Psalm 147, these are the words of God. Praise Yahweh, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant, and praise is beautiful. Yahweh builds up Jerusalem. He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. YHWH lifts up the humble. He casts the wicked down to the ground. Sing to YHWH with thanksgiving. Sing praises on the harp to our God. who covers the heavens with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who makes grass to grow on the mountains. He gives to the beast its food and to the young ravens that cry. He does not delight in the strength of the horse. He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man. YHWH takes pleasure in those who fear Him and those who hope in His mercy. Praise YHWH, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, your God, O Zion, for he has strengthened the bars of your gates. He has blessed your children within you. He makes peace in your borders and fills you with the finest wheat. He sends out his command to the earth. His word runs very swiftly. He gives snow like wool. He scatters the frost like ashes. He casts out his hail like morsels. Who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word and melts them. He causes his wind to blow and the waters to flow. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his judgments to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any nation, and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise Yahweh. Amen. So far, the reading of God's word. What a great psalm for helping us think about worship and blessing to us and the ordinary working through consecutively the psalms to which we're coming to an end. And I have to wait. I have to consider which of the poetical books in the Old Testament to use next in the calls to worship. Psalms is the most obvious. Song of Solomon, properly understood, I think is the second most obvious, but because it will be difficult for the congregation without understanding it well. I was going to wait to have Song of Songs. Sorry, I shouldn't have said Solomon. It calls itself the Song of Songs. It's quite obviously the Song of Jesus, but I don't think many people understand it as the Song of Jesus and the love song between Jesus and the church. And although the Bible images in the poetry are so full of references to images used in other parts of scripture for spiritual things, for whatever reason, it's just not well understood that way. So I think in order for us to have our hearts and minds properly called to worship by that book, I'm going to have to be preaching through it as we use them. So maybe wait until we're done with Proverbs, which would put us a couple years out, or maybe interrupt the Deuteronomy preaching, but to have preaching on it one week and then be called to worship the next week. Right now, though, we're being called to worship by the Psalms, and Psalm 147 is one of the most natural and obvious psalms by which to be called to worship, because it tells us about the blessing of praise, it tells us about the duty of praise, and it tells us about the privilege of praise. And so as you come to worship God, as you come to praise God, it's good to be put in mind by His own Word, applied to you by His Spirit, of the blessing of what it is that you are coming to do, the duty that you are coming to fulfill, and the privilege, the unique privilege that has been bestowed upon you in what you're about to come to do. And to have the Spirit stir up our minds and hearts about these things towards God so that we don't just come in a perfunctory way, in a way that does the outward function just because that's what you do, perfunctory. You don't just come in a perfunctory way to worship God, but you come to him as one coming to enjoy the greatest blessing that you have been offered, coming to fulfill your necessary, justly required duty as a creature responding to your creator, that you come as one amazed at the unique and high honor, the privilege that has been bestowed upon. So those are the three things we see here. First then, the goodness of praise. Praise Yahweh, for it is, and there's three words here, and the first one we can translate the same as the New King James. The words fundamental meaning is good. Often it means beautiful. In maybe a fuller sense of that word than we usually use the word beautiful in English. So good, I think, is best for us here. Here is a good thing. Here is something that is as it should be, that is has nothing undesirable in it at all. The best thing that we get is to praise Him, because in praising Him, we don't just see things about Him. In praising Him and worshiping Him, we come to Him Himself, to enjoy Him. This is chief end sort of stuff. that we come to glorify Him and to enjoy Him Himself is good to sing praises to our God. And I think He's even designed music to feel that way in a kind of natural sense, to reinforce and help the soul to embrace God the way that music often stirs up the affections to and intensity of experience and expression. So it is good to sing praises to our God for it is pleasant. And it is a word that means pleasing or to give pleasure, but we think of the word pleasure in enough different ways that I think it may be more helpful or gets more to the nub of the meaning of this word to say sweet. It is sweet and praise is beautiful, lovely, attractive, communicates not just the goodness and everything being right and desirable, like that word