The final answer that Psalm 150 gives to the questions you or I might have about worship is to tell us who should praise God. The answer is as comprehensive as those that have been given to each of the other questions we might have been asking.
In yesterday's study we looked at those churches that forbid the use of instruments in worship. But there is another side to this controversy as well. We look at that side in today's study.
What an obvious flow of thought this final psalm has! After telling us where to praise God (in v. 1) and reminding us why we should praise him (in v. 2), the next three verses, exactly one-half of the psalm, tell us how God should be praised (vv. 3-5).
Where should this be done? Where should "everything that has breath” praise God? The first verse gives us a comprehensive answer. It is “in his sanctuary" and “in his mighty heavens.”
It is time to make noise, praise-noise for God. Not all worship should be noisy, of course. There are psalms of lament that call for heart-rending sorrow by God's people. Other psalms call for quiet reflection on the acts of God in history, acts that are sometimes puzzling and even incomprehensible to us. But there are times for celebration too. When David brought the ark to Jerusalem, to the place he had prepared for it, the arrival of the ark was announced by trumpets and David danced with abandon before God (2 Sam. 6:14, 15). When the people praised God for the completion of the building of the walls of Jerusalem in Nehemiah's day, the sound of trumpets, cymbals, harps, lyres and singing was so loud that “the sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away” (Neh. 12:43; see vv. 27-44).
