source, as living
water. And maybe you’d expect that this great book of prayers and songs would
finish with some deeply profound statement about God but ‘To Attempt to say
something final about God would inevitably be anticlimactic’. Psalm 150 rather
continues to summons and call us to worship. The book finishes with a call to
worship… It builds into a crescendo of invites , like wave after wave crashing
on the shore, praise him praise him praise him and in that crescendo is an open
invitation for all to come and hallelujah… for all to come and live a life of
praise to God.
In the end the Psalms
have to be open ended because how can we put a full stop to the worship and
praise of God. To do justice to the mighty acts of God and his surpassing
greatness, is a never ending call on our lives, a never ending task
a never ending joy. It’s going to take all of us, all we’ve got and all of
time, in fact all of eternity. Psalm 150 acts as an open door for us
to that ongoing life task and privilege of Praising God.… Bible commentator
James Mays, not to be confused with James May of top gear fame puts it like this “The book that began
with a commendation of Torah of the LORD as the way of life ends here with an
invitation to praise of the LORD as the use of that life.”
Psalm 150 opens up
that life of worship for us by providing some answers to some open ended
questions. Open ended questions are those designed to get conversations going …
the Psalm opens us up to the where, why, how, who and when of praising God.
Where should we praise
God?…verse 1 invites us to see that we should praise God in his sanctuary… it
invites us to praise God in the highest heaven. For the Jews the place to
worship God was the temple in Jerusalem. They saw the temple as the place
where God dwelt with his people. But they were also aware that God was so much
greater than that and the temple really was just a glimpse into the reality
that God was enthroned in heaven… beyond the boundary of the physical world.
Perhaps the connection between those two are best seen in Isaiah’s call to
ministry in Isaiah chapter six where he is in the temple and suddenly it is as
if the curtains between Heaven and Earth are pulled aside he finds himself in
the throne room of God. But while for the Jews the temple was the focal point
of praise, a life of praise invites us to worship and give thanks to God in all
of life in the whole of creation. To the theological question of where should
we worship God that the women at the well asked Jesus his response was that
there was coming a time when would worship God in truth and in spirit. At the
crucifixion the curtain in the temple is torn a way of saying that God no
longer simply is contained there but will dwell with humanity, through the
reconciliation in Jesus death and resurrection, through indwelling us by the
Holy Spirit.
There is a move today to place gathering for
worship low on the list of priorities, to simply say I can do it on my own, it’s
all about my alone time with God. But Psalm 150 tells us that praise is
polyphonic, symphonic and it starts in gathering together. As 1st Peter
says we are the living stones being built into the temple of God. There is
something that reflects the worship of heaven as we gather together to worship
God, and we have the assurance that God is in our midst.
Verse two gives us the
why we should praise God? it gathers up all the reasons that have gone
before in the psalms, God’s creation, God’s promises to Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, God’s bringing his people out of Egypt, settling them in the
promised land, his provision, his goodness to individual and to the community,
his answers to prayer, his presence in times of lament and trouble, individual
and corporate, his keeping his word even when it meant taking them into exile
and his bring them back from exile and re-establishing them in the land… Psalm
150 sums that all up in “his saving acts of power”. But it does not stop there
it leaves the door open for that continuing story, the coming of Jesus Christ,
his life death and resurrection, the sending of the Holy Spirit, how the gospel
has been passed on and worked out in the lives of individuals and communities,
amidst the churn and blur of history, our stories joining the story, our voices
joining the choir, our joys and our laments, as we have come to know and
experience God’s saving acts of power. All those great acts of power,
reflecting the very character and greatness of God, the surpassing greatness of
God shown in his love and grace.
It is an open ended
invitation to praise because it is not just about God’s past dealing with
humanity, The final Psalms invite us to look forward to the coming of the
kingdom of God a time when God’s with reign and set things right. Many of the
early psalms are laments, wrestling with the brokenness of people and the
world, but as we progress through the psalms there is more an emphasis on songs
of praise. Not that we forget the pain and suffering in the world but to praise
God is a prophetic activity it is to proclaim God’s sovereign rule, God’s
kingdom until it comes in its fullness. We live in the tension between the
already, that the kingdom of God has been started in Jesus life death and
resurrection and we share in the life through Christ, and the not yet, that we
wait a future fulfilment. To Praise God is to proclaim his ultimate victory.
What it does is allow us to then see and work with God at what that might look
like as we live out our life of praise in our everyday life, praying ‘thy
kingdom come.’
Then in verse 3-5 we
have a list of how we are to worship the LORD. This is a song for human singers
but the focus is on what accompanies those voices. Some people have tried to
use this passage to quantify what is in and what is out when it comes to worshiping God. But we need to realise that in these verses is a comprehensive
list of musical instruments, the whole orchestra is here. In the ancient near
east you only had stringed instruments, wind instruments and percussion. The
list is wider now and maybe more wired than stringed but the call is still
open, all should praise the LORD.
