The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): One word that’s recognized around the world and in any language is Hallelujah, a word which simply means to praise the Lord. Psalm 146 implores us to praise the Lord and then goes on to tell us just how.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Today’s culture would have us believe that worship must be fun to be worthwhile, but Psalm 146 tells us that true worship must engage the mind as well as the emotions and requires a working knowledge of God’s Word. Join Dr. Boice as he explores the depths of a Psalm that tells us who to worship, how to worship, and why we worship.

Dr. James Boice: We've been coming toward the very last Psalms in the Psalter for quite a while, and I've been saying that, but today we actually are coming to the very last Psalms in the Psalter. That is, we're coming to the last definable block of the Psalms. These are the Psalms, the last five, all of which begin with the word Hallelujah or, in our translation, praise the Lord, and end with the word Hallelujah or praise the Lord as well.

The Septuagint, which is the translation into Greek of the Old Testament, identifies these in the notes as Psalms of Haggai and Zechariah, making them what is called a second Hallel. Hallel means praise. There's an earlier group called the Egyptian Hallel, and so this would be a special block of itself. That identification doesn't add anything to our understanding of them, and it's probably incorrect, but the fact that these Psalms all begin with the words "Praise the Lord" and end with the words "Praise the Lord" indicate, I think, in a remarkable way that that really is the chief end not only of the Psalter but of our lives.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks that question: what is the chief end of man? And the answer is man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. In the earlier Psalms, we had all kinds of subject matter. We would come across the writer's griefs or shames, guilt, discouragement, aspirations, desperate pleas for help. But all of that is behind us now. We don't have that kind of personal outpouring of feeling anymore. What we have instead are words which are entirely from beginning to end praise to God.

Now that's the way it should be for us, and especially as we move on in life. At the beginning of our lives, as we first become Christians, we're thankful to the Lord for his salvation and we have much for which to praise him. But as we go on and experience increasingly more and more of his grace, it should be the case that we find ourselves praising God more.

Charles Spurgeon tells about a man whose name was John Janeway. He was on his deathbed; he was about to die. And these are his words. He said to those who were around him, "Come, help me with praises. Let everything that hath being help me praise God. Hallelujah! Praise is now my life work, and I shall be engaged in this sweet work now and forever. Bring the Bible, turn to David's Psalms, let us sing a Psalm of praise. Come, let us lift up our voices in the praises of the Most High. I will sing with you as long as my breath lasts, and when I have none, I shall do it even better."

MacLaren said of these Psalms that in them, with constantly swelling diapason, all themes of praise are pealed forth until the melodious thunder of the final Psalm, which calls on everything that hath breath to praise Jehovah. These Psalms have given us a number of our hymns. And as we go through a study of these last Psalms, we're going to be singing those hymns. One of them comes from the Psalter of 1912, and it's a poetic rendering of this Psalm.

Hallelujah, praise Jehovah, O my soul, Jehovah praise. I will sing the glorious praises of my God through all my days. Put no confidence in princes, nor for help on man depend. He shall die, to dust returning, and his purposes shall end. Happy is the man that chooses Israel's God to be his aid. He is blessed whose hope of blessing on the Lord his God is stayed.

One of the studies of these Psalms that I found helpful is by a contemporary preacher whose name is Roy Clements. He says when he gets to this point of the Psalm dealing with this word Hallelujah, that there are three words that are understood in every language on the face of the earth: Amen, Hallelujah, and Coca-Cola. Well, Amen we know, and Coca-Cola we know. What does Hallelujah mean?

Well, we have a great tendency in our day to trivialize this word, as we have so many other biblical terms. Some time ago, Phil Ryken handed me an ad that he had seen. It was for Nicorette gum, which is supposed to be effective for those who want to stop smoking. This particular ad showed a package of this gum bursting through majestic clouds while the sun was shining through like an end-time theophany. And the copy said, "Nicorette gum is now available full strength without prescription. Hallelujah!" Well, I guess overcoming a lifelong addiction is something to be happy about, but it certainly is a trivialization of the word "praise the Lord" to apply it to the appearance of a gum.

Hallelujah is a compound word. It's made up of two separate words. Halal, that I've already mentioned, is an imperative of the verb to praise. It means praise. And then Yah, which is a contracted form of Jehovah. So the word Hallelujah really means praise Jehovah. It was often used, apparently, as a liturgical response in Jewish worship. The leader would say something like this: "The Lord is good, his love endures forever." And then the people would say, "Hallelujah." The same sort of thing you and I would do.

