Hymns: All Creatures of our God and King

Introduction- Pulsars

Have you heard of pulsars?

A pulsar is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation.

These beams sweep across the sky as the pulsar rotates, and then these beams sweep past Earth, we observe them as regular pulses of radiation, most commonly radio waves or X-Rays.

Now, to be clear, space is a vacuum, so scientists had to do a little bit of work on this.

Because pulsars rotate, that means that they are emitting a frequency.

So scientists started to take these frequencies, and figure out what kind of sound the Pulsars are making.

One- Simple Enough.

Two- Sped up

Three- Percussion section

Four- Pitch

Five- Pitch again

As St. Francis said in this hymn, ye lights of evening find your voice.

What I love about that is that these things are always rotating, always spinning.

And so the stars themselves are always singing.

Sometimes, it’s good just to take hold of wonder.

Psalm 148

What do we mean by praise?

The word in Hebrew that the psalmist uses over and over again is the word Hillel.

It’s the root behind our word Hallelujah.

It means…praise!

But! The dictionary takes it to a deeper place all on its own.

It originally means “be boastful.”

Be proud!

A few weekends ago, the boys played a tournament in Canada.

And in the first round of the playoffs, they played Quebec.

That Quebec.

You know, the place where they basically invented hockey.

And our Barbarians, extremely short-handed, beat Quebec in overtime.

I was and am INCREDIBLY proud of my boys.

You better believe that I have been boasting about them ever since we got home.

I have seen what they did, what they gave of themselves, and I’m praising them.

This Psalm is all about praising God.

When we figure out that God made singing stars, we praise.

When we figure out that God put these beautiful creatures for us to stare at in wonder, we praise.

When those moments where we’re considering our place in all of this, those moments we feel extremely small, we praise.

And praise is central to who we are as Christians.

It should be and is in our DNA.

Who can praise?

Angels and host

There is something about the very angelic beings that are all about praise.

These angels have had a front row seat to all of this.

They were there when God came up with the idea for singing stars.

They were there when God came up with forests to hike through.

They were there when God crafted that deep blue color of the oceans.

And they were there, most importantly, when God created the plan of our salvation, when God knew how he would redeem us and bring us back to him.

They have lots of reasons to be boasting about what God has done.

Sun, moon, shining stars-

It’s one thing to appreciate that God has made the singing stars above us.

But it’s another thing to realize that those stars are themselves, according to our psalmist, singing their own praise to God.

That beautiful sunrise that we see when we’re driving home from work is displaying it’s own boast in God’s goodness.

The moon on a cloudless night is showing us who God is and serves as a marker of God’s love over us. It’s a vehicle for praise.

Ye lights of evening find your voice!

Natural elements like water.

I don’t know about you, but I have come to realize that the sound of running water is really soothing.

The other night I was meeting a friend for a drink and to catch up, and I decided that I’d take my bike.

I had a bit of time, so I decided to take the long way around, and go through the woods.

And even though I was a little bit tight for time, I went over this bridge, and I had to stop for a second.

There’s something about the sound of that running water that calms me down.

Do you think it could be that the running water itself is whispering God’s praise over us?

Do you think that calmness that such a scene can provide for us is actually God’s reminder that we’re ok?

Do you think that it’s pointing us back to God so that we can drink deeply of God’s calmness and serenity?

I do.

And those waters above the heavens while we’re at it:

Don’t you love sitting on the porch during a good rainstorm?

Can’t it have that moment where it reminds you of the bigness of God?

Don’t storms like that show God’s glory, and in that way boast in praise toward God.

Snow and storm- Even the things we don’t like are praising God!

Look, I’ve made my case and complaint for a long long time, but I despise snow.

I don’t like driving in it.

I don’t like walking in it.

I don’t like when it turns all grey and slushy.

Don’t like it.

Especially when I’m driving in it, actually snow scares me quite a bit.

And yet…even the things in nature that frighten us can be pointing us back to God’s praise.

Everything in Australia is trying to kill you!

Snakes

Spiders

Plant life.

It’s all super deadly.

And yet, it’s there to proclaim the goodness of God.

Why do we praise?

It’s enough to praise just because we were created!

I was on a ride with someone a while back who said something that’s stuck with me.

She said “I like this day! I’ve never seen this one before!”

No matter what’s going on, this day is brand new.

You’ve never seen this one before.

It’s full of untold possibility, unbelievable potential, and amazing moments of wonder.

Just the fact that we’re here, just the face that God saw fit to create everything in the universe, and decided that the universe needed one of you too, is such a wondrous and beautiful gift.

That alone is enough to praise, isn’t it?

You get to be here!

You get to see this day, and we’ve never seen this one before!

You get to fill up those longs with air, over and over and over again.

You are here!

God made sure of it!

What an opportunity for praise!

A monument

There’s a line in this psalm that I got hung up on in verse 14:

Psalm 148:14 “He has raised up a horn for his people,

What’s that all about?

As is sometimes super helpful, Eugene Peterson’s Message Paraphrase helps us get at the heart of what the Hebrew language was trying to tell us.

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Psalm 148

Let them praise the name of GOD—

it’s the only Name worth praising.

His radiance exceeds anything in earth and sky;

he’s built a monument—his very own people!

God’s people, you and me, we are a monument to God!

And worth mentioning, people is plural here, so it’s not that God has filled the world with a 10 billion monuments.

We, the people of God, the community of the church, we are a monument to God’s goodness.

