Breath of Praise

Scripture: Psalm 150

Sermon: Breath of Praise

Topics: praise, beginning, ending, awe, wonder, breath

Preached: July 20, 2008

Rev. Mike Abma

Psalm 150

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in his sanctuary;

   praise him in his mighty firmament! 

² Praise him for his mighty deeds;

   praise him according to his surpassing greatness! 

³ Praise him with trumpet sound;

   praise him with lute and harp! 

⁴ Praise him with tambourine and dance;

   praise him with strings and pipe! 

⁵ Praise him with clanging cymbals;

   praise him with loud clashing cymbals! 

⁶ Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

The news has not been good lately:

Record unemployment

Banks failing

Markets falling

Inflation rising

Morale declining

People moaning and groaning…

Senator Phil Gramm apparently had enough of the doom and gloom and stated, recently, that we have become a nation of whiners and complainers. According to surveys done by the Pew Research Center, he may be right. Those surveys reveal that this generation likes to whine and complain. We like to focus on the things going wrong, rather than the things going right. As one journalist put it, we are “drunk on disappointment.” To put it another way, in the lexicon of the Psalms, perhaps our mother-tongue has become lament. We love to lay out our troubles and chew on them. This comes naturally to us.

PSALMS – BEGINNING AND END

Of course, in the life of a Christian there is room to voice our complaints,

just like in the book of Psalms there is lots of room for psalms of lament.

But lament is not where the Psalms begin,

and lament is not where the Psalms end.

Earlier in our liturgy we read Psalm 1.

Psalm 1 is all about obedience:

obeying the Lord,

listening to his voice,

following his way.

Then the Psalms travel a winding and twisting road through

laments for dangers and thanksgivings for rescues,

confessions of sin and reassurances of forgiveness.

But in the end, the dominant theme,

and a pervading theme throughout the Psalms,

is that of praise.

The last psalms pull out all the stops

and sings a full-throated praise to the Lord God Almighty.

PSALM 150

Psalm 150 is the final psalm in the psalter.

It is the final note played,

the final song sung.

It is the Hallelujah Chorus of the Psalter.

Psalm 150 is a bold and far-reaching summons to praise the Lord.

The way Psalm 150 reads,

the praise is less for things God has done for us,

and more simply for who God is.

That is why I think a better translation of verse 2 might read:

Praise him as befits his great sovereignty;

Praise him as befits his surpassing greatness.

How we praise God is our choice.

We can grab a trumpet, lute, or harp.

We can grab a xylophone, a kazoo, or a guitar.

We can grab a pen and ink a hymn or poem.

We can move and dance,

or we can sit quietly and ponder.

How we praise God seems less a concern for the psalmist than that we do it.

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.

MEANING OF PRAISE

Let everything that breaths praise the Lord.

Praising the Lord should come as naturally to us as breathing.

But it doesn’t.

It takes practice.

It takes patience.

And it takes the right perspective.

We even need to bolster our understanding of that word “praise.”

As I looked through materials on “praise” this week,

a large chunk of it was in the realm of teaching and parenting.

Many of the things written were about the power of praise

on students and children.

Praise was defined mainly as saying things like:

Good job,

Nice try

Way to go

Excellent

In other words, praise was a way to get kids to feel good about who they were.

It was a kind of pedagogical pep talk.

But there is a certain condescension to this kind of praise.

This kind of praise involves a “speaking down” to another.

When we praise God, are we really trying to brighten his day?

Are we really trying to help God feel good about himself?

Are we speaking down to God?

No, the praise we offer God can’t be condescending.

We can’t look down.

We need to look up

to look up and be overwhelmed by God’s greatness,

to look up and be awestruck by his all-surpassing might.

To look out over the waters of Lake Michigan and be overcome by its

beauty;

To look out into the summer’s night and be spell-bound by a myriad of

fire-flies

blinking in the night.

To look up to the night sky and get lost in a myriad of stars.

At its best, praise, as the old hymn says,

allows us to get “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”

Praise causes us to pause and consider….

Who am I that I can speak to God?

Who am I that my songs of praise even matter to God?

Who am I that my beating heart of gratitude is acceptable to God?

But that is who we have been created to be.

We often forget that our chief end in life,

the most important reason we have been put on this planet,

is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever;

it to praise God and delight in him always (Westminster Catechism Q&A 1).

ALL THAT BREATHES

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord….

Everything that breathes.

Without breathing there is no life;

Without praise there is real no purpose to that life.

Breathing….

You know, scientists have a name for how much we breathe in and out.

They call it a tidal volume.

Each breath we take in and out is roughly 500 ml (half a liter).

On average we take 15 breaths a minute – meaning 7.5 liters of air.

Let’s say there are roughly 6 billion people on the planet.

If everyone took a breath at the same moment

That would be 3 billion liters of air.

Let’s say every breath was in praise,

That would be 3 billion liters of praise.

And if it was every breath we took …. that would be a lot of praise.

Let everything that has breath…everything,

so not just humans but also….sheep.

There are more sheep in New Zealand than people.

Also dogs and cats,

Guinea pigs and gophers,

Iguanas and insects.

And then there are all the plants.

They breathe too in their own photosynthetic way.

Let everything that breathes, praise the Lord.

In a way, we humans have a special place in this creational choir of praise.

The Lord breathed into us,

so that our breath might be in special praise of him.

George Herbert’s poem, Providence, helps highlight our special place.

Of all the creatures, both in sea and land

Only to man thou hast made known thy ways,

And put the pen alone into his hand

And made him secretary of thy praise.

Secretary of thy praise….

We are secretaries of God’s praise.

That has led one theologian to quip that when the church gets together,

we simply read the minutes.

We simply put into words what the rest of creation

chirps and barks

mows and meows.

Of course, praise happens in church, or as Psalm 150 has it in his sanctuary.

But it also happens in his mighty firmament, which is the wide open expanse.

In other words, praise of the Lord if fitting at all times and in all places.

Even when one is breathing their last.

BREATHING OUR LAST

There are few things as moving as seeing a family gathered around the bed of a loved one who is slowly dying. In the corner of the room, the oxygen machine may be churning.

But to the rhythm of its churning, the family is quietly singing hymns of praise:

I’ll love thee in life, I will love thee in death

And praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath

And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow

If ever I loved thee, my Jesus ’tis now

Even when the breathing has stopped,

And a family is gathered at the cemetery around a grave,

it is the tradition here at Woodlawn to sing the doxology:

Praise God from whom All Blessings Flow.

We sing this doxology

Because we know that in the end

When the trumpet sounds

And the saints are gathered to the marriage feast of the Lamb,

Our mother tongue will be what it was created to be,

Our mother tongue will be praise and glory,

Blessings and honor,

To the Lord God, Almighty.

Amen