I will extol the Lord (111:1).  “Lift up your voice, now lift up your voice!  Great is the Lord!”  Extol.  Praise.  Maybe we don’t spend enough time here praising God, though that depends on what you think it means to praise God.  What does it look like, feel like, to praise God?  That’s a tough one to be asking the Frozen Chosen.  Well, we certainly praise God in song and in prayer.  Our praying is our acknowledgment that God is the only one to whom we can pray.  If we pray to Him at all, it is only by His grace—God before me and behind, in my waking and my sleeping.  That acknowledgment is praise.  To know that God is indeed God is praise.  In song, in prayer, we thank God.  I know it can sound rote and lifeless at the end of the reading of the sermon text each Sunday when we say, “Thanks be to God.”  Robots could say it with more heart, right?  Beloved, we don’t have to sing it or shout it or even say it with a little choke in our voice to feel it, deeply.  Emotion and emotionalism are quite different things.  Some churches work hard at working emotions; let this be a church that works hard at knowing and proclaiming the Word.

Why isn’t Presbyterian worship more . . . more . . . you know—happy!  That depends on what makes you happy.  Is it not worship, if it doesn’t make you happy?  Is it not God, if it doesn’t make you happy?  Or make me happy?  What makes God happy?  We can lose sight of that.  We can become so preoccupied with our own happiness that we lose sight of what makes God happy.  That’s biblical, to be sure!  What pleases God is our hearty acknowledgment that God is indeed God, that we are in His hands, that His are loving hands, the most loving hands we could ever imagine.  Consider what He has done for us, by His hands.

Presbyterian worship, as I’ve experienced it in congregations all over this nation, as worshiper and as pastor, is reverent; my father, who grew up Presbyterian, remembered how, when he was a boy, worship would open with words from Habakkuk: “The Lord is in His holy Temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Hab 2:20).  That’ll wipe the smile right off your face, eh?  The sense of awe permeates our worship, and the fear of the Lord, in the best possible sense.  But we get confused about this fear of the Lord that the Bible instructs us to feel.  We don’t like to feel fear, and we don’t really know why we should feel afraid when it comes to God—why would we call out “Daddy!” and tremble at the same time?  That is blessing, and that is trouble, beloved.  We approach God as His children in Jesus Christ, but even children tremble a little at the explosion of thunder overhead, the sudden jagged brilliance of lightning.  God lets us know with Whom we have to do.  Are we going to talk over Him, in His own house?  He loves us; we are made in His image and likeness, but He is not like us.  Presbyterian worship is an expression of praise in love and deepest respect, reverence—this is becoming harder for us to understand in our mandatory strictly casual times.  We’re actively losing our grasp of what reverence means and why it would ever matter.

Extol the Lord, praise Him with uplifted voice, all your heart—we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Dt 6:5, Mk 12:30).  But what would that look like?  I suppose it looks very much like Jesus.  We raise our voices in praise for the one who was raised, for the one who raises.  We lift our voices for the one who lifts up.

The psalm praises God for His works: “they are pondered by all who delight in them” (111:2).  Some of my happiest moments have been in contemplation of God’s works.  Is it this way for you, too?  The most perfect sunrise you ever witnessed.  The most blessed sunset you ever saw.  The mountains, the sea, the lake, the plains, stretching out in every direction, vast and alive.  Wildflowers in the desert.  The night sky beyond the glare of cities.  The planets, about which we learn more with each passing decade.  The depths of the sea and the forest.  The ways of hummingbirds.  What kind of God fashions all these?  And human beings—fearfully and wonderfully made!  All the works of the Lord—brilliant is far too dull a term.

We see God’s work in creation and in providence, that church-y term for God’s constant care of what He has made: God takes an active, ongoing interest.  That is providence.  Salvation, beloved!  Deliverance, restoration, blessing, a future and a hope.  God fills our hearts with joy that cannot be expressed even by the happiest words; we are filled beyond our understanding; we are humbled; we are loved.  We feel reverence—sometimes we begin to feel we may be starting to comprehend it.  Sometimes, it causes me to tremble.