We are a monument of God’s praise.

What is it exactly that monuments do?

Monuments remember

I’ve been working on these two papers for the doctor of ministry program.

And one of them is actually a theological history paper, and so I’m studying some of the sermons of one of our first pastors here at Beulah, James Graham.

We here at Beulah have done an incredible job of preserving our history.

We have done an incredible job of remembering.

And so as I’ve been doing all this research and writing, the other day I went out to the cemetery to just check out where he’s been laid to rest.

There’s a monument here to help us remember.

Help us remember where God has been in our past.

Help us remember who God has used to speak the gospel over us as a congregation.

Help us remember how God has gotten us here.

And help us to remember that God is going to be with us in our future.

The psalmist says we do that for God.

We remember the stories of what God has done for us so far.

We remember the ways God has been working to redeem us.

We remember the times that Jesus has shown us mercy and grace and forgiveness.

We remember all of God’s goodness over us.

Monuments tell a story

One of the most powerful moments for me was when I got to visit the World War II memorial.

I walked around, and saw as each state in the union was represented there.

And even though I was looking for Pa, I was kind of struck by the story this monument was telling.

It was telling us that no one state went to war against Germany, we all did.

It was telling us that Republicans weren’t the only ones who were attacked at Pearl Harbor, we all were.

It was telling us that Democrats didn’t eradicate the Nazi’s. We all did.

One nation together.

First of all, that may or may not be a relevant story for us to hold on to these days…

But secondly, just a simple monument was able to tell that story.

Just by walking around, there’s a narrative that comes forth.

And so it is with us.

We are here to tell the story of God.

We are here to proclaim the salvation of Jesus Christ.

We are here to give voice to god’s redemptive work over the creation.

We are here to lay out a story that may or may not work against the dominant stories of our cultures.

We are here to tell a good story, complete with conflict and twists and turns and ups and downs.

Monuments draw people in.

Another of the great monuments down in Washington is the MLK Memorial.

This is a monument that you’re meant to walk through, there’s lots to take in and observe about it.

But as I was walking past this big towering monument, it kind of captivated me for lack of better words.

I drew me in, it made me want to get closer, it made me want to learn more about this man and what he had done.

This is what the church should be too.

Too often in our world today, whether because we’ve thrown in our lot with politicians, or we’re too judgmental, or we just simply forgot to be kind, the church has been more repellant than attractive.

We too often scare people away rather than draw them in.

If we’re to be a monument of praise to God, then we should draw people in.

People should be curious about what kind of God we’re memorializing.

People should be attracted to the way we display God’s grace.

People should be interested in the kind of life we’re living, simply because we’re living it.

Perhaps, this is a good point for one of St. Francis’ other great lines:

Preach the Gospel Always, if necessary use words.

Our lives should be a monument to the Gospel of Christ.

We should be living our praise every day.

We should be a monument that draws people in, to tell the story of who God is and what God has done for us.

What should our praise look like?

Enjoying what God has created for us.

Because life is what it is during the summer with nine year old twins, my best opportunity to get any kind of exercise in comes at 5:00 AM.

And let’s just call it what it is, that’s gross!

But!

Just about every morning for the past two weeks, including this morning, I get up at 5.

Thanks to the wonders of technology the coffee maker was set up the night before and the timer has brewed me a perfect cup already.

I grab that mug and I head outside to either ride the bike, or take a walk through my neighborhood.

And it’s in those quiet moments, even just walking around my neighborhood, that I get to enjoy what God has made.

In the early morning I can hear birds chirping that I don’t usually get to hear during the day.

On Wednesday this week I came across a mother deer and her fawn, and (like Francis) I had a lovely chat with them as I walked past.

On Thursday I ran in to the Dad of that family, and had a slightly more nervous conversation with him and his big horns.

I’ve seen Rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks.

Luckily I haven’t yet seen a skunk.

And, at 5 AM I might add, I’ve seen a canopy of stars, including the ones that are singing over us.

And I’ve loved every second of it!

God gave us all of this so that we could boast in what he’s done.

Listen hard for their praise too!

The stars are singing!

The birds are chirping!

The rivers are babbling!

The deer are running!

And they’re all doing it to say the same thing.

Hallelujah! Halleujah! Hallelujah!

Praise! Praise! Praise!

Tune in for that song this week!

It turns out it’s a pretty easy one to get stuck in your head.

Making “thank you” a habit.

If praise is about saying thank you to God, then we ought to make the phrase “thank you” a regular habit, don’t you think?

It’s a good thing to praise God in here. It’s an even better thing to thank God for the people in your life.

It’s a good thing to praise God in here. It’s an even better thing to be grateful for all that you have.

It’s a good thing to praise God in here. It’s an even better thing to say thank you to the people in your life, even for the little things no one notices.

It’s a good thing to praise God in here. It’s an even better thing to practice thank you so much that you don’t have time for bitterness or anger.

This is something we can practice. It’s something we can get good at.

So thank someone this week, even if it’s for something silly!

Find your voice monuments!

We are the monument to God’s praise.

So let’s remember all the good things God has done in our lives, and let’s take the time to remind each other often.

Let’s tell the story of who God is, and what God has done for us. His glory is above heaven and earth! Let everyone know!

And may we, just by our lives, just by the way we exist in this life of praise, draw people in to the story of God’s redemptive work in the world.

The lights of evening? They’ve found their voice. May we find ours!