One of the saddest
chapters in the modern church is what is called the worship wars, churches
split and divide about what is appropriate music for worship, and Psalm 150’s
answer to that is simple, bring it all, bring it on. When I was preparing this
message I went looking for musical expressions of Psalm 150.. I googled it and
I was amazed at the depth and variety of hits I got. The Hits just kept
coming… Gregorian chants by Romanian orthodox monks, the
Episcopalian choir from New York, various hymns, the soft rock of Hillsong and
Vineyard churches, soulful black gospel choirs, rocky upbeat bands, even a Hip
Hop version complete with amazing choreography. Which just captured the
joyousness of worshipping God with timbre and dance.
But this is not a
Cacophony of competing sounds; each instrument plays a part in the worship of
God. This is an open ended summons but it is both structured to give it
solemnity and gravitas and also bubbling with joy and
spontaneity. The trumpet that is mentioned in verse three is a Ram’s
horn, used to summons people to worship. The lyre and harp were instrument used
by the Levites and professional musicians to accompany professional choirs. The
tumbrel and dance and strings and pipe are the instruments of the congregation
in response to that. There is place for both the formal and informal, outstanding
professional musicianship and out of tune amateur exuberance, the great performance
pieces and the sing-a-longs. The happy clappy tap your feet move about and the
soaring stilling reflective artistry. And the two lines about the cymbals is
not that percussion takes precedence that it is all with a driving beat.
Cymbals were used in two ways in worship. To let people know that they needed
to listen this next part was important, kind of like the gong at a dinner party
or polite clinking of glasses to get everyone’s attention. So they could hear
what’s coming next, in this case the word of God. But also to let people know
when it was time to respond with a festive shout, which the second cymbal does
in the psalm coming right before the call for everything that has breath to
praise the Lord.
There are echoes in
the structure of psalm 150 of our reformed tradition, of gathering confessing
and worshipping to prepare us to hear the word, then hearing the word read and
preached, then responding to the word with praise and mission. My hope is that
within that here in our morning service that in our worship we would develop
what is called a blended worship style, where we can take the best of our
traditions, that great treasure Trobe of ritual and meaning and depth, and the
best of the new and the now and together use it to Hallelujah Praise the Lord,
opening us up to the presence of God as the Spirit speaks through his word read
and preached…
Everything that has
breath leads nicely into looking at the who of worship? We may
simply see instruments here and I’ve often heard this called the musicians
psalm. But that is not the case, behind the instruments it is a summons to all
people to come and worship. The ram’s horn was blown by the priests they are to
come and to lead and direct, the lyre and harp were used by the Levites, so yes
the musicians were called to come and worship. But the other instruments are
the everyday instruments of the people, all of us are called to come and join
our joy and creativity in worship. The timbrel and dance were used
by women in festivals and times of celebration. So it is inclusive of men and
women to bring who we are to add to the worship. Music and Dance are also an
expression of culture and it is an invitation to bring that as well to
worship. In Thailand the church has flourished away from western
influences in many of the tribal areas because the main theologians and bible
teachers in those areas are choreographers who use traditional dance to teach
and preach. The Tokelauan’s similarly have dances that tell bible stories, it’s
how they communicate. Sadly they won’t use them in church because the western
missionaries said it wasn’t appropriate to dance in church. In the end it is an
invitation to all people all that has breath to come and join us in praising
the God who they have come to know... It's a missional call.
It goes beyond that
the whole of creation is called to come together and to acknowledge and praise
its creator.
Finally it opens up
the question of the when of a life of worship?
Maybe for some of us
that might be a closed question and the answer is 9:30am on a Sunday morning,
and it might be a bit longer than an hour if Howard goes on. That’s great
because the psalm is in the context of gathered public worship. However I is
also placed at the end of the book, it is as I said an open door into a life
lived in praise to the LORD.
May you accept and
respond to this open invitation to a life of worship, in song, in word in deed,
may you step through the open door of psalm 150.
My you continue to
affirm the importance of gathering and worshiping together, structuring worship
into our busy lives, but may you also find praising God something that is
reflected in everything you do.
May you be
attentive to the rams horn, above the blaring traffic horns, inviting you to
see and to know and to acknowledge God’s saving acts and his surprising
greatness as you experience them. Now I happened to be day dreaming at the
lights the other day and I needed a horn blast from the car behind me to wake
me up to the fact that the lights had changed. I did resist returning the
traditional hand signal… but we often need the horn blast to wake us up to
seeing God’s great saving acts and surpassing goodness. write down somewhere
five things you want to praise God for.
May you find your feet
dancing in tune to the praise of God as you delight in God’s word and are aware
of god guiding your steps in times of lament or joy, as you weave your way
through daily life.
May you hear the
cymbals calling you to be quite this is important and to listen as God speaks.
That you may hear the cymbals of the spirit call you to festive shout, or at
least to voice God’s goodness to those around you.
May find your life
being a psalm a song to God, as Adrian Aldrich says in lifestyle evangelism,
our words are the gospel and our lives and love are the wonderful tune that
makes it catchy.
May your song be an
open ended invitation for everything that has breath to come know and praise
the Lord.
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