Another psalm not particularly noted in the commentaries nor often preached by the great preachers - but one which I found quite instructive and full of relevant lessons. Psalm 92. The note says a psalm for the Sabbath day.

1-3

"It is good to praise the Lord and to make music to your name, O Most High,..." (NIV)

"What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks, to sing an anthem to you, the High God!" (Peterson’s The Message)

Two practices that are good, very good. First, it is a good thing to praise God and to thank him. It is the right thing to do just by virtue of the fact that God made us and blesses us with innumerable blessings everyday. "Be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thess. 5:16)

By contrast, scripture teaches us one of the very worst attitudes one can exhibit is an attitude of ingratitude and complaint. Paul speaks of those who "although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him..." (Romans 1:21) He goes on to explain in that context this attitude is the root of all sin. So it is no surprise when in Philippians Paul goes on to admonish us to "do everything without arguing and complaining."

I have always tried with varying degrees of success to teach my boys the value of thanksgiving, the ugliness of complaining. And yet I have noticed the strangest phenomenon - people who live in the most materially blessed circumstances so often complain the most about things. I have been reading some of the letters the orphans have been sending over here to Denny and me. They are full of thanksgiving to us for our love and visits.

Olya Rubonenko is writing to you. I miss you, Stan, David and Mike, very much. I am looking forward for your arrival to spend time with our brothers and sisters. Vika, Ira and all who visits the church say hello to you. When I was ill, I thought about you and prayed about you, your family and your church.

We love you very much. We have only you and our church who support us in our hard times and give us pieces of advice. And we have our loving heavenly Father. You are for us like parents. We love you, because you are with us like with your own children. We love you for your kindness, love and for your attention to us.

Here are children who appreciate the value and presence of something so common as a parent! We need to be more thankful like them. Kids, when it comes to your parents, which predominates - complaint or thanksgiving. It is good and right for God to hear you giving thanks.

It is good to praise the Lord, and second, it is good to make music, to sing praises unto God’s Name. It is good because God gave us voices with the ability to sing. It is good and pleasant to use this gift, especially in praise to the One who gave it. It is good to praise God in song because it involves every individual in worship. There is one of the clear benefits of congregational singing. I am not observing worship. I am participating in worship. And it is good to praise God in song because it is edifying to do so. It lifts us up and those around us. One of my commentators related the story how that St. Augustine was moved to tears when he went to the church at Milan and heard the singing there.

In our manual on church planting, listen to what I wrote about the importance of church singing.

A most important aspect of the Sunday worship meeting is the singing. We have found this to be true from personal experience. Church growth is very much related to the quality of the singing at the church meetings. People are attracted to good singing. God made us this way. The gospel itself can be powerfully preached in the singing. By contrast, poor singing is embarrassing to those present, both members and visitors, and it tends to drive people away. In addition, members are reluctant to invite visitors if the singing is of such a quality as to be an embarrassment to all who hear.

One can claim that the singing is even more critical in certain respects than the preaching because it is often our experience that if people hear good preaching and terrible singing, they go away remembering the singing more than the sermon. A powerful sermon may be rendered ineffective by poor singing.

Paul says that "whatever we do in word or deed, we are to do heartily as unto the Lord." (Colossians 3:23) We Christians ought to excell in our singing. God deserves our very best in all that we do for him - including our worship of God in song. Does this mean only professional singers ought to sing during the worship meetings? Not at all. All Christians are told to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19). Indeed most people like to sing and want to participate in the musical worship of the church. Congregational singing makes this possible, but it needs to be perfected and done as best we can do it.

In the Old Testament much time and effort went into the worship music at the temple. This is clear from the book of Psalms that was apparently written for and used as their song book. Singers were trained and spent much time practicing for the temple worship. Why would we think that God deserves less effort from us who live under the new covenant of Jesus Christ. Indeed, we have lots more to sing about than they and more reasons to excel in our worship that we offer to God.

Christian churches would do well to have regular practice and training in all aspects of the song worship of the church. Those with a knowledge of music can teach the congregation new songs and how to sing them well. Those who can read music should be utilized to teach the others to learn to sing four parts in harmony. Even voice teachers can be well utilized to teach people to sing on key and in a most beautiful fashion. Spiritually minded Christians can help the singers to truly worship when they sing. Those with the ability to lead in song need to be training others in this needed ministry. Time should be devoted every week for all of this training. It is hard to overemphasize this point, and it would be hard for a church to spend too much time in this work. Indeed, there is a correlation between a church’s growth and the quality of her singing. We have repeatedly seen this to be true in every congregation with which we have worked. Want to plant a growing church? Invest time and training for the singing!

And observe at what times it is especially good to offer God thanks and praises. "It is good ... to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness in the evening." Under the Mosaical law, God commanded the Jews to offer both morning and evening sacrifices. We know the law was a shadow of things to come. (Hebrews 10:1) What was God trying to teach us by these old testament sacrifices offered every morning and evening? Of what were they a shadow? What do they point to that God wants under the new testament? Could it be morning and evening thanksgiving and praise? Could it be morning and evenng worship?

