Praise the Lord! Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! His faithful love endures forever. Who can list the glorious miracles of the Lord? Who can ever praise Him enough? (Ps 106:1-2)
I’ve probably said this somewhere in this blog, but every time you see the phrase “Praise the LORD!”, it’s literally the English translation of the word Hallelujah! That’s not only a great way to begin the Psalm, it’s a great way to begin your day, because it puts your day into the proper context. The Lord is your focus, the Lord is your purpose, and your thoughts, words, deeds, and emotions are permeated with praise.
Since the Lord is our focus, and our purpose, we discover that the object of this praise and thanks (at least in this Psalm) is: He is good. And His faithful love endure forever. That’s something worth hanging onto, especially when surrounded by the uncertainties, sorrows, and pain that life brings. We need to remember “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalm 30:5) And “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
When you ponder that verse from Lamentations, about a love that never ends, about mercies never cease, you then realize what the psalmist was writing in verse two: Who can list the glorious miracles of the Lord? Who can ever praise him enough? Those are what you call rhetorical questions, because we can never list His glorious miracles, nor will we ever praise him enough.
There’s an old hymn called The Love of God, the final verse goes like this:
Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.
And notice that that’s just writing about the love of God. What about His other attributes? Such as His goodness, and His faithfulness. The end of the Gospel of John says something quantitatively similar:
This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that His testimony is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)
May you begin your day with His praise. Because His love endures forever, you may discover that His praise may occupy your day.
This psalm begins on a grandiose scale: Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Nothing less than “the whole earth” is to sing to the LORD. The verses continue to crescendo until, in these final few verses, all of creation joins in the song. The heavens are glad; the earth rejoices; the sea and all its creatures shout His praise; the fields and crops burst with joy; and the trees sing.
With every bone in my body. When I looked up the word for bone in the Hebrew, it meant…bone. But it also means (as secondary translations) body, limbs, self and strength. That’s a pretty significant commitment for praise. And when you add the word every, which is also translated as whole, all, completely, anything, whatever and whenever, the praise become totally consuming.
Years ago I remember Billy Graham talking about one of the ways he did devotions—5 psalms a day and one chapter of Proverbs. So at the end of each month, he would have read through both books. Whenever I am not in front of one of my computers doing my study/devotion/prayer (I am currently working on the Fruit of the Spirit) I use this 5 x 1 study to come into His Presence.
How often are we blessing and extolling the LORD? At all times. In Hebrew all times means at all events, all occasions, and at all times. This word is more than a generalization, it can be absolute; and in its definition are “all for every”, and “all the everywhere”. When God says all, He means all.
We now see the result of being lifted up—in plain sight—on a rock. It’s not a matter of sight; rather it is a matter of power. He has been exalted, set on high, over his enemies. Yes they do indeed surround David, but it is of no consequence, because He is the one with power and authority, not they. And David knows full well where that power and authority come from.
In our contemporary, over-booked, over-stressed culture, how often do you praise the Lord? Once a week? But then perhaps Sunday is more about the performance, or the preaching. So how much time do you really spend praising the Lord? David realized praising God once a week at tabernacle worship just wasn’t enough. It become a daily event. And as such, David became quite creative on how to praise the Lord.