This is the last of six blog posts looking at the first 3 verses of Psalm 34, and attempting to understand the idea of “continual praise”.
Series: Who? | What? | Whom? | When? | How? | Why?
I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.My soul shall make its boast in the Lord;
The humble shall hear of it and be glad.Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
Psalm xxxiv.1-3
And let us exalt His name together.
4. Why?
Here are four reasons why God is deserving of our praise. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I find these four categories very helpful. These 4 Gs are not original to me. I picked them up from Tim Chester.
God is great
God is great, so we don’t have to have it all together before coming to him. David wrote this Psalm while living a cave, on the run from King Saul, having acted like a madman to escape Gath. You can come to God in worship when your life is spinning out of control. You don’t have to be in control, because God is.
God is glorious
God is glorious, so we don’t have to fear others. David was in fear of Saul, and then in fear of the men of Gath. But when he sought the Lord, God delivered him from his fears (v4). We live in fear of our boss, or our co-workers, or our professor, or our classmates, or our friends/peers. When we don’t keep the glory of God before our face, when we are not looking to him, other people loom large in our minds and we begin to fear what they think, or what they might do to us, or what they might say about us. This is not how we are to live, but the amazing thing is, we don’t have to conquer this fear before coming to God in worship. Coming to God in worship, especially together with others, helps us to rightly see God as glorious, it magnifies his glory, it clears our vision and directs it to him, and when we see how big and glorious God is, it delivers us from our fears.
God is good
God is good David tells us in verse 8. But we tend to look elsewhere for satisfaction and fulfillment. We look to our job, our possessions, or our spouse, and when these things let us down we feel empty, we suffer want and hunger (v10). We don’t have to feel complete before coming to God in worship. He wants us to come to him in worship when we are brokenhearted, crushed (v18), and emotionally empty. When we gather in worship and speak the truth of God’s goodness to each other, we find that God is good, that he is our joy, that we find fulfillment in knowing him.
God is gracious
God is gracious so we don’t have to live a perfect life before coming to God in worship. We sometimes fear that God will not hear us, that our worship will be rejected because of our failure to live holy lives. God does not relate to us in this way. The basis of God’s goodness to us is not our behavior, not the holiness of our hearts, but rather the basis of God’s goodness to us is found in the new covenant where he forgives us our sins because of Jesus’ blood shed on our behalf. We don’t get what we deserve. What we deserve is hell, instead we get God himself. God is gracious, and we are reminded of this in worship when we come together and celebrate communion, remembering the body and blood of our savior.
This is why David ends his psalm this way
The Lord redeems the soul of His servants,
Psalm xxxiv.22
And none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.
Our lives, are redeemed in Christ. He makes our failures right by his life and death. This is the gospel. This is what we celebrate. This is why we worship.
It is our joy to know and worship God, in community with others, in the stream of real life, continuous praise for who he is and what he has done. Bless the Lord! And let us exalt his name together!
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