Praise the Lord!
“Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” (Psalms 147:1)
At the early morning prayer service on Saturday, I sang the hymn “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine.” While singing this song to God, I went to the chorus and looked at the phrase "This is my story, ..." and thought about it for a while. I thought about my story of 50 years and asked my self what my testimony is in my story. In particular, before the 25th birthday of Victory Presbyterian Church, I thought about my church’s 25 years story for a moment. I have a heart to pray for the 25th anniversary of my church that greatly praises the Lord, the faithful Lord, the gracious Lord, the Lord of mercy and compassion, the Lord of forgiveness, and the Lord of discipline and so on. With that heart, I proclaimed the words of Psalm 147:1-3 at this morning's prayer meeting. In particular, while reading verse 1 and focusing on these three words, “good”, “pleasant” and “fitting”, I meditated on three reasons why praising God is good, pleasant, and fitting. I think these three reasons are the Lord’s will toward Victory Presbyterian Church.
First, the reason why praising the Lord is good is because the Lord is the Lord who builds His church.
Look at Psalms 147:2 – “The LORD builds up Jerusalem; ….” Since the end of last year, Victory Presbyterian Church has been meditating on the book of Nehemiah every Sunday worship service. In the book of Nehemiah that we have already meditated on, we can see that God used Nehemiah and the Israelites to build the walls of Jerusalem. However, Nehemiah confessed, knowing that the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem was not done by himself and the Israelites, but through "the good hand of my God was on me" (Neh. 2:8, 18). Likewise, our church members should acknowledge and confess that the good hand of our Lord was on us that Victory Presbyterian Church is being built up according to His promised word of Matthew 16:18, “… I … will build my church.” Therefore, we must experience the fact that praising the Lord is good. In the midst of offering such praise, we must participate in the good work that the Lord has built through the grace of His goodness. The church that the Lord builds, we must participate in building each other up as the Lord shows us our gaps and breaks us and rebuilds us. In particular, after the church's 25th anniversary service, we must more fully participate faithfully in the Lord’s work in building ourselves, our families and our church. If we fail to build ourselves we will never be able to build our families. Also, we cannot build the church if we cannot build our families. All of these things, like the word of the Lord's promise in Matthew 16:18, the Lord Himself will build in His way and in His time according to His good will. I hope and pray that we can praise our Lord as we taste (experience) His goodness.
Second, the reason why praising the Lord is pleasant is because the Lord gathers the scattered ones.
Look at Psalms 147:2 – “… he gathers the exiles of Israel.” In the Bible, there are scenes where the Lord scattered the Israelties when they didn’t repent their sins. For example, in Deuteronomy 4:27-30, there is a scene where the Lord scattered the Israelites among the nations because of His punishment for their sins, so that there were not many remaining people. Then, in the midst of suffering and pain, the Israelites cried out to the Lord and met (experienced) Him. Eventually, in the end, the Lord made the Israelites return to Him and obey His word.
This pattern of the Lord's work is still happening in our days. The Lord is scattering us when the church, His people, don’t repent our sins. When the Lord scatters due to our unrepented sins in the church, there are not many remaining in the church. But what is surprising is that we don’t pray to God even in our suffering and pain. While the church isn’t shining the light to the dark world, but rather is hiding God’s glory and thus has become a mockery of the world, we aren’t crying out to God in the midst of suffering and pain. Therefore, because we cannot meet (experience) God, we don’t return to Him in repentance and obey His words. What is our responsibility? We must participate in the Lord's work of gathering the scattered people of God. Too many of Christians are wandering away from the church, living scattered because they were hurt in the church and for other reasons. The Lord wants to bring them back together and He wants to use us. Therefore, since we see beauty in God’s providence of this scattering and gathering of His people, we must give our hearts a joyful effort in gathering His scattered people to His church. And we must praise the Lord with all our hearts because we see His beauty.
Third and last, the reason why praising the Lord is fitting is because the Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Look at Psalms 147:3 – “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Looking at the Lord’s healing work here, we can see that the Lord first heals brokenhearted and then heals their external wounds. How appropriate is the Lord’s healing ministry? But even more surprising than this, I believe that our Heavenly Father is “The Wounded Healer”' (Nowen). The Lord Jesus, who was wounded on the cross and who still has those wounds in heaven, heals us and binds our wounds. But we are rejecting the Lord’s hand and the healing and binding wounded Healer. At least in the days of Hosea, even though the prophet said to the Israelites “Come, let us return to the Lord” (Hos 6:1), who would heal them and bandaged the, the Israelites ran far away from the Lord. I think one of the reasons is because they think that God has hurt them. Of course they don’t say this. Rather, we see in ourselves the likeness of Jonah who gives up on God in resentment about why God hurts me even though He says He loves me. But we are forgetting a very important truth here. Heavenly Father, who is the wounded healer, was still when He saw His only begotten Son Jesus was hurt on the cross by sinners, doesn’t just watch us getting hurt. The Lord is the God who wants to heal and bind our hurts and wounds. Therefore, as we experience His proper healing and binding work, we must praise the Lord.
We should be compelled to praise the great Lord for His great grace (Ps. 145:3, 7). The reason why praising our great Lord is good, pleasant, and fitting is because the has built us and gathers the scattered ones and heals the brokenhearted and binds our wounds. After praising and worshiping God, we must participate in the three works of the Lord: the work of building, the work of gathering the scattered, and the work of healing and binding. Let us be faithful in doing the ministry of good, pleasant and fitting in the sight of God.
With gratitude to God for telling me through His word the ministries I should be faithful,
James Kim
(Wanting to be faithful to the ministry that the Lord entrusts to me)