Hilton Head Island, SC – May 12, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 95:1-7; Psalm 149; Psalm 150
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! – Psalm 150:6 (RSV)
Psalm 95 has a memorable opening verse, with an unusually memorable phrase in the middle of it. “O come, let us sing to the Lord,” it begins, and it goes on to declare, “Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” And then, as if saying “joyful noise” once wasn’t enough, the second verse repeats it: “Let us come into (God’s) presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!”
Just what is a joyful noise? Did you ever think about that? Everyone who has attended church even minimally over a lifetime has surely heard the words “joyful noise” at least a few times. But what, generally, might that phrase connote?
A few months before my brother died last July, he and my sister-in-law moved from the home where they had been living for over forty years to an apartment in a community twenty miles away. Since Bob died, Marilyn has been trying to find a church in the new community where she can feel comfortable. She has tried several, most of which use what are called “praise bands” in worship. These musical ensembles consist of a keyboard, various kinds of horns, other instruments, and drums. Last Sunday Marilyn went to a church which had three loud drummers, and by the time the service was over, she said, she had a headache. Was that a joyful noise?
At some point in the past I visited a church in which the children’s choir sang during the worship service. I don’t remember where or when this was, but I do remember what they called the choir. They were known as The Joyful Noise. Is that supposed to be funny? And is it fair to the choir? It’s kind of cute, I suppose, but does it do anything to enhance the youthful yodelers?
Musically, much or most what today is called “contemporary worship,” consists of loud sounds with a persistent beat. It is often called “praise music.” It appeals to young people, because when young people go to rock concerts, they hear joyful noise by the multitudinous decibels, whether joyful or not. But does that type of music truly praise God?
Music was an integral part of worship in biblical times, in both the Old and New Testaments. Music is used in worship in most religions, although apparently not much in Islam, which is curious. But we need to keep in mind that the Psalms, all 150 of them, were originally sung. They were not spoken. Many of them have served as the theme for hundreds of hymns which have entered the traditions of both Jews and Christians.
I suspect that the music employed in worship when the Psalms were being written was of quite a different nature than we are used to in most mainline Protestant churches or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. Our music is likely more majestic, but also more subdued. Whether it was similar the worship forms commonly practiced in many contemporary evangelical churches, with their praise bands and their swaying singers, neither I nor anyone else can say with certitude. No one, other than God, knows. And, as in most things, He is silent on this subject, either to approve or disapprove.
The point is this: praising God is an essential element or worship, and music and singing is essential in how we praise Him. When I was a little boy in Sunday School, I remember singing a song which said, “Praise Him, praise Him, all you little children, God is love, God is love.” That is a quintessential truth, but its veracity is strengthened even more so when we sing it rather than just say it. Therefore, “O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! …For the Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods” (Ps. 95:1,3).
God as the divine king is a frequent concept in the Psalms and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. God’s glory and majesty were celebrated in scripture. The praise of God was a central feature of all forms of worship that are described in the Bible. Most nations no longer have kings, but we at least know what monarchs are, and we can relate to God as our Supreme Monarch.
During the lifetime of most of us, worship, at least in America, has changed from being primarily about the praise of God to something quite different. In too many cases, it seems to me, worship has become an exercise in self-help or self-affirmation or self-reliance or the power of positive thoughts or attitudes. It focuses too much on us and too little on God. It is enough to give one a headache, not from the joyful noise, but from the inanity and banality of it.
The other day I saw a bumper sticker on a car being driven by a man who appeared to be nearly as old as I, which is to say, a spring chicken he wasn’t. The bumper sticker declared in large print, “Our God Is Awesome!” In one sense that is a very biblical-sounding statement. Indeed God is awesome. The sentiment is right, but the place for expressing it seems wrong. There is something about the “slang-ness” (to coin a word) of the word “awesome” that is somewhat off-putting in that particular setting. Is the hind-most location on a car a proper place to proclaim that, in the best sense of the word, God is awesome?
I have been in the UK several times, but I don’t recall ever seeing cars with bumper stickers. Perhaps they have them and I just can’t recollect it. But if they do exist, I can’t imagine subjects of the United Kingdom with signs on their cars boldly stating, “God Save the Queen” or “Three Cheers for ER II,” who technically is “ER I” in Scotland, since the first Elizabeth Regina was never queen in Scotland, because there was no United Kingdom until 1707. Anyway, it diminishes the British monarchy to express support for it on back bumpers. And it may diminish our praise of God if our worship is too joyfully noisy or too uninhibited or folksy.
To praise the God who is God is to acknowledge that He alone makes our lives not only possible but fruitful. Everything we have comes from God. Everything of value that we are comes from God. Everything that is comes from God. Therefore “Praise ye the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation,” “Praise the Lord, His glories show,” “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven.”
On Mothers Day, we can praise the Lord for mothers. On Fathers Day, we can praise Him for fathers. On Children’s Day, which sadly is not celebrated anymore, we can praise God for all our children. But we should also praise Him regularly for all our relationships as well as for everything else we have.
When I was in seminary, we began one fall semester with a convocation at which Carlyle Marney was the featured speaker. For many years Dr. Marney was the pastor of the Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte. He was a Southern Baptist, but in his time he was not like most Southern Baptists, and certainly unlike most Baptist ministers in the South in these times. But Carlyle Marney was truly a legend in his own time.