What are the sacrifices we are to offer as Christians? "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that praise his name." (Hebrews 13:15) It is good and right and pleasant to worship God when you get up in the morning, to give God the firstfruits of your day, to commune with him when you start your day so as to ready and prepare yourself for any eventuality that may come on that day. It is just as appropriate to worship God when you go to bed at night, to speak to him with thanksgiving at the close of every day.

An orphan writes this letter:

Vika is writing... please, what should I do? I am not a Christian. I have no mother and my father is very ill... I am going to visit the church of Christ this Sunday... I started to pray before eating, sleeping and in the morning. Before this time I never prayed, but now I started. That is all...

Here is a young orphan girl who is not a Christian praying before eating, sleeping and when she gets up in the morning, doing what Christians ought to be doing.

It is good to thank and praise God in song for his loving kindness and his faithfulness...

4-5

"For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands. How great are your works, O LORD, how profound your thoughts!"

"You made me so happy God. I saw your works and shouted for joy." (Peterson, ibid)

"The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows his handiwork."

What is it about God that makes us glad? What is good about the good news? What God has done. The creation. The new creation in Christ. The plan of redemption. The sending of his Son. The victory over death for us... "... no one has seen any God besides you who acts on behalf of those who wait for him." (Is. 64:4) God acts. It is what God has done and is doing that makes us glad and want to sing for joy.

But...

6-9

"The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand, that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed. But you, O LORD, are forever."

Now who are these wicked people of whom the psalmist speaks? In the book of psalms the wicked may simply be the ungodly or those without God in their lives. They may not be people you would consider wicked at all - they may be your neighbors and friends and relatives who are just without God. The hope of such people rests solely on the things of this life. The hope that sustains them is quickly running out. What shall they do when the end of this life comes? They will have had their good things and there will be no more.

There is something that a lot of people don’t understand. God calls them senseless fools, not a title anyone would covet. Who is this senseless fool? He is someone who doesn’t realize what earthly prosperity looks like in light of an eternal God. He doesn’t appreciate the brevity of his prosperity, how short he will be able to enjoy it, and therefore, its lack of value in light of eternity. He is the person who lays up treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal but none in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves do not break in and steal.

No, to the senseless fool, acquiring and enjoying earthly things is the main thing. It is the greatest thing. He is most concerned about this life and not the eternal future. Though materially rich here, he does not understand his poverty there - and here! Nor does he contemplate what his final end, his eternal future, will be. It is a theme repeated in the psalms and indeed throughout the bible for those willing to listen. Here is the condensed wisdom of the ages. He is a senseless fool - and there is no shortage of such throughout all the generations - who spends a lifetime acquiring riches that will soon be forever lost when he could acquire for himself eternal riches in the world to come.

But the psalm closes with the contrasting prosperity of the righteous. It is a familiar theme in scripture. The good life, the best life, is the godly life, the life with God in it. The most miserable life, the hard life, the defeated life when compared with the godly life, is the life of the wicked, the life of those who take the wrong turn, who travel down the wrong pathway.

First, the author acknowledges how God has blessed him and how his life has flourished in comparison to his enemies who have travelled down the broad and easy way away from God.

10-11

Then, the author swells to the grand climax of his theme which is that "The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God." (92:12-13)

It is the same as the other scriptures where God says, "He that would love life and see good days must ... turn from evil and do what is good..." (Psalm 34:12ff) Or when Jesus says, "I have come that they might have life and they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10)

The psalmist is saying as the bible insists from cover to cover that if you want to really be blessed, if you want to really have a good life, if you really want to be successful in the things that matter, if you really want to find joy and happiness and peace and hope, there is only one way. "The righteous will flourish..." When one plants himself in the house of the Lord, (for Christians that would be the church of the Lord), when one plants himself there and gets puts down his roots there and spends his life there, he will grow like a Cedar of Lebanon...

And the psalmist further states that if you don’t want to come down to the end of your life feeling useless and like everything you lived for is about over and coming to an end, if you want to be fulfilled in your old age, if you want to even be doing great things in your old age when you’re too old and decrepit to earn money, if you want God to make something good and beautiful and positive even out of your final years, there is only one way: "The righteous will flourish... They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, ‘The LORD is upright..." (92:14-15)

Old age is not the natural season for fruit. Even in humans, the outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed and there is fruit everday. Those who choose to listen to God are (in marked contrast to the wicked) blessed with fruit even in their old age - the knowledge of God, sanctity of character, patience, heavenly mindedness, concern for the salvation of others - and they testify to the blessing, confirming that the LORD is upright, what he says is true, that his promise of blessing has proven true in their own lives.

I saw this truth confirmed in the lives of my own parents. And I have seen the opposite truth confirmed in the elderly who ignored God.

It is the same common theme found throughout scripture. Ignore and defy God and be cursed. Listen to God and there will be blessing for you.