Psalm 111 sings of the glory and majesty of God’s deeds: God making Himself known all through His creation and all through His Word.  God invites us to know Him.  The glory of His deeds is not their luminous afterglow, but the mark of His ongoing, committed, active interest in all He has made.  The glory of God is the unmistakable intimation of His presence.  How often even we faithful miss God’s glory!  Yet He gives us glimpses all the time.

The psalm connects this glory and majesty with the righteousness of God, as though the glory were a display of God’s righteousness, perfect righteousness.  Humans have been very diligent at making displays of human glory, human majesty.  We have done a much poorer job of displaying righteousness: we want the glory without becoming too concerned about the righteousness.  We may be in God’s likeness, but we are not like God.  God shows us that righteousness glows with glory, glory the light of righteousness.  Faded glory—human glory is always fading because it is no glory, only the pompous costume of vanity.  God’s glory never fades: it is an eternal glory.

We are forgetful, negligent, distracted—we walk out of the house without our keys.  We leave our coffee on top of the car as we drive off.  We forget our phone, misplace it, and have no idea how we could ever forget our phone—why, our phone is our life!  We are forgetful.  God knows it—the Bible tells us again and again just how well God knows it!  This psalm praises God who “has caused His wonders to be remembered” (111:4).  God causes.  How do we remember God?  God causes.  How do we love God?  God causes.  How do we have faith?  God causes; He creates, for He is Creator.  His creation is the outworking of His love.  We are forgetful, and He causes us to remember; remembering is life for us, remembering is hope, remembering is peace.  The psalm associates this causing us to remember not with God’s glory or majesty but with God’s grace and compassion: His eternal tenderness for us.  Because He loves us, He causes us to remember.  We do not have a God who forgets and abandons us, but a God who maintains relationship, who initiates relationship where we had forgotten and were happy to forget.  God doesn’t reject us.  We—people, humanity—reject God.  It doesn’t look too pretty: just look around, outside the church, and inside churches today.  And people, even Christians, feel confused and indignant about this wrath of God thing, as though we should ever fear the Lord.

God remembers us, feels eternal tenderness for us, and He constantly cares for us—the sure provisions of the Lord.  “He provides food for those who fear Him” (111:5), even for those who do not.  By and large, we are quite well fed.  America loves food and likes to eat.  Me too!  Do we like the bread God gives?  Would we give up other food, for that bread?  Remember, Jesus spoke of the bread his disciples hadn’t yet perceived: doing the will of our Father in heaven (Jn 4:34).  This will is explained in the Word.  The Word is our bread; Christ is our bread.  God provides food for those who fear Him, food for life.  Truly, as the psalm sings, God “remembers His covenant forever” (111:5).  Prince was right, forever is a mighty long time.

But this fear of the Lord.  It confuses us and makes us feel afraid, so we reject it, want no part of it—love drives out fear!  Be it so—only let love learn reverence.  We read in Proverbs, “Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; through the fear of the Lord evil is avoided” (Pr 16:6).  As you love, without fear, be careful to obey the Lord and to serve Him; or is that not what people understand by love, not the love people want?  Is love when I live however I want, and God does not condemn?  Because how could God disapprove.  Beloved, God is remarkably intolerant—of sin.  Yet God is also, blessedly, amazingly patient.

We read this word, covenant, in the Bible; we hear it sometimes in church.  A covenant is a binding, sacred commitment.  No contract I know of requires that we sign our name in blood, though we joke about it, that and giving our firstborn.  The Bible is very clear: a covenant is sealed with blood.  A covenant demands blood: no blood, no covenant.  A covenant is a matter of life and death.  This is no contract, compact, agreement, or understanding.  A covenant means forever.  A covenant is the hands of God breaking through to embrace us, to bring us fully into the presence of God, fully into the love of God.  The food God gives is part of His fulfilment of the covenant He has made with us.  He provides.  Those in covenant with Him perceive this, know they receive this, and praise Him.  Those who are not in covenant do not perceive, receive, or praise the power of God.

