Psalm 111
1 Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart,
in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
2 Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.
3 Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.
4 He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the LORD is gracious and merciful.
5 He provides food for those who fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant.
6 He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations.
7 The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.
8 They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
9 He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever.
Holy and awesome is his name.
10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
all those who practice it have a good understanding.
His praise endures forever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A couple weeks ago we started a sermon series on the Psalm of the day in the lectionary. The first week we did Psalm 51, a psalm of confession; and the second week we did Psalm 130, which was a wonderfully appropriate Psalm about praying to God during difficult times. I felt both of these Psalms were, in their own way, very timely, very relevant to where we are.
Today’s Psalm I almost didn’t do. I almost changed it out, because it felt so out of place and jarring to me.
It starts off with the words “Praise the Lord” – and I felt like, we’re in a difficult time right now, between the resurgence of the pandemic, and the flash flooding this past week, and all the craziness that’s happening in the world around us. It almost seemed out of place. And for me personally (unfortunately) the phrase “Praise the Lord” will always be associated with the disgraced ministry of Jimmy Bakker’s “PTL Club” back in the 1980s.
So I almost chose another psalm. But then I thought twice, because it’s been my experience when the heart resists some part of God’s word, it usually means I need to spend some time with it. So here goes.
Verse One: in Hebrew, the first sentence is just one word: “Hallelujah!” Which to me means a whole lot more than praise the Lord. For starters, praise the Lord in English borders on being a command. Hallelujah is not. Hallelujah is better translated the Lord’s name be praised. It focuses on God, and invites everyone within hearing to join in a song of praise that began back in the beginning of time and continues into eternity.
And isn’t that why we’re here every Sunday? We want to take our place in God’s story and add our voices to that eternal song.
So starting with a hymn of praise, the psalmist opens our song.
As an aside, I should mention: the writer of this psalm used an ancient Jewish technique called an acrostic: in the Hebrew, every line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet: aleph, bet, gimmel, and so on. It adds artistry to the poem, and also made it easier to memorize (if you happen to speak Hebrew).
The psalmist continues by talking about why God is worthy of all our heartfelt praise and why God should be praised in the assembly, by all of us together. He says, “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart…”. When the Bible talks about the ‘heart’ it doesn’t mean (as we mean it) just the emotions; in Bible times, the ‘heart’ was seen as the center of “emotion, morality, spirituality, [the will], and the intellect”[1] – in other words, the whole self, our whole being.
The psalmist says he praises God for three reasons: (1) God’s works are great; (2) God’s works are to be remembered; and (3) God’s works are truth and justice. I’d like to take a look at each one of these three.
- God’s works are great
God’s works include both what God has done and what God has created, and I think the emphasis in this psalm is on the creative side. “The Hebrew word for “wonderful deeds” is niphla’oth” which means literally, “something that I simply cannot understand,”[2] something beyond comprehension. God’s thoughts are beyond us. But as the psalmist says, “God’s works are studied by all who delight in them.”
Isn’t that true, even today? People who work in the sciences, in medicine, in art, in theology, in music, in psychology and cultural studies, in history – all of us – are, as the 16th century scientist Johann Kepler said, merely “thinking God’s thoughts after him”. And God’s thoughts are such a delight! As a musician, to know that every note was invented by God, and we musicians are all just exploring; my brother the physicist loves Kepler’s quotation and agrees wholeheartedly that physicists are ‘thinking God’s thoughts after him’; as a theologian, I learn more every day about what God has created in us and has done for us. We are all called to ‘think God’s thoughts after him,’ and when we do, praise becomes spontaneous because God is so brilliant and so amazing.
- God’s works are to be remembered.
— and that means “out loud”, in conversation. God’s works are to be proclaimed: not just ‘brought to mind’ but spoken.
For the ancient Israelites, this meant remembering things like God’s call to Abraham to be the father of a nation that would bless all the people of the earth. It meant remembering God’s call through Moses to freedom and a promised land. It meant remembering God’s faithfulness to Joshua and to King David and to the nation of Israel as they settled securely in Judea and Jerusalem.
That’s as far as the psalm-writer’s history goes. But you and I can add a lot more to that story. We remember God sending Jesus: to teach us what God’s law looks like when it’s actually lived: not as a set of cold-hearted rules like the Pharisees and Sadducees taught, but warm and loving and inclusive of outsiders and the outcast, healing the sick and giving to the poor and setting the prisoners free; and then dying in our place so that we all could enter into his life, in the eternal Promised Land.
Theologian Walter Bouzard says this: “Christians have seen the power of God’s work in the weakness of the cross. Christians have seen God’s faithfulness in the work of Christ’s wounded hands. Christians, like the prophet Anna… have seen the “redemption of Israel” (Luke 2:38). […] Christians praise God for God’s works not [just] because of what God has done in the past, but because the work of God, the righteousness of God, the love of God approaches us again and again in the cup and the bread.”[3]
God continues to work today: in every prayer that is answered, in every new hope that we discover, in every ray of light we find as we pass through the dark places.
And God’s works are also found in the everyday: in the fact that we have food to eat, and homes that are comfortable and health care when it’s needed, and family and friends nearby. All that we have, all that we need, are provided by God so generously.
God’s works are to be remembered, and when they are, they inspire praise.
- God’s Works are Truth and Justice.
The very nature of God is truth and love – and in God these two characteristics are never in conflict. How often, in our sinful and imperfect world, does it seem like we have to make a choice between doing what is right and doing what is loving? In God there is no conflict between the two. In God, truth and love meet and merge and find their highest meaning.
So when God works, the actions God takes express his truth and his justice.
God’s laws don’t change. God is holy, and God’s understanding and mercy are as far beyond us as the next galaxy is from the Planet Earth. We need to be in God’s word, learning God’s truth, learning God’s justice, on a daily basis, because we don’t change God’s word; God’s word changes us.
That’s what the psalmist means when he says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” “The fear of the Lord” does not mean being scared of God, but rather being in awe. It means wanting God more than we want anything else.
This awesomeness: we can get a taste of it sometimes, like when we walk into an empty church at night and can almost hear the songs of the generations before us echoing off the walls. We can feel it when we look into the eyes of a newborn baby and see someone who knows more about God than about the world. We feel it when we realize a prayer has been answered and God really heard what we asked for. That’s awesomeness, and that’s where wisdom begins.
Wisdom doesn’t end there. We need to keep on growing; and we need to know “that God’s praise will outlast everything, including [our] own praises.”[4]
So when we see all that God has done, praise is the only possible response. Today when we sing the Doxology, our song of praise, let’s remember all these things, and blend our voices together to praise our God.
Hallelujah! AMEN.
Preached at Fairhaven United Methodist Church and Spencer United Methodist Church, 8/15/21
[1] Yolanda Norton, Working Preacher
[2] Nancy deClaissé-Walford, Working Preacher
[3] Walter Bouzard, Working Preacher
[4] Wil Gafney, Working Preacher
Getting Started 