Living the Hallelujah Life

Living the Hallelujah Life | Psalm 146

Key Verse: Psalm 146:5-6 (ESV) - “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the Maker of Heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them - the Lord, who remains faithful forever.”

READ: Psalm 146:1–10 (ESV)

1. Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!

2. I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

3. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

4. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.

5. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,

6. who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever;

7. who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;

8. the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.

9. The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

10. The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD!

INTRODUCTION

The Westminster Catechism begins with the question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” This is what the Psalms as a whole teach us to do. From Psalm 1 to the Psalm 150, we are instructed and shown how to live the Hallelujah life. Psalm 146-150 are known as the Hallel Psalms, the praise Psalms. Each of these 5 Psalms begin and end with the Hebrew word “Hallelujah”, or Praise the Lord as it is translated into English. It is as if to remind the reader of the Psalms that the Lord alone is worthy of constant and complete praise. Whether we find ourselves in grief and sorrow or joy and celebration, the Lord is worthy of praise. One thing that the book of Psalms teaches us is that our lives are wrought with ups and downs, difficulties, challenges, sin, joy, and happiness. But in the midst of all of life’s circumstances every moment should resolve to the praise of the Lord for the believer and the believing community. For the people of God, our lives should be Hallelujah lives.

In this series in the Psalms, we have been looking at how the Psalms point us to finding our ultimate peace in Christ…finding our rest in him… looking to Christ in the midst of chaos and a world that seems to be spinning out of control. In Psalm 146, we are reminded, urged, encouraged to place our trust ultimately in Christ. The lack of peace in our lives comes from misplaced trust. We long to find someone who is trustworthy, whether it be an employer or employee, friends, a husband or wife, a pastor, a teacher, a president, a government, a political system. We long to trust people. We long for someone who will come to our rescue, someone in whom our hopes will be fulfilled and our needs will be met. But the Psalms, and scripture as a whole, remind us that placing our hope in fallen and frail humans leads to disappointment and ruin. Jesus Christ, the Lord and eternal King, is the only one who can truly fulfill our needs. He alone is the only one worthy of our hope and complete trust, because [Proposition] this God in whom we hope and who is our help was, is, and always will be faithful.

Analytical Question: How does this Psalm encourage us to respond to the God who is faithful forever? How are we to live in response to the God in whom we hope and who is our help? How do we experience this Hallelujah life?

We do this first by…

1. Surrendered Living – Psalm 146:1-2

The Psalmist begins with the corporate call to “Praise the Lord”. The Hebrew word is Hallelujah. It is a call to the people of God to come and bring your praise. Join together in corporate boasting of the greatness of the Lord and speak of his great works that he has done. Hallelujah is a call to awaken from our slumber. Worship of the Lord is at hand. And worship takes work, a spiritual discipline that has to be developed. It is not for the apathetic. It is not for the amusement or entertainment of the worshippers. It is discovering truth and responding to the Lord in active and engaged praise of him.

The act of praising is an act of faith. It is a declaration of what is true and right and worthy of admiration. It is hard to truly praise what you do not believe in, what you cannot trust. You can only praise someone who is worthy of praise. You can only boast about someone who is worthy of being boasted about. To praise someone, to boast about them, is an act of trust and confidence. We boast about the things that we believe to be true. We praise the things that we deem worthy of admiration and attention. Something worth our attention, worth our admiration, must be something in which we believe we can trust. And the psalmist is claiming that person, that being, is the Lord. The Lord is worthy of trust. The Lord is worthy of admiration. He is worthy of our boasting.

Psalm 100:4-5, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” Why is he worthy? Because he has proven to be trustworthy, faithful, and worthy of our worship. Let’s praise the Lord together. Let’s proclaim the greatness of the Lord and boast of his great works.

