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Psalm 148:11

Psalm 148:11 All rulers should praise Him The emphasis of the Psalm shifts subtly and significantly. Now that the praises that the Lord is due have been ascribed to all created things, now that we have seen that they do His bidding and thus they glorify their Maker, it’s time to think “human” again. If all of the listed elements, forces and creatures are willing to “Praise the Lord” and in so doing contribute to the health and prosperity of the planet, what about men? In particular those men and women who owe Him the most for they have risen to thrones and position of power and wealth in the world, surely these people owe the Lord God the greatest honour and respect? Sadly, and I barely need to enforce this point, they are the ones who seem least likely to give the Lord glory for what they have achieved or for the honour and prestige that have been granted to them. Kings, princes and rulers on earth are exhorted to praise the One who exalted them, and they are also ordered to encourage...
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Psalm 148:10

Psalm 148:10 Creatures praise their Creator Our survey of the created world now embraces living creatures, a number of them are lIsted here,  “wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds .” Once again, we are being reminded that songs of praise emanate from these creatures and join with all other natural objects and forces in giving glory to the Lord. It’s so easy to listen to the sounds that all animals make and to break them down by function; “Oh, that deer is calling for its mate, or, that cow is mooing because it is hungry.” But how do we know? I have studied birds for over 50 years and listened to many explanations of bird song. According to scientists, warblers migrate to the UK and sing their beautiful melodies to attract their mates in spring. That theory held out until the same species were tracked into deep African jungles where they spend the winter months, and it was discovered that they sing identical songs outside of the breeding season. Why does a s...
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Psalm 148:9

Psalm 148:9 Mountains and hills and trees  The psalmist is growing in excitement as He surveys the earth and embraces the notion that the created world praises the Lord. We’ve already looked at some of the aspects of the created world whose function is to represent the Lord and in so doing to gain Him glory and praise. We’ve visited the ocean depths and pondered the weather! Now we are to lift up our eyes to the mountains and hills, and then to survey the trees that cover the earth from the mighty cedars to orchards and fruit plantations planted by men. All of these gloriously beautiful and dramatic additions to creation have one primary objective and that is to  “Praise the Lord. ” We, as a human race have taken all of the natural wonders and turned them to our benefit and forced them to serve us. It would be a crazy world where we were unable to use wood for construction or to pick apples, pears, oranges and the rest, from our fruit trees. But, in so doing we should learn fi...
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Psalm 148:8

Psalm 148:8 The elements do His bidding! This verse gives us a clue as to the nature of the praise that is offered to the Lord by elemental forces and the inanimate objects that are the fundamental building blocks for the created world. The writer lists a number of weather features and then explains that “They  do His bidding .” Literally this means that they obey His Word. In Psalm 147:15 we read,  “He sends His command to the earth; His Word runs swiftly.”  We need to realise that what gives God the greatest glory, what please Him above all else is that we “ do His bidding.” It’s time to forget about climate change and focus on the One who guides and administers the weather, in this instance – lightning and hail, snow and clouds and stormy winds. If we take the Word of God literally, and I see no reason why we should not, then it clearly declares that all of these forces are controlled from above, that nothing is left to chance, the weather patterns across the world are...
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Psalm 148:7

Psalm 148:7 Looking beneath the surface! Well, we’ve enjoyed eavesdropping on the praises of the angels and the heavenly bodies, the waters and all inanimate objects in creation, now it’s time to take a dip into the oceans! The sphere of life that is explored here is the ocean depths and the psalmist calls out songs of praise from the creatures that inhabit these dark, secret places. In Genesis 1:21 we read, “ So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds  …” In Psalm 74:13-14 we saw that the primeval, chaotic waters were depicted as a many-headed monster that the creator God overcame, He is the same Lord who parted the Red Sea to make a path through for the Israelites as they fled from Egypt. The Bible suggests that these waters were all part of God’s creative purposes and that it was He who placed living creatures within them. What cannot be argued is that the oceans and seas al...
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Psalm 148:6

Psalm 148:6 Established forever Listen to these words from Jeremiah 31:35-36. “ This is what the Lord says, He who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moons and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is His name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.””  Comments on previous verses in this Psalm suggest that maybe the inanimate objects that inhabit the heavens are able to respond in some way to the Lord. At the very least, the fact that they studiously fulfil their functions causes them to give glory to His Name. They clearly announce that God is alive and well and keeping His promises to us all. As Paul succinctly puts it in Romans when he talks about the wickedness of people,   “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualiti...
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Psalm 148:5

Psalm 148:5 He is our Creator! This verse gives us the reason why even inanimate objects are prompted to praise the Lord. It’s because He created them! The same principle applies to us, we may find 10,000 reasons why we should praise the Lord, but the first reason is simply that we exist! We can add up the events and circumstances, the moments and the experiences that we have enjoyed when the Lord has revealed Himself to us, but the first cause for celebration is that we have been granted life! He could have ignored us or left us out of his plans for planet earth but, no, He decided that we should be allowed to live in His world and He chose the parents that would make that possible. I am here, because God wanted me here. I live and breathe and enjoy the beauty of the planet because God enabled it to happen. We are incredibly privileged, to be born human and to be planted on the earth for our time. Not only that, but the Lord has organised our future as well, the fact that He made us f...
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