good, that word translated good, in the first part of verse, but something that shows the exquisite loveliness of the one who is being praised. So there's so much here. No one word could really do any of these three things, but the blessedness of God gives us when he gives us to worship. So we must see that worship, although we do come and we render particular activities and especially our very souls unto God. In worship, the true worship of the true God, it is not so much his people who give to him. If that were the case, you would have a needy God and a great people. But the true God isn't a needy God. he has a needy people. And so worship is not so much about what we give to him, although he does sustain us by his grace in giving to him and what duty and privilege that is, as we're going to see in the rest of the psalm. Worship of the true God is more about what He is giving to us. Very specifically, His giving Himself to us. So worship is blessed. It's good. It is sweet. It is lovely. We should look forward to it. It's the dessert of the week and in the gospel age, with Christ having come and sitting in glory and His Spirit having been poured out, you get to have your dessert first. The dessert of the week comes at the beginning of the week, and there should be an anticipation of the soul before you come to worship, and a delighting of the soul as you are worshiping. And there ought to be even the aftertaste or afterglow of the soul after you have worshipped. It is a blessed thing. Indeed, we're looking forward to one day to when we live in a perpetual Sabbath, and you don't just have aftertaste, but you enjoy the goodness and the sweetness and the love forever. Okay, so praise of God is a blessing. Praise of God is a duty. It's a duty because it's a right response to all that we see him to be and all that we see him to do. It front loads some of what he does in verse two and three, because the picture in this section of the psalm is his gathering people to be an audience. And so he takes this Jerusalem, these outcasts, these brokenhearted, which is a wonderful thing. The brokenhearted or the contrite heart, the Lord doesn't despise. He doesn't love the blood of bulls and goats. Those are things that anticipate the Lord Jesus and his once for all offering and his being not only the one who takes away our sin, but the one in whom we are brought to God. But Psalm 51 says those aren't his sacrifices. His sacrifices are the broken spirit and the contrite heart. That's a grace that God gives when he's giving us repentance into life like we had in our catechism lesson. And when he gives us that brokenheartedness, that contrition, and he gathers us from our sin and misery and the chastening that we've been under, He's gathering us to make us an audience. So in verses two and three, you have these brokenhearted and sorry ones that he is healing in himself and forgiving of their sin. He's gathering them as an audience, the way a child might gather their family to show them something they've been working on. or a performer in an open square somewhere. We haven't done much of the open square kind of stuff in Columbia, but it's actually a common thing in the world where there'll be someone who draws a crowd in a square to show something that they've been working on. Well, here, God gathers his saints to make some display. is a talent show, if you will. Not thinking of that in a way that minimizes or trivializes what God's going to do, because look at what he shows in his talent show. He counts the number of the stars and calls them all by name. The whole point of stars is that they are innumerable. yesterday in Deuteronomy, forget now, nine or 10. We read a bunch of chapters, but anyway, when he said, now look at you, you went down to Egypt to 70 people and you are as many as the stars. It's not literally mathematically true. There are not quadrillions of Israelites there on the other side of the Jordan, but as many as the stars to a human means uncountable. And yet God actually knows the number. Even with all of our supposedly advanced technology, etc., we don't have a clue how many stars there are. Scientists will make a guess and point the strongest telescope possible at the darkest place in the sky. It'll turn out that they're pointing it at multiple galaxy clusters, and you focus on the darkest place there, and there's multiple galaxy clusters, and they launch telescopes into orbit and point that at the darkest place there, and it's multiple galaxy clusters. You're God who has gathered you. to see His glory, knows the actual number. And not only, like, is He able to take an inventory of the number, He knows the specific characteristics that He's given. You know, when I was a child, when I was a little boy, I still am a little boy before God. We just learned that in the preaching, right? When I was a child, I would read and hear this voice, and I would think, I wonder what their names are. Will we get to know them? Is that part of why heaven is forever? Because we'll be learning all the names of all the stars. Very silly, childish sort of thing. But a name being a description of the character, not just a collection of syllables. What it's saying there is not just that God knows which is which. but that not only does he know this innumerable number, but every single star in that number has unique characteristics that have been given to it by him. There are glories in the creation that