Immediately after the writer calls for corporate praise, he turns inward and invites himself to join in with the words, “Praise the Lord, O my Soul!” The psalmist is not merely requesting everyone else to praise the Lord. He is urging himself to commit to this praise as well. It is as if he knows his own need to surrender his life to praise the Lord. It is one thing to call others to praise the Lord and not take those words to heart. It is one thing to speak well of the Lord, calling others to fix their gaze upon him, yet in your own heart you are distant, complacent, apathetic. The psalmist realizes his own need to bring forth praise, because he knows that participation in corporate worship begins in private and personal surrender. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to join in the praise of the Lord. We need to invite ourselves to praise the Lord for the great and awesome God that he is and for the great and awesome works that he has done. Praise him for how we have personally experienced the help of the Lord in our lives. Praise begins from the center of our being. Praise comes from a soul surrendered to the Lord.

In many ways truly being able to sing Hallelujah in life is an act of daily surrender. Which is what we see the Psalmist describing and declaring here. The Psalmist writes, “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.” As long as I have breath, as long as I have the breath that You, My Lord and My God, have given me, I will use that breathe to sing Hallelujah. I will use that breath to boast of your greatness and goodness. Every breath will be given over to praising the life-giving God for as long as I exist. Do you see the surrender? In order to make this declaration, this commitment, one must be surrendered. It takes surrendering one’s entire being to the Lord to have the song of one’s life be to the praise of the Lord.

ILLUSTRATION: About 15 years ago, Casting Crowns released a song entitled Lifesong. The idea behind the song is that no matter what you do, the praise of the Lord is the reason that you do it. Whether vocally expressing it, or simply from the heart motivated to serve and boast in the Lord, you commit to sing the praise of the Lord with your life, your entire being. It encourages believers to commit their lives to lifelong praise of the Lord. It begins with surrendering your life and asking for the Lord’s help to make good on your promise. And as the chorus of the song encourages us, we daily make the request, “Lord, let my lifesong sing to you.”

There is nothing more telling to a person’s commitment and where their hope truly lies than how one responds in those moments of desperation and uncertainty. A true commitment to lifelong praise can only happen when we turn our attention off of ourselves and every earthly thing that we have put our hope in and place it in the One who alone is worthy of complete trust.

[Transition] Living the Hallelujah life begins with surrendered living, and living the Hallelujah life means that we must be aware of where our trust lies. We must be aware of where we have placed our trust.

2. Life Wasted - v. 3-4

After the Psalmist invites us and encourages us to praise the Lord with all our being for as long as we exist, he warns us not to waste our trust. Not to waste our life placing in our trust in the wrong place. He warns us, “Put not your trust in princes”, in human leaders. Human leaders do not deserve and should not receive the praise reserved for the Lord our God. The Psalmist is not saying that honor and respect should not be given to these leaders. We know from other passages that God has placed these rulers and authorities over us. God in his divine wisdom has ordained that these human leaders would be in positions of power and authority. In 1 Peter 2:17, we are told to “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” In 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Paul encouraged Timothy to instruct the people under his care with these words, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” We give honor and we pray for these human leaders because “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1). So we pray that God would use them for his divine purposes. And that they will submit their lives to the authority of God and execute their role as leaders in accordance with the will of God.

But back to the warning. The psalmist warns us not to put our trust in human leaders. Our tendency as human beings is to find and devote our attention to people who we believe will pull through for us. Those who will fight on our behalf, those who promise good for us and will make good on their promises, and those we believe have our best interest in mind. People who have the power to make things happen for us. The Psalmist here encourages us not to waste our life trusting in princes, nobles, leaders, individuals of influence. Don’t waste your life placing your allegiance and loyalty in princes. Why does the Psalmist give this warning?

Because they are men just like you and I. They are mortal. They are frail and weak, marred by sin, just like you and I. In them, just like you and I, “there is no salvation”. Meaning they don’t have the power to save. They cannot bring about true and lasting deliverance. Mankind is limited.

“When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” The Hebrew word for breath here is Ruah. It means breath, spirit or life and to have ruah is to have life. When his breath departs man returns to the earth. In the Hebrew, this is a play on words. Man is the word Adam and earth is adamah. The Psalmist directs our attention to the curse of Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is the curse of man. After the our bodies are abandoned, we are left to return to our place of origin, the dust or the ground. We return to our condition before the breath of God inhabited our being.

