#DailyDevotion It Is Delightful & Beautiful To Sing To The LORD
Psalm 147 Praise the LORD! It is good to sing hymns to our God because He is delightful, and praise is beautiful. 2The LORD is rebuilding Jerusalem and gathering those of Israel who were driven away. 3He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. 4He decides how many stars there should be and gives all of them names. 5Our Lord is great and very strong,and there’s no limit to what He knows. 6The LORD makes those who suffer happy again but throws the wicked down on the ground.
And some 144 it was “blessed be,” and Psalm 145 it was “I will extol,” and then and 146 all the rest of the psalms begin with “praise the Lord.” So here too we are called to praise the Lord. It is an invitation to us to examine all the Lord has done for us and give him thanks and praise. There is some debate as to how verse one should be translated. Do we sing hymns to our God because he is delightful or is it delightful to sing hymns to our God? We know the direction this translation takes. But seeing the parallel “praise is beautiful” I think it more likely that “it is delightful” is the intent of the psalm.
This Psalm was probably written during the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple after the exile into Babylon. It is credited to the Lord the building of it and the calling of the people back from Babylon. However, I believe that if it points to a much further time when our Lord Jesus Christ came to renew his covenant with his people, build the temple, which is his body, that is all who would believe in His name. Indeed it is good to sing about His crucifixion, death and resurrection. It is delightful and beautiful to do so. We all should have a hymnal at home so we may, with all of our family, sing praise to our Lord and God Jesus Christ.
There are several other reasons he gives praise to the Lord here. One is that He heals the brokenhearted and bandages up their wounds. The Lord Jesus does this in the gospel as He forgives our sins, He moves our guilt, and gives us His Holy Spirit we may have His light and life in us. Have you looked out into the vastness of space? We declare that the Lord decides how many stars there are and he gives them all names, obviously not the same names that we give them. He praises the Lord for all of His strength, His greatness, and His knowledge which is beyond all understanding. While we have many scientists with great understanding we should always realize they are consistently and constantly baffled by creation. Only the Lord our God is able to comprehend and understand it all because it all came from His mind.
The Jews who returned to Babylon, who suffered much because of their sins there, the Lord made happy again. He defeated their enemies who tried to prevent the building of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem. They were again able to worship and give praise to God for all his benefits to them. Now we continue to follow Christ, who pick up our cross daily, we look to the day when He makes us happy. No matter how we suffer or who causes us to suffer, You know that he is building the New Jerusalem, the New Heavens and New Earth To dwell in and live with him forever. We know that all who rejected him and who caused us to suffer receive everything that is due to them in the lake of fire.
Gracious God merciful Father, we give you thanks and praise for sending Your Son Jesus Christ into the world to gather for Himself a holy people, to build up the New Jerusalem, and to be our Temple. Give us understanding that we may sing with the knowledge all that You have done and will do. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.