Hallelujah!

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Appleton Gospel Church

Religion & Spirituality


Songs of Greatness is a sermon series on the greatness of God from the Psalms. Hallelujah! — Everyone everywhere is called to join the choir of creation in praise of God. Worship is offering everything you have, as a living sacrifice, in response to the glory of God. Recorded on Sep 5, 2021, on Psalm 150, by Pastor David Parks. Sermon Transcript All year, we’re focusing on The Greatness of God. And today we’re going to finish a sermon series from the Psalms in the Bible called, Songs of Greatness. And we’ve said that the psalms cover the whole range of human emotion/experience. Whatever you’re going through, the Psalms can be helpful for you. But a number of the psalms are all about the greatness of God, which is why we included this series with our annual theme. This series started back in July with Psalms 1-2 and today, we’re finishing our series with Psalm 150, which is the end of the book of Psalms, so we’ve covered a range of Scripture and themes over the last few months. We’ve seen that God is great. That God is glorious and eternal and almighty and wholly independent, he does not need anything from us. But at the same time, he inexplicably cares for us and is steadfast in his love and faithfulness to us and uses his greatness not to oppress us or to work against us, but to reach down and lift up the poor and those who are in need. He comes down to lift us up. God is great and God is good. So here, in Ps 150, we have a fitting end, focused on worship. This psalm begins and ends with a hallelujah or the phrase, “Praise the Lord,” and is really a call for every person, in fact, every living thing, to add their voice in a song of praise to God. And this is what life is all about. Please open your Bible/app to Psalm 150, starting with v. 1. We’re going to read all the way through this psalm, and then we’ll work through this in three parts, and actually, we’re going to take them in reverse order: 1. The Call to Sing 2. The  Way We Sing 3. The Reason We Sing. Psalm 150 (NIV), “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. 2 Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. 3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, 4 praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, 5 praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. 6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.” 1. The Call to Sing: As promised, we’re going to unpack this psalm in reverse order. So once again, v. 6, and let’s read this together, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.” Let everything that has breath, that is let every living thing. Let every fish in the sea (small and great), let every bird in the sky, let every one of the livestock and all the wild animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground. And let every human being, every man, woman, and child. Let every nation, tribe, people, and language. Let every one in every time and place. Let everything that has breath…do what? Praise. Praise who? Praise God! Oh, but not just any god. Not the god in your mind or imagination. Not a god of our own creation. But Yahweh God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of history, the God of the Bible. Remember when Lord is in all caps in the Bible, it doesn’t translate a generic title of Lord from the original Hebrew language, but rather the personal name of the God. Yahweh God. This God. We are to praise this God. Praise him! Hallelujah! This is the call to sing. Use your breath. Use your life. Join the chorus and sing! And we’ve seen this call/invitation to worship/praise before in our series. But the call to sing crescendos as we get closer to the end of the book of Psalms. The last five psalms in the book all begin and end with this phrase, “hallelujah,” or, “Praise the Lord.