We could call Psalm 148 “Praise the LORD!” Over and over the psalmist proclaims, “Praise the LORD!” and then gives us one reason after another for why we ought to praise Him. He also tells us the creatures of the earth praise the LORD, the creation praises the LORD, every animate and inanimate object praises the LORD! This truth must not get by us in those times when we don’t feel like praising the LORD. In our darkest moments, in our deepest pain, the LORD is worthy of our praise. Thanks to this unnamed psalmist for reminding us of this timeless truth!
Psalm 149 starts out quite similar to Psalm 148 with a proclamation to praise the LORD! It continues in that vein, but adds a twist: Let those who worship and praise the LORD slay those who don’t. Okay. That’s not something we’d expect to hear in a contemporary praise song, but it is something we’d expect to hear in King David’s time, and in the immediate future after his time. The people of Israel were surrounded by idol worshiping nations. Those nations still claimed the land the Israelites had taken from them. The worship of the one, true, and living God was not done without struggle. In our day, we also live in a society rampant with idolatry. Our “sword” is not a literal one, but as the Apostle Paul reminded the Ephesian believers, it is the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” As we live into God’s word, and live it out in our daily lives, we are still “slaying” the spiritual forces of evil that would do us harm.
The Book of Psalms closes out in Psalm 150 with a call to praise the LORD with our voices and with our instruments. The LORD is worthy of our worship and praise every moment. We praise Him in the morning when we wake up. We praise Him throughout the day, because He is always with us and deserves our worship and praise. We praise Him together with music, dancing and singing, because–He is worthy of our worship and praise!
As we return to Luke 11, we find it full of teaching as well as Jesus’ interaction with the religious leaders. That interaction was mainly negative, because Jesus chastised them for teaching the truth, but living in contradiction to it. That style of living: teaching one thing and living another is hypocrisy. Let’s focus on that for a moment. In our day, the church is often accused of hypocrisy. When I was fifteen years old, I stopped attending church, because of all the hypocrites there. I continued to read my Bible, to pray, and to tell my friends at school about Jesus. My life wasn’t always what I read and “taught” to my friends. My anger often spilled over into daily life. My language wasn’t pure. I was being a hypocrite myself, but it’s always easier to see the shortcomings in others than in ourselves. We tend to judge others on their actions and ourselves on our intentions. A couple of years into my boycott on attending any church activity with the “hypocrites” there, a new pastor came to our church. Pastor Andy Weigand started coming to dinner at our home. He was a single, young man who had recently graduated from Harvard. I was intrigued. Why would a Harvard graduate “waste” his time serving as a pastor in a tiny church in Gipsy, Pennsylvania? After a while, I started meeting with Andy to study the Bible together. Then about six months after he came, Andy asked me why I didn’t go to church? I told him it was because of the hypocrites. Andy proceeded to ask me a series of questions about whether there were hypocrites on the football team at school, in the cafeteria, and then he asked, “Do you ever do anything hypocritical yourself?”
I had to say, “Yes,” but then I added, “What’s your point?”
Andy answered, “I always figured I’d rather go to church with a hypocrite than to hell with him.” I was in church the next week. Jesus called the religious leaders hypocrites, and they were. They weren’t seeking to change, though. We all have some hypocrisy that’s obvious to others, or maybe hidden under the surface. I’m grateful to Andy for challenging me in love about mine. It has given me the opportunity for more than four decades to mingle with other hypocrites in the church, who are seeking to let Jesus transform us from the inside out, so when we see Him face-to-face one day, He will affirm our faithfulness and not our hypocrisy!