have been glorifying him ever since heaven and earth began. without anyone else even knowing about, and even our not knowing has been glorifying Him. Kind of like when we discover new creatures in the depths of the sea that have existed from, you know, like day four of the creation, or is it five, day five of the creation. And, no, no, I'm not done. Anyway, forgive me, I can't remember which day. But they've existed from the beginning of the world And the only thing they've ever done is glorify God by being there, and our not knowing about them, and finally discovering them 6,000 years later. He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by name. And as you realize what that's saying, I hope, your heart responds, great is our Lord, mighty in power. Look what he's made. His understanding is infinite, not because he discovers things. and knows about them, but because he has created and sustains continually those things, he knows them as they are. They exist because he knows them. He doesn't know them because they exist. That's the way our knowledge works. We find out the things that exist, and we increase this empirical knowledge about them, and we put together the observations into this collection of rational knowledge that reasons about it. God doesn't know by empiricism or reason. Those things exist because he knows. And so he knows the whole as it is. And we discover what he knows as we grow in our derivative knowledge. Great is our Lord, mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. But there isn't just this wisdom and this power, but there's this goodness that you remember we referred to verses two and three as a sort of preview, as high and glorious and almighty and infinitely knowing and wise as he is. He stoops down, and he lifts up the lowly, and he casts the wicked to the ground. He's not just kind and merciful to us. He's also just, and so his goodness is expressed upon us in kindness and mercy, without compromising his righteousness. Which is why, in order to show us that mercy, it was necessary that Jesus become a man and die on the cross for our sins. Because nothing else could have satisfied justice in a way that gratified mercy. God gratifies His mercy. He does what His mercy wants. to do us good, to show us favor. But he does so while satisfying his justice. He doesn't compromise his justice. Yahweh lifts up the humble, he casts the wicked to the ground. And so worship praise is not just a blessing like we saw in verse 1. it is it is a duty because he's gathered us as an audience and he displays himself to us particularly he gathers us in the public worship and that's the point in verse 7 there's a covenantal language First, the covenant name Yahweh, sing to Yahweh with thanksgiving, and the covenantal language of possession. Sing praises on the harp to our God, just as you had that in verse 1, our God, and in verse 5, our Lord. When we come to praise Him, we praise Him as the God who has given Himself to belong to us in Christ Jesus. And one of the places that He most displays that to us is when we are in the assembly of those who belong to Him and He to them. That's what covenant is, that mutual belonging, that being bound to one another. and the church is that which is bound to God in the blood of Jesus Christ. Just like you hear and see and smell and taste, almost. Sophia hears and smells and sees and the Lord willing, continuing to work in you and you make incredible profession of faith, you'll get to taste the cup of the new covenant in his blood. that these are the people who are bound to God. So when we come to praise Him, we don't just praise Him in amazement at who He is in Himself and in amazement at what He has done by Himself, but in amazement that this One who is this and does this has made Himself to be ours. sing praises on the harp to our God. And that too, the word harp there, is public worship language. It is not musical instrument language, although it is a musical instrument. But the command to sing with the harp is a command to participate in something that God actually originates, or maybe better stated, identifies with the temple. that when he gave to David, not that David could build the temple, because David had blood on his hands and he was a man of war and God said, not you, but your son, I'm going to give peace in your days. And then your son, who will be a man of peace, not a man of war. he will build the temple. And so David, in the latter part of his reign, stores up wood and stone and gold and silver and spices and all these things that are going to be necessary. But he also, in his office as a prophet, One who speaks words from God, one who writes many of the psalms, perhaps even this one, we don't know. He prepared many psalms that refer to the temple, and the silly critics will say, David couldn't have written that, the temple wasn't built in his day. No, he was preparing psalms for temple worship in anticipation of God fulfilling the promise that his son would build the temple. But in addition to all that, also in his office as a prophet, he designates certain priestly families to be gatekeepers in the temple, priestly family to be choir in the temple, priestly family to be the instrumentalists in the temple. And he actually invents or designates, but we think even invented, a harp and lyre of particular kinds for the particular temple worship. So that when you see the harp here, or very famously in Psalm 