Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Adult Sunday School Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/bb/bb19990926.htm

PSALMS: DIARIES OF GODLY OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS
Psalm One Hundred And Fifty - The Boundaries Of Acceptable Praise To God
(Psalm 150:1-6)
  1. Introduction
    1. God has saved the believer that he might be to the praise of the glory of His divine grace, Ephesians 1:5-6. That certainly is a lofty reason to praise God.
    2. In case the believer wonders what praise, and what expression of praise is acceptable to God, the psalmist instructs us on the boundaries of praising God as follows in Psalm 150:1-6:
  2. The Boundaries Of Acceptable Praise To God, Psalm 150:1-6:
    1. Psalm 150:1 tells us where we may acceptably praise Jahweh Elohim:
      1. We may praise Him in the confines of His earthly sanctuary in formal worship, Psalm 150:1a.
      2. We may also praise Him in the vast stretches of lonely space in the heavens, Psalm 150:1b.
    2. Psalm 150:2 tells us what about Jahweh Elohim we should praise:
      1. We should praise Him for His mighty deeds, Psalm 150:2a.
      2. We should praise Him for His surpassing greatness in Being, Psalm 150:2b.
    3. Psalm 150:3-6 describes how we should praise Jahweh Elohim:
      1. We should praise Him with the trumpet that makes a loud sound with the vibrations of the human lip on the mouthpiece as well as praising Him with the softer, stringed instruments of harp and lyre, 150:3.
      2. We should praise Him with the medium of the dance with hand-held percussion tambourines as well as with strings and the mellow, mournful flute, Psalm 150:4.
      3. We should praise Him even with the clash of cymbals, with loud resounding cymbals as well, Ps. 150:5.
      4. In fact, everything that has breath, or that can make a sound in the air in any way, should be useful to praise Jahweh Elohim, Ps. 150:6.
Lesson: We should IDEALLY praise God anywhere we are for everything about God's great in His personality and work with every available means or art form we can conceive!

Application: (1) There is IDEALLY no limit to where, about what and how we can praise the Lord as far as God is innately concerned. (2) However, the errant way mankind has often functioned in worship will of necessity at times limit in PRACTICE ou r praise expressions of God's glory for the sake of testimony: (a) At one point in time, God ordered Moses to make and hold up the bronze serpent so that in faith in GOD the viewer might be healed of the wilderness fiery serpent bite, cf. Numbers 21:4-9. However, in time people began to worship the bronze serpent ITSELF instead of worshipping God, so King Hezekiah had it destroyed to counter such idolatry, cf. 2 Kings 18:1, 4. (b) Then in our day, unlike what used to be the acceptable practice in the Old Testament as described in 2 Chronicles 6:13, WE do NOT raise our hands in prayer as that can signal adherence to the experience-based error of the Charismatic movement. We do not want to become a theological stumblingblock to anyone on such a beli ef, and so we refrain from this practice of worship, 1 Corinthians 6:12a; 8:4, 7. (c) The similar application can be made to what instruments are used or where one goes to worship, for even Paul complained that a believer's eating meat in a pagan temple could be a stumblingstone to the weaker believer, 1 Corinthians 8:10-12. (3) Someday when all that is sinful and immature in the universe is done away, we will be able to enter into the full expression of worship means and methods described in Psalm 150. All the psalmist wants us to know is that true praise of God is INNATELY acceptable in all the various forms and ways and reasons that we can imagine as people!