Praise and Worship (III): Giving thanks leads to Praise

---continuing

As we have seen earlier, the psalmist starts by inviting the people to "give thanks" to the Lord. And then, he invites them to make a joyful noise with "songs of praise". Psalm 100, which is also used as an alternative "invitation to praise" in the liturgy says

Ps. 100
[4] Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him,
bless his name!

I think it helps to see how the Temple of Jerusalem was designed to understand the flow of Praise and Worship (We know in detail mostly the last temple which was built around 35BC, which is much later than the time when the psalm was written, but I hope it helps to give a glimpse of the design) . If you see the plan of the Jerusalem temple, it is constructed with several areas or layers. The outer most is the "Court of the Gentile", then moving inward, there are various courts, and then in the inner most of the temple, there is the Holy of the Holies, where no one can enter, and even the priest can only enter once a year. This is the holiest place for the Jews, where they put the ark of the covenant. This is the place of God's presence.

Psalm 100 tells us that the Jews enter the gate of the temple with "Thanksgiving". Then they come into the courts with Praise!

The temple of Jerusalem was built with different degrees of Holiness, from the holiest inside (God's presence) to the least holy at the outside (that is the world, this is how they see). You might wonder what this means, and how it is related to our flow of Praise and Worship.

I guess we need to understand the meaning of "Holy". It comes from the word "consecrated" or literally means "set apart". So this is how the temple is designed. From the outside, that is the world and the gentile, we come into the courts of the Israelites, that is God's chosen people in the world. Israel is "consecrated" or "set apart" for the Lord.

[6] "For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.
Deut 7:6

Then moving inward, only priests can come to the Court of Priest. Priests are the "consecrated" people among the Israelites, they are "set apart" for the Lord among the Israelites.

Aaron was set apart to consecrate the most holy things, that he and his sons for ever should burn incense before the LORD, and minister to him and pronounce blessings in his name for ever.
1 Chr 23:13

And then the inner most is the Holy of the Holies, where God dwells. It is the holiest place because God as the Creator of everything is set apart from the creation, but the beauty is that he set himself apart "for" us, his creation. This place is the presence of God for the Jews.

Of course, for us, the new testament people, we are God's Holy Temple. St. Paul said

1Cor 3.
[16] Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?
[17] If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.

And so the flow of the praise and worship helps us to achieve the same thing. Just as the Temple is designed with different degrees of "holiness", so the praise and worship is also designed to bring the people's "heart" to different degrees of "consecration" to God, that is bringing the hearts of the people to be set apart for the Lord, to be consecrated for the Lord, to be Holy for the Lord our God little by little, or step by step, until we truly enter the inner most of the temple, that is God's dwelling place, where we consecrate ourselves fully to God.

Let us say it again, the movement of praise and worship is the movement of our hearts to be set apart for the Lord step by step until we come to the full consecration for the Lord in the deepest of our selves, until we give ourselves set apart for the Lord wholly and fully.

We enter the presence of God with thanksgiving, just as the Jews enter through the gates with thanksgiving. As we give thanks, we passes through from "our world" to "God", just as the Jews enter from the "world" to the "temple" through the gate.

Do you know what happen when you give thanks? You start to look in your life, and in your world, where God is, where his blessings are, where you have received grace upon grace. And for all that God has given to us, we give him Thanks! And as we give thanks, we "enter through the gate" into what God is doing, into the kindness and the love of God. And only with this awareness, can we start to Praise God for who he is. We praise God because he deserves our praise.

Ps. 147
[1] Praise the LORD!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for he is gracious,
and a song of praise is seemly.

The psalmist says we enter His gate with thanksgiving, and so we start from our worries, our world, our self-centredness, and we turn to what God does for us in our lives. We learn to see what we have received: Love, kindness, grace, and blessings. And for these we give thanks to God. And as we give thanks to God, we start to see who this God is. We started to see the Love that he has for us. And we move on from "the gift" to the "Giver". If in thanksgiving we look into "our lives", then in Praise, we fix our eyes on THE "God".

In praise we start "to set aside" the so called our "world", and we move into the courts of God to gaze in his sanctuary, to see the God who loves us, and the God whom we love.

Ps. 27
[4] One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD,
and to inquire in his temple.

And together with the Psalmist, we start to Praise God with our eyes fixed on him!

Ps.150
[1] Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty firmament!
[2] Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his exceeding greatness!
[3] Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
[4] Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
[5] Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
[6] Let everything that breathes praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD!

--to be continued