149, the timbrel and the harp, but the commands to use these instruments There are people who think, oh, that means we should have, and then they fill in the blank with whatever instrument they like. Old people like organs. An organ is a very grand thing. It is also often so loud and crushing that you can hardly hear yourself sing, let alone be admonished by psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs from others. And then there's a contemporary crushingly loud Stuff that comes out of the the speakers in some quote-unquote worship places or even God says to use instruments. So we should use piano which is more helpful now We're getting closer to the human voice or string quartet which if you have to have instruments for the sake of supporting the human voice string quartet is really very close to the human voice and very helpful, but God isn't saying any of those things or when he says to sing with the harp, he's referring to something that is part of the corporate worship that was provided to his people as a gift in fulfillment of his promise to give them a place of worshiping him that had a permanence and a grandness to it that would anticipate what Jesus, great David's greater son, would bring in himself with the permanence and the grandness of worshiping Jesus. The tabernacle, by comparison to the temple, was very portable. and small and unimpressive, although for what it is, a portable worship center in the wilderness in particular, it's pretty impressive for what it is, but it's comparatively small and unimpressive. Well, when God gives David to build the temple, he gives this communication of purpose, permanence, and grandness of worship. And part of the grandness, then, is the addition of these instruments to make the singing grander, to lift and elevate the way that even the sound is, but especially the heart as you sing. And that's why Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, in those two parallels, one says, making melody in the heart, and it uses the word that's actually for instrumental accompaniment. And the other place it says, with grace in the heart, because it's not musical instruments anymore. The permanence and especially the grandness of the worship in the age of Christ leading worship is not added by musical accompaniment. It is added by the Holy Spirit applying to us the knowledge of the crucified, risen, ascended, enthroned Savior and the permanence and the grandness of the worship that participates in him where he is enthroned, something that they never had before, something that physical temple and musical instruments anticipated in kind of like a picture book sort of way, something that Jesus is trying to teach us when he refers to himself as the temple in many places and even his people as a temple of sorts in other places. All that to say that when you come to verse 7 and it says, sing praises on the harp to our God, It's not saying sing praises with the beautifulness of this particular kind of stringed instrument. It's saying this covenantal worship that he has provided in fulfillment of his promise to communicate the permanence and the grandness of his worship with his people in his assembly, according to his prescription, using this instrument that was prescribed by his prophet. And so we have a covenant duty. We get, we're still in the audience, verses eight through 11, and this kind of, you remember the word chiastic structure, where it begins and ends with those who are hoping in his mercy, beginning of verse two, end of verse 11, and you have some of the greatness of who he is and what he does, verses four through six, and then verses eight to nine, or maybe eight, nine, 10, And then in the center is what we have just been focusing on, the covenant assembly fulfilling its duty to respond to what he has gathered us to see. And so you're in the second section now, as you go out from the center, verses eight through 10 of what he displays. Imagine if a child who gathered their family or gathered their friends or whatever, could as part of their talent show, waved their hand, and the brilliant shining sun in the sky during this time of drought in which the land became thirsty and the beasts needed their food, and the raven's chicks were crying because even the raven could not scavenge up food for its chicks, and the child who had gathered The people for the talent show could wave her hand and cover the sky with clouds. And then the rain would start to fall and green grows up out of the land. And you see the beast able to feed its child again. And the raven arrives at its nest with its crying babies and starts feeding them. That's the display in verses eight and nine. Now we don't see that within seconds, like I just described, but we do see that That is what God is always doing, and it would actually be evil for us to see the greatness and the goodness and the wisdom of our God and not respond by praising His greatness and praising His goodness and praising His wisdom. He gathers us to Himself. He shows us Himself. And there is a right response. There is a duty to respond. There's also a duty to be unimpressed. There's a duty to be impressed with God. And there's a duty to be comparatively unimpressed with the creatures. He does not delight in the strength of the horse. I have never been at a horse race. I have seen some of them on TV, and I'm sure it is much, much more in person, but I suspect it is fantastically