Universal Worship Defined

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Universal Worship Defined

Psalm 150:1-6 ESV

1 Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
2 Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!

3 Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
4 Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
5 Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!

The final Psalm is a universal call to worship. It begins and closes with Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. This is the privilege and joy of every believer, but it is also the universal responsibility of all creation which includes all mankind. The universalism of this Psalm is a unique look into the requirement of worship.

1. Psalm 150:1 The where of praise is described. It is local, “in his sanctuary.:” As all politics are local, the beginning place of praise is in God’s local dwelling place. The gathering of God’s people is his sanctuary. The church is his house in a peculiar way and praise is always “comely for the upright.”

But His praise is not confined to the local expression. For the Psalmist it went far beyond Israel. It was to be universal to the “mighty heavens.” As Israel was not then to consider their God a local deity, so now no church has the right to nationalize God. He is in his “mighty heavens” and he is unconfined.

Praise is recognized as a local responsibility but it is universal in its extent.

2. Psalm 150:2 The reason God is to be praised is simple.

A. It is because of what He does. He is to be praised “for his mighty deeds.” It is unbelief to fail to believe God is active in His creation doing “mighty deeds.” We are sure of this because his word tells us it is so. And if we look we see him in judgment and mercy. We fail to recognize God’s activity not because it is not before us, but because we fail to look for it.

There is a reason lying behind His activity that demands our praise. This is “his excellent greatness.” All praise to God is directed ultimately to this first truth of God’s self revelation. God, in his being, is worthy of man’s absolute devotion. The self-revealed triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is infinitely worth of the praise of all creation.

3. Psalm 150:3-5 The Psalmist describes how God is to be praised. He is to be praised with humanly invented esthetic means. This writer names particular musical instruments. There are enough different instruments named to assure that all the inventions of man that can be used to make harmonious music can be included here.

The qualification for the instruments and the sounds they produce is that they are to praise God. That does not exclude esthetic gratification but it does exclude human gratification, entertainment, and sensual enjoyment. It does not say that any musical sound which instruments can produce is to be accepted. The qualification is singular. It is to “praise the Lord.”

This is neither easy to define nor always easy to recognize. But the difficulty does allow us to dismiss all musical instruments or to accept the blatant entertainment that has been introduced into Christian worship.

Psalm 150:6 The who of worship is stated so plainly it cannot be misunderstood, “everything that has breath.” This is a universalism that so plainly extends beyond Israel that honest Old Testament commentaries do not attempt to so confine the breadth and scope of the statement.

This is applied to everything in general. Psalm 19:1 has to apply here. The creation is to be praise for its creator. In everything and always it displays His glory the work of His hands.

More particularly this addresses mankind. As those who have breath, that can express God’s glory, power, and goodness, man universally has the responsibility to praise God.

How can this Psalm be applied? There are three ways this affects our worship..

1. God is to be praised for His Creation. We live in a sin-cursed world. But we do not live in a God- deserted world. Roses have thorns. But they are roses with their beauty and perfume.

2. The responsibility of praise is a call to forsake selfishness. The one who praises God realizes the responsibility that he is a giver and not just a taker. It is easy to forget this but worship is giving God His worth. This giving must extend to the whole of loving God and no less to loving our neighbor.

3. This Psalm answers the question of what the church can use to praise God. The requirement of

a cappella singing in worship should forever be put to rest by the information given here..

John Calvin begins an argument in Psalm 33 that musical instruments are a part of the Old Testament typical worship that is done away with in the New Testament church. He, in no way proves this, he merely states it and then takes his statement as proof. But when he comes to Psalm 150 he is too honest to do this. He states there is a universal requirement but he will not use it to correct his earlier position. Many earlier Reformed commentaries follow Calvin in this understanding.

Unless one is willing to say the Old Testament is not authoritative in directing worship in the church, the plain directive of Psalm 150 cannot be extended to mankind universally and exempt the use of instruments in the church.

It is not enough to say the New Testament never tells us to use musical instruments in worship. For the church not to use them there must be something later than Psalm 150 which forbids their use in the church.

With everything that can be used for praise let everyone who has breath say Praise the Lord.