I love stories, I always have. I love books and I love movies—anything with a good story. And one of the key aspects to a good story is a good ending. Some good endings end with a twist. Some are open-ended, to make you think. Some are just not crazy or mind-blowing, but they’re just a perfect conclusion to the story as it was told. And often, the end is important to understand the whole. It often gives you the most important information to reiterate everything that has gone before.

As we come to a close on our summer of Psalms series, we’re going to look at the conclusion to the book of Psalms. It’s been pretty great, looking at these various Psalms. And I hope you’ve been encouraged, been strengthened in your faith, and you have seen God in a new light, and perhaps, seen your circumstances in a new light, and seen what it means to worship God in the highest highs and the lowest lows, how to follow God, to trust his Word, in every area of life.

As we come to the end of the Psalms, we will see that the final word in Psalms is PRAISE. It is not a new concept, but it is a review of all that has come before. Here’s Something important about the book of Psalms: the order matters. It’s not like they just took all these poems and put them in a bag a shook it up and pulled them out. No, they arranged the book of Psalms to tell a story, to tell a story about a faithful follower of God, to tell a story about a coming Messiah, and ultimately to tell a story about how we respond to God. So, when we get to the end, the people who compiled the book wanted us to leave the book of Psalms thinking about one thing: Praise.

Let me show you.

Psalm 146:1 NLT

Praise the Lord! Let all that I am praise the Lord.

Psalm 146:10 NLT

The Lord will reign forever. He will be your God, O Jerusalem, throughout the generations. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 146 begins and ends with the phrase “Praise the Lord”

Psalm 147:1 NLT

Praise the Lord! How good to sing praises to our God! How delightful and how fitting!

Psalm 147:20 NLT

He has not done this for any other nation; they do not know his regulations. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 147 begins and ends with the phrase “Praise the Lord”

Psalm 148 and 149 and 150 all begin and end with the phrase “Praise the Lord.”

Live a Life of Praise

As we conclude the book of Psalms, we have to remember that a life following God is a life of Praise. If you want to truly follow God, to have a relationship with God, you should live a life of praise.

So, we’re going to look more deeply at this in Psalm 150. As we prepare to read it together, let’s take a moment to pray to receive God’s Word today

PRAY

Psalm 150 NLT

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heaven! Praise him for his mighty works; praise his unequaled greatness! Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn; praise him with the lyre and harp! Praise him with the tambourine and dancing; praise him with strings and flutes! Praise him with a clash of cymbals; praise him with loud clanging cymbals. Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord! Praise the Lord!

All right, so what do we notice here immediately? I hope you notice the word Praise! Again, the phrase “Praise the Lord” bookends the Psalm and in the middle, each line begins with the word Praise!

Praising God is Exciting

Instruments*

Praise the Lord is not actually a phrase, but a word that you probably know: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! “Hallelu” — is praise and “jah” is the LORD, as in Yahweh, God’s personal name.

It’s a word that comes from the concept of cheering and singing for someone: Imagine a screaming crowd when Taylor Swift or Beyonce takes the stage. Like, going CRAZY. Or imagine the crowd at a sporting event. I'm a Kentucky basketball fan, but I spent my teen years in Indiana, and I remember my Dad once took me to an IU-Kentucky game at Assembly Hall, which, if you’ve never been there, the stands are insanely steep, so even when you’re halfway up, you feel super close to the court. And it was packed, and it was a great game that came down literally to the final seconds, when IU ran down the court and hit a buzzer beater to win. And when I tell you the crowd went wild, I mean they went WILD. It was maybe the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, everybody screaming and jumping and the band playing the fight song. That’s the kind of energy “Praise the Lord” is talking about.

The question I think we should ask ourselves is “why don’t we praise God like that?”

Now, obviously there’s a whole context thing. It’s acceptable, even normal, when you’re surrounded by thousands of cheering people, to join them in cheering. Whereas at church, what’s acceptable is a little different. So maybe we don’t get that excited about what God is doing because it feels weird, or out there, or we’re not sure how other people are going to respond—will they be excited or will they judge me?

When I was growing up, there was a super 90s Christian group called DC Talk. You guys like DC Talk? And they had an album called Jesus Freak and the title track said:

I don’t really care if they label me a Jesus freak / there ain’t no disguising the truth.

Let’s remember the example of David, who jumped and danced down the street in worship of God, it says he “danced with all his might.” Listen, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there’s any context where you want to see me dance with all my might. And when his wife got mad at him about it, this is what he said:

2 Samuel 6:22 NLT

Yes, and I am willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in my own eyes! But those servant girls you mentioned will indeed think I am distinguished!”

David was willing to look foolish in his excitement to praise God because he love God and wanted to celebrate what God was doing in his life. And I think that’s the key—we can overcome our reserve when it comes to praising God by remembering our love for him.

I am generally pretty reserved, I’m not gonna go crazy and cheer and clap and yell, unless I’m trying to support someone I love. If one of my kids is playing basketball and needs some encouragement, or if they are getting an award and I’m proud of them, I’ll yell for them; I don’t care who hears. Because of love.

When we love God, we praise him for all that he’s done for us. We get excited about who is and what he’s doing. Do you get excited about praising God? It’s okay if your excited face looks different from my excited face, but we should ALL be excited. We should all be willing to go outside of our normal comfort zone, to look a little foolish like David in order to worship God.