And yet when we understand how this word is being used in these last Psalms, we realize that it's not simply thrown in there as a meaningless response, still less as a mantra, as if the way you worship God is simply by repeating some magical religious word, especially if it comes from Hebrew over and over again to make yourself get into a certain frame of mind. It's not doing that at all. What the Psalmist has done here is set these Psalms in Hallelujah parentheses, both begun and ended by the word Hallelujah.

So he says you should praise the Lord, and then the Psalm tells you how. It tells you things about God for which you should praise him. And after it unfolds all of that, when you get to the end, it says, "Hallelujah." Clements, whom I just mentioned, said you could regard Hallelujah in each case as a kind of liturgical alarm signal to the sluggish in the congregation, sort of a way of saying, "Listen out there! It's time to wake up. We've got serious business in hand; we're going to praise the Lord." And then you say, "Praise the Lord," and those who are awake say, "Hallelujah."

Now, that implies a number of things about worship, and let me just mention them before we actually plunge into the Psalm itself. The first thing it implies is that worship is work. I mentioned some time ago the work of a Lutheran woman whose name is Marva Dawn. She wrote a book about worship which I've found helpful, called Reaching Out Without Dummying Down. I was intrigued by the title. I would have read it for that reason alone. It's about worship, and she's concerned with the dummying down of worship in our Western culture, in the same way we're dummying down just about everything.

We live in an entertainment age where everything is supposed to be fun, everything's supposed to be effortless, everything's supposed to be easy. We almost have a motto that would describe our age. It goes like this: if anything is worth doing, it must be fun. That's the way people tend to think, and so they think exactly the same way about worship. If worship is worthwhile, well, then it should be fun. And actually, the things that are worthwhile usually are things that require work, and that is true of worship too. She says in her book, "Ours is a lazy Christianity," and the church's problem today is not wrath but sloth. I think she must have picked that up from an English speaker because it sounds much better if you pronounce those words in an English way. Our problem today is not wrath but sloth.

Now, secondly, worship must engage our minds. If worship is praising God for who he is, then we have to know who he is and understand something about him in order to worship him. That's what John Stott was concerned about in that little book, Your Mind Matters. He was concerned some years ago when he wrote that about the mindlessness of our times, and he was challenging Christians to actually put their minds to work. You've been given a mind by God; for heaven's sake, use it! And one way in which you need to use it is your worship. In order to worship God, you have to understand who God is, and that means you have to think about him. That's what these Psalms are doing. You can't really use these Psalms without thinking about what they actually say about God.

Third, worship is possible because of God's prior revelation. To worship God, we have to know who he is, but we can't know who he is unless he first of all chooses to reveal himself to us. Now he has done this, of course; he's revealed himself in Christ, and he's also revealed himself in the Bible, which is how we find out about Jesus Christ. So for that reason, the Bible and the exposition of the Bible have to be central to our worship services. Clements, whom I've mentioned twice already, says the only reason we can worship God is that we know something about him, something which excites our imagination, our gratitude, our faith, and our joy. Worship is heartfelt, emotionally charged expression, but it is also a rational and thoughtful expression. True worship is thus always a response to what we know of God as a result of his revealing himself to us.

And then, fourthly, worship has to be personal. What I mean by that is that you have to worship God yourself. You can't do it by proxy. It is true that we worship God together in the company of his people. That's one of the great joys that we have, to join with others who know God as we do and want to praise him as we do. But each one of us has to do it for himself or herself. The old, the young, the fathers, the mothers, even children. If you're a Christian, worship is for you, whoever you may be. It's not something that you pass off on a professional clergy or pass off on a spouse or somebody else. It's something you are to do Sunday by Sunday, indeed, moment by moment in your life.

Now, this is where the author of the Psalm starts off. Having called the congregation to worship in the very first word of the Psalm, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, he then immediately declares his intention to worship God himself, saying, "I will praise the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to my God as long as I live." Spurgeon said it's a poor business if we solely exhort others and don't stir up our own soul.

Now, at first glance, when we move on from that opening to the stanza that tells us about princes and not putting our trust in them, it seems that we're dealing with something that is irrelevant to what has just been introduced, something incongruous; it doesn't seem to fit. Here we're told that we are not to put our trust in princes, but even if we consider that as a mere negative statement of something positive, what in the world does that actually have to do with worship? Well, the answer isn't difficult to find if you think about it a little bit. Isn't the chief reason why we have so much trouble worshiping God and fail to do it is because we actually value others more than we value God?

