WE ARE COMMANDED TO PRAISE GOD AT ALL TIMES
Psalm 81:1-5
1 Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob!
Raise a song; sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our feast day.
For it is a statute for Israel,
a rule of the God of Jacob.
He made it a decree in Joseph
when he went out over the land of Egypt.
I hear a language I had not known:
The call here is clear: the children of Israel must praise
God. They must praise Him for His strength and for His deliverance. The praise
must be loud and joyful. It must continuously fill their feast day. The
children of Israel had been freed from their captors and now could rejoice in
their God.
Psalm 81:6-7
“I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I delivered you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah
They had called upon God for deliverance and He had
provided. They had suffered, making bricks for the Egyptians, and God had given
them rest.
Exodus 2:23-25
During those many days
the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their
slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to
God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with
Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
God was faithful to His covenant; He never lost sight of His
people.
Dear friends, let these verses remind us that we, too, are
called to praise our God!
Hebrews 13:15
Through him
then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the
fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
Ephesians 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him…
Like the children of Israel, we were in bondage: slaves of
the devil, of ways of the world and of our own lust. We carried the burden of
our guilt each day. We are called to rejoice in our salvation, even through
difficult times.
1 Peter 1:3-7
Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us
to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept
in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now
for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so
that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes
though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Our faith is tested during trials. God should never be on
trial, but our faith needs to be proved genuine. Our trials are diverse and
they produce grief, but they also provide a way for us to see if we really
believe what we claim we do about our God. Trials
either drive us to God or away from Him. As our difficulties drive us closer to
God, to His Word. and to our brothers in Christ, we should rejoice in our sure
salvation, in our dependence on Christ, and the soon return of our Savior. We
have much to rejoice for, just like the children of Israel!
Why don’t you take time to thank God right now? Stop to review
the goodness of God in your life. Ask yourself what practical ways you could help
others to praise God. Is it time to gather your family and make time to thank
God? You don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving Day! How about getting together
with some other believers from your church and having a particular time of
praise to the Lord? Would that be unusual? Would they be surprised?
SINCE WE ARE COMMANDED TO PRAISE, THEN WE’D BETTER DO IT!