Praising God is the Right Response

Because as we look at this Psalm and the rest of scripture, I think we see that praising God is the right response to God’s character and action. I should praise God, and I should get excited about praising God, because that’s the only right response to who he is and what he’s done.

Let’s be real—we’ve all had times in our lives, whether it’s from life circumstances or whatever where we wonder if God really deserves the kind of praise we talk about. Maybe it seems like he isn’t really keeping his promises, or he is allowing evil in our lives, or he just feels really distant, like he’s too busy with other people to be close to me right now. And if that’s the case, then do I really need to praise him? Maybe he’s not worthy of praise. Maybe my time would be better spent doing something else.

Sometimes when the present is clouding our view of God, we have to look to the past and to the future. I know that God has come through before, and I believe that he will again. That’s what Scripture tells me.

But I want to remind us of the truth of Scripture that God is worthy of praise and praise is maybe not the natural response, but it is the appropriate response to what God has done for us. Sometimes, we have to trust the word of Scripture above how we feel, and the word of Scripture reminds over and over of the goodness of God.

We see that here specifically in these Psalms. We talked about how the final five Psalms are all about praise—how all five are bookended with Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. And throughout the five, there are reasons and reasons about why God is worthy of our praise. Here’s a few:

A selection from Psalms 146-150:

God helps humanity

God created heaven and earth

God keeps his promises

God gives justice to the oppressed

He feeds the hungry, frees prisoners and makes the blind see

He protects strangers, widows, and orphans

He frustrates the wicked

He heals the brokenhearted

He knows every star in the sky

He has all power and understands things beyond us

He supports the humble

He makes it rain and feeds the animals

He protects our families and blesses our children

He revealed himself through scripture

He makes peace in the world

He creates order in the world

He honors the faithful

He delights in his people

He gives the humble victory

I mean, come on. Is our God not worthy of praise?!?!

I’d like to try something, if that’s okay with you guys. I’d like to practice responding to God in worship. I want somebody, if you’re comfortable, to shout out like a one-sentence testimony. God saved me. God healed me. Whatever. And then we’re going to, as a family, respond in worship. Remember—we want to get excited when we worship

Call for Congregational Testimony & Praise

Praising God is Your Purpose

Okay, the last thing I want us to see today is that Praising God is Your Purpose.

Writing about Psalm 150, theologian Walter Brueggeman said, “the outcome of life under the God’s law arrives at unencumbered praise. The expectation of the OT is not finally obedience, but adoration.”

What he means is this: if we go all the way back to Psalm 1, the message of Psalm 1 was about the choice we all make, to follow our own path or to follow God’s path, to live a life meditating on God’s law, God’s word. And all throughout the Psalms it’s about what this life is like, and ultimately, the primary goal is not to perfectly DO all the laws, it’s to love the one who gave the law. God’s Word is given to us with the purpose of growing praise.

This is what we were made for. I love verse six, where it says “Everything that has breath.” I like this detail because it reminds me of something fundamental: I only have breath because God gave it to me. In the garden, God breathed his breath into Adam. My most basic human functioning is a gift from God, and if it’s his, then it’s only right for me to return it to him in praise. In a very literal sense, God made me with the capacity to worship him, to speak and sing his praises with the breath that he gave me.

Your purpose in life is to give God praise. And it’s not just what we’re created for, but it’s also our calling.

A while ago, a company that makes shirts for foster care asked Karly to be a brand ambassador. They sent her some shirts and she posted on her instagram about it to show everyone how cool the shirts are. She was chosen for the purpose of promoting this organization. But what do you think they would have said if she accepted the shirts and put them in her drawer and never said anything about it? They would be like, um, you’re not fulfilling the purpose we called you for.

In the same way, God has chosen us for the purpose of spreading his praise throughout the earth.

Listen to what Peter writes:

1 Peter 2:9 NLT

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

So he chose us in order that we might show others the goodness of God. We’ve been chosen as ambassadors for God (2 Cor. 5) and God has given us gifts in order to do that. But I wonder if too often, we hide those gifts or we use them only for ourselves instead of using them to publically praise God!

TBD

Conclusion

Here’s what I would like to do as we close.

The band can go ahead and come back up.

I want to go back to our list of reasons why God is worthy of praise. It’s a great list, but it falls short because it doesn’t include the greatest reason for praising God because Jesus hasn’t been born yet. The number one reason to praise God is Jesus.

Think about it. If God himself came to the world to preach to us that would be enough, but he did more. He gave up his life for us. And not only did he give up his life for us, but his sacrifice saved us from our sins. And not only did it save us from sin, but it made a way for us have a relationship with God again, and not only all that but he sent his Spirit to live in us, to guide us and strengthen us. We have all that and more because God in Jesus put his love on display on the cross.

And you know what Jesus said about his purpose? That it was to bring glory to God, to effect praise in this world.

John 17:4 NLT

I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

He came to earth to do a work, the work of his life, his death, and his resurrection, and he completed the work so that you and I would praise God. So, as we said before, the only right response to what Jesus has done is praise!!

Come on, let’s praise him!

PRAY

Now, it’s your turn. Praise God. We’re going to sing. Praise him through singing and through instruments. You can praise God to your neighbor or you can come down to the front and pray a prayer of praise with someone here, or you can praise him in the midst of a struggle, or you can praise him by choosing to follow him. But no matter what you do right, praise him.