Here is where we need to see ourselves in the picture, if we have come to know God in Jesus Christ. For this is the importance of Israel, that it was through this people, providentially preserved by God, that the divine drama of redemption was unfolded. It was through Israel that the Messiah Savior came. Therefore, it is in the company of those who believe on that Savior that what was begun in the past and is referred to by the psalmist here was brought to fulfillment. It is through the church and her message that God may be seen and worshiped now.
In the final analysis, that is what we all do apart from God's grace in drawing us to faith in Jesus Christ; we put ourselves in God's place. Adam and Eve did it in Eden. Nebuchadnezzar did it in his prideful boast over Babylon (Dan. 4:30). We do it too, often subtly—we put our own interests before God's or other people's—but also blatantly sometimes.
Having looked upward to the heavens and having called on the angels and the many heavenly bodies to worship God, the psalmist now looks downward to earth and calls on things terrestrial to join the worship chorus. Worship on earth is to echo that of heaven. As in the preceding section where the worship of heaven is sought from angels and the heavenly bodies, here worship is sought from two entities also: from the animal creation, and from human beings.
Looking upward first, the psalmist sees two entities that he urges to praise God: the angels and the heavenly bodies. These are above man in the cosmic order, just as they are in Psalm 8 in which David looks upward to “the moon and stars” and “the heavenly beings [elohim]” (Ps. 8:3-5).
We are asking a lot of questions about worship in our study of the last few psalms of the Psalter: what worship is, how we should worship, where we should worship, and so on. In Psalm 148, we find who should worship or praise God and where, the answer being everyone everywhere should praise God from the highest heavens to the lowest spots on earth.