Man is frail and weak. He cannot hold his breath forever. The Psalmist here is declaring that man doesn’t have power over his own life. At the appointed time for his death to come and he exhales his final breath, he has no power to inhale again, he has no ability to get his breath back. How frail and powerless is man! The Lord knows that we are dependent creatures. We need and are dependent on external substances for life. The one who has power over our lives is the Lord God, the creator of all things. He has complete control and sovereignty over the lives of all his creatures as is indicated in Psalm 104:29, “When you hide your face, they [the creatures who rely upon your provision] are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.”

On that very day his plans perish. The thoughts and goals, the plans and purposes of a man cease to exist. They perish with him. Nobody can carry out another man’s plans with the same thoughts, goals, passions and purposes. Try as they may. This is brutal reality of all of our hopes and dreams. Everything that we long to accomplish, hope to gain for ourselves, strive for in our own strength for our own glory, ends in failure. The faith that we put into others to accomplish for us has the same result. All of human efforts has no lasting significance.

If you cannot ultimately trust man, who can we trust? Human beings are weak and powerless, but the Lord is capable and worthy of trust.

[Transition] When we are living lives surrendered to the Lord, surrendered to living in praise of the Lord, and aware of where not to place our trust, we can live confidently experiencing the blessing of the Lord.

3. Confident Living - v. 5-7

“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God”

Blessed are all those who look to the Lord for help, and who place their hope in Him. What does it mean to be blessed? It means to be happy, to be in a state of happiness. Happy are those who have placed their confidence in the Lord. Happy are those who seek the Lord and find in Him their joy and strength. Blessing is receiving divine favor. It is God’s grace experienced in your life. Divine favor is bestowed upon all those who turn to the Lord, who reject sin, who meditate on the Law of God, the word of God.

Psalm 1:1-2, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Psalm 32:1, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

Psalm 128:1, “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.”

Those who experience the blessing of God, the outpouring of divine favor, of grace, are all those who trust in the Lord. In all of these references there is a distinction between the way of receiving blessing, dwelling in happiness, and the way that leads away from divine favor/blessing. Those who walk in the way of the Lord, who delight in his word, all those who fear the Lord, and know and experience the forgiveness of sin are those who are blessed. All others are wicked, walking in the way of wickedness and on their way to ruin and destruction.

How happy are those who know the Lord and trust in Him for deliverance. How happy are those who have sought refuge in him and have experienced salvation from sin and destruction.

Because of this blessing, we have confidence. We can have confidence in living because our help, the one who comes to our aid, is the God of Jacob. He is the covenant keeping God. The God in whom we hope and who is our help is the God who never lies (Titus 1:2). Our God who is our help was, is, and always will be faithful. We have his word on it and he will not disappoint. He is capable of helping those in need. He is powerful and able to save and release the prisoners and provide relief for the oppressed. Unlike mortal man in whom there is no salvation.

Why does placing our hope in the Lord, and looking to him for help, give us confidence?

1) Because we know that He is capable. The same Lord who is our help and hope, is the creator of heaven and earth. The same God who spoke and the world came into existence is the same God who comes to our aid in time of affliction, in time of need. We have confidence in our help because the power that brought all things into existence gives aid to his people. Nothing is outside of his capacity to create, therefore no need, no affliction, and no thing is outside of his capacity to fulfill his purposes. The resources of the Lord are infinite.

2) He is trustworthy. He keeps faith. One translation says he remains faithful forever. The KJV says, “He keeps truth for ever”. Again, He cannot lie. How many human leaders can you say that about? How many people do you have in your life that you can say, “they cannot lie, they keep truth for ever? How many people can say that about you? The Lord is completely trustworthy always and forever. He is the keeper of truth who can be depended upon to lead you in the truth, keep you in the truth, and to protect you by the truth. This is exactly what faith is and requires. Faith is believing in that which can be believed as truth. And faith requires us to not believe that which is not true or cannot be believed as truth.

Our hope is in the Lord keeps faith forever. He is faithful to those whom he has saved. He is always actively faithful and preserving his creation and especially those whom he has sanctified.

3) He works on behalf of those who are under unjust affliction. “who executes justice for the oppressed.” He will bring about what is right and just. He will set things right according to his righteousness, his righteous standard will be upheld.