In our autumn convocation he was talking about prayer, and he happened to mention a kind of prayer I had never heard of before. He called it “ejaculatory prayer.” When something happens in the blink of an eye, and we want to thank God, we hurl a prayer (which is what the word literally means) at God. We are driving, and another driver, texting on a cell phone, nearly kills us, but we manage to avoid the collision without hitting him or anyone else. “Thank You, God!” we say, when we realize we are still alive. We are told a grandchild is interested in becoming a doctor, and we say, “Thanks be to Thee, O God!” On Mothers Day we thank God for our mothers, those still living and those who have died. We see a gorgeous sunset, we have a wonderful visit with an old friend, we find a solution to what we thought was an insoluble problem, and we hurl a short prayer to El Shaddai, “My God, how great Thou art!”
Although up to this point it may seem like this sermon is about how we should praise God, that isn’t it at all. Rather is about this: why should we praise God? That is the subject matter of the theology of praise.
People who feel self-sufficient are less inclined to praise God. People who are highly self-absorbed are too much into themselves to praise God. People who are consumed by anxiety, people who are stressed to the limit, people who are consumed by consuming, are less inclined to praise God. Why praise God if you have too much or too little on your plate already?
Further, if we focus too little on God on a regular basis, we are not as inclined to praise God as we would do if we devote a good bit of thought to who He is and what He does. God represents all that is good and solid and permanent and trustworthy and laudatory. Therefore He deserves to be praised, for He alone is those qualities plus infinitely more that are infinitely praiseworthy. Praise of God is the primary purpose of worship - - - nothing more and nothing less. It is the primary purpose of our existence. As the answer to the first question in the Westminster Catechism says, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” Not every sermon is devoted to that, which is probably good, because it might turn out to be a bit too much. And I presume it doesn’t bother God very much if every sermon isn’t devoted to praising Him, either. He can accept that. It might also be too much for Him if every homily was an obsequious attempt to curry favor with the Almighty by praising Him excessively.
To state this in a different way, those who don’t praise God enough apparently don’t know why they should praise God more than they do. We cannot be adequate sons and daughters of God without paying the proper homage to our Creator. If we don’t praise God, we end up taking Him for granted. Or we suppose He doesn’t need our praise, which in truth He doesn’t. But WE need to praise Him, not for His benefit, but for our benefit. Not to do so is to have a misperception both about God and about us. We need to praise God as surely as we need food or hydration or sleep. We cannot be the people we should be unless we give proper praise to the God who made us people.
The last five Psalms, Psalms 146 through 150, are called “The Songs of Hallel.” The Hebrew word hallel means “praise.” In English, each of these final Psalms begins with the three words “Praise the Lord!”, and there is an exclamation mark in each instance. It isn’t just “Praise the Lord.” It is “PRAISE the Lord!” Praise Him! Praise God! Praise Him!
In Hebrew this is not three words, but one. And that one word is a word with which you are all familiar: Hallelujah! And thereby hangs an important theological understanding among the ancient Hebrews. In Hebrew God’s actual name is Yahweh. But they believed God’s name was so sacred that they never spoke it out loud. To do so, they believed, would result in their instantaneous death. The name Yahweh is so holy that it must never be verbalized.
Then why would they say Hallelujah, and that was permissible, but no one could say Halleluyahweh? It is because there are three words in Hebrew which literally mean “God”: El, Elohim, and Jah, spelled J-a-h, but pronounced Y-a-h. Thus it would have been okay to say Halleluel, or Halleluelohim, or Hallelujah, but never Halleluyahweh. And why they never said the first two and only the third I don’t know.
In the English language we assume that God’s name is God. That corresponds to the Hebrew El or Elohim or Jah. And we Christians have no qualms about saying Yahweh either, although we don’t often use that name for God. However, whenever ancient or modern Jews come to the sacred name of God when they are reading scripture, instead of reading out loud “Yahweh,” they say instead, Adonoy, which means “Lord.” Thus to transliterate the opening verses of Psalms 146 through 150, the English comes out as “Praise the Lord!” rather than “Praise Yahweh!”, or “Praise God!”, which is what it actually says.
Further to complicate the exercise of your gray matter, I feel compelled to explain why I almost never use the word “Lord.” In the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, the word “Lord” always refers to God. In the New Testament, however, the Greek Bible, the word can refer either to God or to Jesus. Because of my personal and peculiar discomfort over the doctrine of the Trinity, and because I am theologically averse to equating Jesus with God in any conventional sense, I don’t ordinarily say “Lord,” except when I publicly read the word in scripture.
To many Christians, “Praise the Lord!” means to praise Jesus. I can certainly affirm the concept, because in some sense Jesus is “Lord,” especially to Christians. But in my mind he is not “Lord” in the sense that he and God are one, because, again in my mind, they aren’t. Whether they are or aren’t remains to be seen --- but not in this world, I think.
Remember Jim and Tammy Bakker, and the PTL Club? Obviously “PTL” stands for “Praise the Lord.” But which “Lord” did the organizational name praise, the Lord God or the Lord Jesus? Whatever Jim and Tammy intended, I am fairly sure that many of their supporters thought it meant the Lord Jesus. And to me that is a misplaced understanding of the true identity of the only one who is truly “the Lord.”
Despite all my theological peculiarities, this much is obvious: When the last five Psalms begin with the words, “Praise the Lord!”, they are referring to God, or, in traditional Christian terminology, God the Father, and absolutely not to Jesus. And that brings us back to the question addressed by today’s sermon title, Do we praise God enough?
In two words, probably not. God deserves our constant praise, but because we all have other concerns besides God, we tend to get too involved in those concerns, sometimes neglecting our praise of God – or, if you prefer, “the Lord.” Whoever put together the order of the Psalms in the Book of Psalms recognized this understandable human tendency, and that person or that committee of committed Jews decided to give all of us a vital concluding theological thrust: “Praise the Lord! Praise him in his sanctuary; praise him in his firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!” (Ps. 150:1-5) Or in other words, whether we like it or not, praise him with a joyful noise, whatever that might properly connote. And finally, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” Praise God!