impressive to see powerful horses all thundering together. That's so small by comparison to the greatness of art. And then this text, our dear brother, who is about to lose his leg, spent a lot of time meditating on this particular text. He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man. From the time they begin to toddle, boys, and especially all children, love to race. They take pleasure in their legs. put boys from two to 22, maybe even older in our frighteningly immature culture, and they will almost always be racing. They take pleasure in their legs. The greatest greatness of a man is not to be compared to the greatness of God, that which pleases God. is not the derivative greatness of the creature. It is the creatures recognizing the inherent greatness of God. Yahweh takes pleasure in those who fear him, so they see his greatness in himself. But secondly, Yahweh takes pleasure in those who hope in his mercy, those who not only fear him seeing his greatness in himself, but hope in His mercy, seeing His greatness towards them in favor and mercy. And so when the Lord is giving that which pleases Him to be in your heart, He gives you not only to see that He is great, but that He has given Himself in His greatness to be your hope. And that's what we have a duty to do, when you see His greatness, to respond not just with praise, but hope, praise that identifies with Him, praise that rests in Him. So praise is a blessing, praise is a duty, and then praise is a privilege. And this has been really long for a family worship, Verses 12 through 20. Praise Yahweh, O Jerusalem. Praise your God, O Zion. And then there is these things that God has done, but the emphasis is that they are done for them. That this is something that God has done particularly for them with a particular purpose. He has strengthened the bars of your gates. Okay, so he's delivered and protected them. He has blessed your children within you. He's multiplied them. He's delivered them, protected, multiplied them. He makes peace in your borders. He delivers them, protects them, multiplies them, gives them security so that they are not distracted by danger. And he fills you with the finest wheat, delivers them, protects them, multiplies them, gives them security, and now makes provision for them so that they're not distracted by neediness. God attends to everything else in order to completely free us up to worship Him. And in verses 15 through 20, it's really in two parts. The first is He demonstrates what a great thing His word is in verses 15 through 18, in that it is by His word that He upholds all things. So Hebrews 1.3, upholding all things by the word of His power. and, you know, picks as an example these tremendous weather events, even just the coldness of cold, which are getting to live in Iowa where, you know, sometimes is negative 19 with a wind chill of negative 90 and you guys remember you know looking up rover stats and Celebrating moments at which it was colder at our house than Mars But even here sometimes there's a cold snap where it gets down into them think harder here because the people are less Accustomed to it and it hurts That's dangerous and you can really feel with with a Tennessean in a in an Arctic cold snap who can stand before his cold But His Word is that by which He upholds the bringing in of such weather. His Word is that by which He relieves of such weather. Verse 18, He sends out His Word, He melts them, He causes His wind to blow, the waters flow. And this Word by which He has created, and this Word by which He upholds all things, is what is expressed to us in words when he speaks to his people in the scriptures and in the preaching. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his judgments to Israel. You see what it's saying here? Do you see the privilege that you have? That when you come to worship God, you not only adore him, he addresses you. You draw near to the God who is doing all of this by his word. And when you draw near to him, he comes to you with his word. A customized portion of the word of God communicated to you in the words of God. So that there is a privilege. And it's a privilege that is not for all mankind generally, but for those among whom or unto whom the gospel has come specifically, which at this time was just Israel. And so verse 20, he has not dealt thus with any nation. And as for his judgments, they have not known them. so that we come and we sit under the word and we hear it read and we hear it preach. And part of it is just having a sense of the privilege that is being bestowed upon us, that we may praise God and we may sing his praises and that we may hear his word, the privilege of praise. So, amazing, amazing psalm for calling us to worship on the Lord's Day, showing us the blessedness of praise, and the duty of praise, and the privilege of praise. Amen, let's pray. Father, thank you that we may call you Father. Thank you that you gave us broken hearts over our sin, that you showed us your mercy in Christ, gathered us to yourself. Make a display of yourself. Give us to respond and praise you. Bestow upon us the privilege of being addressed by you. We love you. Help us to love you more, and help us when we come to the public worship on the Lord's Day, and all the Lord's Days in this life, and anticipate glory, that your Spirit would work in our hearts, applying what we have learned from this psalm. Grant it, we ask, through Christ. Amen.