4) He provides nourishment. “who gives food to the hungry.” God provides the food needed for spiritual flourishing. Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” He will satisfy the needs of the impoverished, those who are spiritually hungry. In Mark 6, we see the fulfillment of these words in Jesus in the feeding of the five thousand. The meeting of the physical need with five loaves and 2 fish reveals the powerful spiritual truth that all of our spiritual needs are met in him in abundance. Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Jesus is the one in whom there is complete and total satisfaction. He is the one that satisfies our spiritual longings. All those who come to him will never hunger. All those who desire to know God will be satisfied. Jesus is the one sent by God the Father to sustain His people with eternal life. John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Blessed are those who place their hope in the Lord, in Jesus Christ. Blessed are those who look forward in great expectation of the final state of glory. This is the hope of our existence. Our hope is not merely that we will be delivered in this life only. It is awaiting the judgement day of the Lord. The day that the Lord will come to reign and vindicate his people. Our hope is an eternal expectation. Our hope is that on the day of the Lord’s judgment we will be vindicated. And we await the day when the Lord will come and reign in power and majesty and all things will be set right. We make the plea just like the Psalmist in Psalm 119:116, “Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope!”

We have confidence now, because our hope is the Lord. The Lord is our hope. The Lord who is trustworthy is the one in whom our expectations are centered, and he will uphold us according to his promise. This promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:3-5, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” We have confidence in living every moment in Hallelujah living, because we have help in our present need and hope for the future.

[Transition] Through a life surrendered, to being aware of where you place your trust, to the confidence you have in the Lord, you become more aware of the grace of God that is sufficient to meet your every need. And you become more and more aware that God’s grace will sustain your life, as we are shown in verse 8 & 9.

4. Life Sustained v.8-9

These verses reveal to us the unceasing activity of the Lord our God whom we worship. God in his grace and mercy, in his kindness and goodness, enters into the sphere of man’s activity and the things that affect man. He works for the righteous and uses each situation as a means to sanctify us and proclaim his greatness.

“The Lord sets the prisoners free, The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.” I believe that the best way to interpret these verses is to interpret them spiritually. Setting the prisoner free is to grant freedom to those who are in confinement, those deprived of freedom, those bound in affliction. It is not a difficult task for us to make the connection to our spiritual state, because apart from Christ we are all under the bondage of sin and death. Likewise, opening the eyes is also of spiritual significance. Nowhere in the OT do we have an example of those physically blind receiving sight. Yet, physical blindness was often used as an illustration for our spiritual condition, the inability to recognize the truth.

These words are fulfilled in Jesus in Luke 4. From the Scroll of Isaiah, Jesus stood and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:18-21).” It is only through Jesus Christ, in the NT, that we are given examples of miraculous healing of the blind. In Matthew 9:27-30, Jesus heals two blind men. And in John 9, after the blind man was healed and he was being questioned by the Pharisees and teachers of the law, he made this declaration about Jesus, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing (Jn 9:30–33).”

Jesus revealed the truth. He opens the eyes of the blind. He releases those in spiritual bondage. He has broken every chain, there is salvation in his name!

“The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;” All those who’s load is heavy. All those who are buried under the weight of distress. All those who are broken hearted, the Lord hears you and knows you. All those who humbly come before the Lord, the Lord will exalt you. As 1 Peter 5:6-7 exhorts us, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” The Lord cares for you, and the Lord will bring encouragement. He will raise you up, strengthen you, and cause you to stand again. He is faithful.

“the Lord loves the righteous”. The covenant making and keeping God loves the righteous. What does it mean to be righteous? It means to conform to the standard of God’s nature. It means to be in the right and to be devout, to act in accordance with the requirements of God. Why is God our standard of righteousness? Because he is faithful forever. He doesn’t change. He is not persuaded to act in a manner contradictory to his nature and character. Psalm 11:7, “For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.”

The Lord loves the righteous. But we have a problem. We know that we are sinners, poor and needy. We are helpless. We cannot be trusted. Our sin leads us away from God, and hinders us from being able to draw near to God. How can God love us, when we are not righteous? How can God love us, when we do not measure up to the standard of God’s nature?

