From an email sent on 5/1/2020 to prepare for Sunday’s Psalms Group
Last week we joined the pilgrims as they proceeded to Jerusalem singing their Psalms of Ascent—psalms that helped them stay in reality about the trouble in their lives, about YHWH who acts to keep his faithful, and about their ultimate security and peace in YHWH. Journeying together through the Psalms of Ascent helps us find words to express our distress, to call for God’s help, and to experience his rest and peace. I hope your reading of chapter 4 on “Poetry” in Open and Unafaid enhances your psalm reading and praying.
This week we are completing another trip through the entire Psalter, finishing book 5 of its 5 books. Perhaps you noticed that Psalms 138-145 have superscriptions “Of David,” indicating the last grouping of psalms associated with David and his court. Some scholars think the Davidic Psalm 145, an acrostic hymn of praise, was the original ending of the earliest psalter. Compare the last verse of 145 with the last verse of 150.
Let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. Psalm 145:21b
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Psalm 150:6a
The last five psalms, Psalms 146-150, were probably placed at the end after the Babylonian Exile, as the Psalter took its final shape for worship in the Second Temple. Like an artfully configured fireworks display, the Psalter ends with images and sounds of praise.
How does this crescendo of praise at the end of the Psalter ( Psalms145-150) inform your life right now? What thoughts and feelings get triggered in you when you think about praising God? (The Hebrew word for praise is hallel, to boast about, speak well of.)
Here are some quotes from “A Word About Praising,” from C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms:
“God is that Object to adore which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all.”
Page 92
“I did not see that it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.”
Page 93
(Lewis observes that in worship God gives and we receive.)
“I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it…The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”
Pages 94-95
(We praise what we value and delight in.)
“In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” (p. 96)
Page 96
So, friends, praising, delighting in, and enjoying God—that’s the flourishing, fruitful life God wants to bless us with, which takes us back to the wisdom of Psalm 1. See you Sunday!