It's not that we don't know that God should be worshiped. If we're Christian people, we know we should. And certainly, God is God, and he's important in all of that. But when it gets right down to it, isn't it true that we often trust other people or value other people more than we value God, at least for getting the things done that we think need to get done? We do it politically, thinking that the president or Congress or the mayor or some other highly placed person will be able to solve our problems. They can't even solve their own problems. How in the world can they solve our problems?

Or we look to science or education or something else to be our ultimate Savior. And the sad thing is that we don't actually trust God and worship him. So that's what the Psalm says. Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground. On that very day, their plans come to nothing. One of the old preachers, his name was John King, a man who lived in the 17th century, preached a sermon on this on one occasion. And he listed a number of reasons why we shouldn't put our trust in mere human beings. And it went like this: first, because they're mere men, no different from ourselves. Second, because they're weak men, unable to give us the kind of help we need. Third, because they're dying men; they won't be around for very long. Fourth, because when they die, they're subject to dissolution, returning to the earth. And fifth, because their thoughts are as transitory as their bodies.

Verses three and four make that point, but they do it in a Hebrew way. They're doing it by a play on Hebrew words, two plays on Hebrew words, actually. The first has to do with the word man, Adam, from which the first man was named Adam, as in Adam and Eve. That really means earth or dirt. God said to Adam, "You are earth," that is Adam, "and to earth, Adam, you will return." That is what this particular stanza of the Psalm is playing on. Any Jew who read that understood in Hebrew would know exactly what is being said.

The second play on words has to do with the word spirit or breath, which is actually the same word in Hebrew. It's the word Ruach. And so what it's saying is somewhat the way Isaiah 2:22 speaks when it says that we're really just a one-breath being. God breathes some of his breath into us and we're alive, but when we breathe our breath out, we're gone, we're dead, and we return to dirt. Now that's what the Psalmist is saying. Why should you be trusting human beings who only live by a breath at a time, and when God withdraws the breath, they die and they return to the dust? What we need to learn to do is trust the eternal God, who is the one great eternal spiritual breath who gives life to all.

Well, that's one reason why we don't worship God; it's good to deal with the problems at the beginning. There's another one, however. Not only is it the case that we value other people more than we value God, it's often also the case that we value ourselves more than we value God, in the sense that we think we're the ones who are able to get things done. We can handle our problems by ourselves, thank you. We don't really need God to work our way through our problems.

And yet we are mortal as well. We're living by a breath at a time. We too will die. We too will return to dust. Queen Elizabeth I was known for being somewhat dictatorial and arrogant on occasion. And she was doing that once and her Archbishop Grindal was there and he rebuked her. And what he said to her was this: "Remember, madam, you are a mortal creature." Elizabeth didn't like it, but she was, whether she liked it or not. And eventually, even the great Elizabeth died.

Here's another story that makes the same point. William the Conqueror, the Norman who defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and changed the whole course of English history, died in the year 1087. Now, it was in circumstances that caused his biographer, undoubtedly a monk, his name was Ordericus Vitalis, to moralize on William's death in the language of our Psalm. What happened was this: King Philip of France had claimed lands on the border country of Normandy that William considered to be his own, and so he crossed over the channel to engage Philip in battle.

He was doing very well in the war. As a matter of fact, he was on the verge of celebrating a complete triumph when his horse stumbled and he was thrown forward upon the iron pommel of his saddle and received a fatal injury. They carried him to the Abbey of Saint-Gervais near Rouen, where on the morning of September 9, he died. Now when he died, his nobles immediately mounted their horses and rode off to secure their own possessions. And his servants, after stripping the body of the dead king of his valuable clothes and jewelry, made off too, leaving the naked body of the conqueror of England to lie there on the floor of the abbey.

And the historian wrote, "Put not your trust in princes, which are nothing, O sons of men, but in the living and true God, who is the maker of all. If riches increase, do not set your hearts on them, for all flesh is grass and all the glory of it is as the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flowers fade away, but the word of the Lord stands forever." The only being in the universe that you can depend on unconditionally is God, so worship God. That's the connection between verses three and four and the rest of the Psalm and why they occur at the start of this final collection of praise Psalms. They're saying man cannot save.