Romans 3:10, “None is righteous, no, not one.” But thanks be to God, for we have a righteousness that is from God. A righteousness from God received through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe (Romans 3:22). “We are justified by grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). “And because of him [because of God, because of his grace] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).

Christ is our righteousness. Through his death and resurrection we become united to him by faith. Through faith in Jesus, we are called righteous, and experience the love of God. And we boast in the Lord. We lift our lives in praise proclaiming his goodness and boasting in his great works.

“The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” The Lord pays special attention to those who are displaced and alone or abandoned. Israel was given specific instructions to deal with those who were strangers and foreigners with justice and benevolence. They were instructed to care for those who were in desperate need of help and protection. God’s heart is for them, because they are a physical representation of all those who have placed their faith in the Lord God. Believers are sojourners here on earth, in the world but not of the world. God is ready to befriend and protect, offer peace and rest to those who come to him by faith through Jesus Christ.

Psalm 1:6, “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

Psalm 145:20, “The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.”

In the judgment of the Lord, the wicked will not stand. Their purposes and goals will perish. Their pride will crumble under the weight of the glory of God. Nowhere in scripture does it say that the wicked will succeed. Their plans are over turned, their hopes will meet disappointment. All because the Lord who is righteous and loves righteousness will not let wickedness nor the wicked stand.

[Transition] We can live lives of Hallelujah because the Lord God preserves and sustains the righteous. He sustains us by his grace. He will uplift those who fear him and hold them safe and secure by the power of his word. He is our refuge so that we can…

5. Keep Living - v.10

“The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.” The God who preserves truth forever, reigns forever. In this final verse of this Psalm, our minds are directed to look to the future, look to tomorrow, look to eternity. Many are the woes and frustrations, many are the anxieties and disappointments of those who only fix their eyes on the immediate. Those who lose sight of the Reigning King find themselves is grief and sorrow. When they lose sight of their help they become filled with worry and anxiousness. When the lose sight of their only Hope they overcome by hopelessness, spiritual disappointment and confusion. But Jesus is the one in whom salvation is accomplished and he applies the benefits to his people. All those who belong to Jesus have confidence to keep living for the praise of him, because we know, and are assured, that all those who belong to Christ will not be separated from him. Romans 8:35, 37, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecutions, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

From generation to generation, the Lord reigns. The greatness of God, the wonders of his works in redeeming His people, will be the subject of praise for all eternity. In Revelation 19:6-8, we get a glimpse of this eternal praise at the marriage feast of the Lamb, when a great multitude of the redeemed call out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” Saints living the Hallelujah Life!

[Transition] That’s the way this Psalm ends again calling us to Praise the Lord. Again, exhorting us lead lives that sing out Hallelujah. It is a simple illustration that our lives should be lived from beginning to end in the praise of God. It is a call to keep living, keep breathing out praises of our God who saves, helps, and sustains us by His grace.

CONCLUSION (Final Application)

As I said at the beginning, the Hallelujah life begins with private and personal surrender. God alone is worthy of all praise. Are you surrendering your praise to him? God alone is worthy of our complete trust. He is our only hope for life and salvation. Where are you placing your trust? In man, or in God? If you place your trust in man you will be limited to only that which men can do. It you trust in the Lord, you will receive what God can do.

This life will have many difficulties, many challenges, many frustrations, but the God in whom we hope, the God who is our help was, is and always will be faithful. Living the Hallelujah life is living life confidently rooted in that truth. Blessed are those who trust in him. Praise the Lord.

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord God, You alone are our hope for life and salvation. You alone are worthy of our praise. You alone are worthy of lives completely surrendered to you.

Help us to make the daily commitment to surrender our praise to you. Help us to surrender our lives so that every breath that you give us will be given back to you in praise. Help us to not waste our life chasing after things that are not worthy of our praise and admiration. Help us to not waste our trust in those who cannot deliver us.

You have proven to be trustworthy and true. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for being our help in times of need and our hope for today and for all eternity. Let our desire in life be to sing your praise for as long as we exist.

Let our life be a life of Hallelujah, to the praise of your glorious grace which you have shown us through salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, in His name we pray. AMEN.