“He has shown His people the power of His works” (111:6).  God’s Word is a continual demonstration of God’s power, the power of His works of creation and His works of constant care, His providence.  God is at work, powerfully.  What God sets out to do He will do.  What He has set out to do is claim a people for Himself: here we are.  He has committed Himself to bring His people fully into the fullness of His presence, the fullness of his glory and love.  This is His righteousness at work.  The umbrella term for all this is grace.  Scripture tells us God gave His people freedom and a place to live under His blessing.  The promised land was like a physical testimony to His blessings.  But the people preferred slavery and the place of slavery.  As they failed to follow the way He gave, God allowed them to experience the result of their way: loss of freedom.

How could His people go astray?  Did they have no direction from God?  Was there something unattractive in the way God gave them?  Our psalm affirms that “The works of His hands are faithful and just; all His precepts are trustworthy” (111:7).  However we may falter, God remains true to Himself, His covenant, His promise.  People are inconstant; God is constant.  In our times, there is much talk of justice yet seemingly such little understanding of justice!  We take from you and give to them; they keep us in power, and that is justice.  So justice is a pretty cover for a power grab?  Where shall we learn what justice truly is?  There is One who is just, whose works are just.  But there may also be times when we agree with theologian Robert W. Jenson: “[b]y no standard of justice known to us,” he writes, “could we examine the facts of history and conclude that ‘God is just.’”[1]  Human history makes it difficult indeed to extol God.  We cast ourselves farther and farther away, yet God continually draws us near: His blood-bought, blood-guaranteed covenant faithfulness.  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

God’s “precepts are trustworthy” (111:7).  We live in times when trust is becoming an empty term, laughable, but we laugh to hide the tears: life requires a foundation of trust; so, too, flourishing; love requires a foundation of trust, constant, committed, and unshakeable.

Precepts.  We never use that word.  Scripture does.  Direction for life, stronger than mere advice—rules for living, rules of conduct: the practical application of law to daily living.  Do this not that.  God’s precepts are what it looks like for you and me day by day to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.  God’s precepts are what it looks like to be in Jesus Christ, taking the name of Jesus with us, within us, practicing daily life in imitation of the character of Jesus.  To live this way is to live “in faithfulness and uprightness” (111:8).  It is life in Christ.

As this psalm concludes, it lifts up its voice in praise of the Lord: “He provided redemption for His people” (111:9).  The psalm interprets this redemption as fulfillment of “His covenant,” a covenant that stands “forever”: a mighty long time.  The Old Testament, also, understands God our Father to be Redeemer.  Redemption is the fulfillment of a promise.  Redemption is the recovery of what was lost, through some satisfaction, a price, payment.  Such a price!  Such a payment!  God has pledged Himself to our constant care, and how we need that care, wayward, stumbling, hungry as we cause ourselves to go through this life.  God causes us to go another way; He strengthens and feeds us.

We must be pretty special, huh?  Is that it?  Clearly, we are dear in the eyes of our Father in heaven, but there is something even dearer to Him: the glory of His name, His holy integrity, the fulfillment of His covenant promise.  If we allow ourselves to become ensnared by some snuggly notion of our personal specialness, to that degree we lose sight of what’s special about God, we stray to that extent from “the fear of the LORD,” which “is the beginning of wisdom” (111:10), as this psalm and elsewhere in Scripture reminds us, teaches us, wants us to understand and live out.  The only wisdom Scripture knows, the only wisdom worthy the name, is wisdom founded upon the fear of the Lord.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] Robert W. Jenson.  Ezekiel.  Brazos Theological Commentary.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos P, 2009.  123.