But says the Psalmist, "Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord his God." Now the longest section of the Psalm is verses five through nine. It belongs together, maybe even the very ending as well, and it begins with a beatitude. It's the last beatitude in the Psalter. Altogether, there are 24 of them. And what it promises is blessing for those who have learned not to put their hope in human beings, mere man who perishes, but rather put their hope in God instead. This stanza is all about God, which is what praise really is all about.

Here God is called the Lord, Jehovah. And this great name for God occurs seven times in this stanza, once each in four of these verses and three times in verse eight alone. And each verse tells us something good about God. Now just briefly: first, the Lord is our hope, verse five. This means that it's God alone who can save us, in contrast to the important people of this world who cannot and wouldn't do it even if they could. We say, "Well, save us from what?" Well, from our enemies, of course. The Psalm always has that in mind, but also from all kinds of calamities, including our sin. God saves us from our sin through Jesus Christ. So put your hope in God.

Secondly, the Lord remains faithful forever. That's verse six. Again, it's not merely that God saves us; he remains faithful to us after he has saved us. That's what's usually called the perseverance of the saints. We ask the question: why do the saints persevere? The answer is because God perseveres with them. To use this word, we can say we remain faithful to God because God remains faithful to us.

Number three, the Lord sets the prisoners free. Verse seven. This verse and the next verse take us to the New Testament, where Jesus announced that the purpose of his mission was, quoting from Isaiah 61, among other things, to free the prisoners. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

It's always struck me as significant that as far as we know from the Gospels, Jesus Christ never actually freed anyone from a literal prison. And for that reason, we're probably to understand this spiritually, as we ought. Not a literal physical prison, but a literal spiritual prison. That's the kind of freedom we real need. And God sets the prisoners free.

Number four, the Lord gives sight to the blind. That's verse eight. It's the same as this matter of freedom. This is not so much a physical blindness with physical sight, though when we get to heaven we will all see as we cannot here, only seeing through a glass darkly here. But it has to do above all with spiritual sight. When God gives us spiritual sight, we understand who God is, we understand ourselves. We come to know something about the misery of sin, and we turn from it, and we find God's mercy in Jesus.

Number five, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. Verse eight. Many things in life push us around or knock us down, but it says that God cares for the downtrodden. And when we're beaten down, he lifts us up again. Many can testify to that. The very next Psalm is going to say he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, verse three.

Number six, the Lord loves the righteous. Verse eight. Love here, you see, is an attitude rather than an action. The other items, the previous ones, have all had to do with actions. But here it's talking about an attitude, and the reason is that it's the source of all the other actions. We ask the question: why does God act in a trustworthy way toward us? Why does he uphold the oppressed? Why does he free the prisoners? Why does he give sight to the blind and lift up those who are cast down? The answer is because he loves us. It's not because we're righteous; it's because he loves us. And even the righteousness that we find in Jesus Christ imputed to us by his grace is because of God's love.

And then, finally, verse seven, the Lord watches over the alien, verse nine. The three cases that are listed in this verse—the alien, the fatherless, and the widow—are often cited in the Old Testament as examples of those who are defenseless. So what this verse tells us is that God watches over those who are defenseless; he protects them from the wicked. And he will do that with you.

Now, the very last verse of the Psalm is one in which the writer declares that the God he has been describing and praising is going to reign for all generations. That means forever and ever. And if he's going to reign forever and ever, it follows from that that he must be praised forever and ever, too.

So here's the question: Will you praise him? Will you begin, first of all, by putting your hope in God and worshiping God as the only utterly trustworthy and reliable being in the universe, or will you continue to put your ultimate hope in human beings? If you do, you're going to be disappointed, and in the final analysis, you're going to become cynical because people will always let you down. The politicians will let you down, the intellectuals will let you down, the scientists will let you down. Everyone but God will let you down.

Jonah says in that great prayer in the second chapter of the book that bears his name, "Salvation comes from the Lord." And he was absolutely right. God alone is utterly good, utterly powerful, utterly trustworthy. So why settle for less? He's the only being in the universe about whom we can rightly say, "Hallelujah."

Our Father, we thank you for this Psalm and its introduction to what it really means to worship and its reminder of why we fail to do it, trusting ourselves or other beings instead. But our Father, we would ask for instruction, godly instruction and help for the reordering and blessing of our lives as a result of this study today and also as we go on to finish up our study of the Psalter. Do bless these things to our hearts. We need the blessing. And do it, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen.