The Glory

DEVOTION

PSALMS

THE GLORY

Ps 149

Praise the LORD.

Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints. 2 Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the people of Zion be glad in their King. 3 Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp. 4 For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. 5 Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. 6 May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands, 7 to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron, 9 to carry out the sentence written against them. This is the glory of all his saints.

Praise the LORD.

NIV

A new song is to be on the lips of the people of God. What new song could that be? We have been singing his praises. We have been praising his name, rejoicing in our maker. We have been glad and continue to be glad every morning we awake and have one more day to extol the Lord here upon this earth. We are the people of Zion. Although in the day of David it may have referred to Jerusalem, but today Zion refers the kingdom of God or the new city of Jerusalem which is coming down from heaven. We are the people of Zion and we are glad in our King. Now it comes to something we more conservative Christians cannot quite wrap our minds around. The style of worship has taken many turns. In most cases we will not find any praising the Lord with dancing. Heaven forbid, dancing has been determined by some as a sin. We have taken the idea of worship with the tambourine and harp to various extremes. Although a piano or organ do not resemble a tambourine or harp very much, but then neither do trumpets, guitars, violins or any number of musical instruments we find in some church worship. The drums might be the closet to the tambourine and maybe we might even find a harp in some churches. But we have gone quite different then this psalm might suggest our worship should look like. However, as long as we are worshipping, with glad hearts it would seem that is all that matters, and the Lord takes delight in our worship, in fact, he takes delight in us. Being crowns with salvation does take humility, as only the prideful would say, “I do not believe” “I do not need God” “I am man”, or in the case of woman, “Hear me roar”. To become a believer, to be crowned with salvation we need to humble ourselves before him and admit we are sinners in need of forgiveness and we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. To this humble act, he responds with salvation. So each morning as sleep gives way as we waken, still in our bed, we rejoice in the Lord. We sing in our heart a new day is dawning and our heart is filled with joy. This joy is on our lips and the double edged sword, the word of God, our bible is in our hand. This is our weapon which we defeat Satan at every turn. This is our weapon we bind him with fetters, with chains that cannot be broken. We carry out the sentence against him. God banished Lucifer from heaven, cast him to earth. We must banish him from our lives, cast him to the depths of the earth. “Get thee behind me, Satan” is our shackles of iron with which we carry out the sentence against him. We will praise the Lord, all the days of our life, forever and ever, his praise will be in our heart and on our lips. This is our glory, the Lord is our glory and we are his.