Psalms 149:6-9 (NKJV) 6Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand,7 To execute vengeance on the nations, And punishments on the peoples; 8To bind their kings with chains, And their nobles with fetters of iron; 9To execute on them the written judgment— This honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!
We have been studying James’ admonition that we must resist the devil. If we do so from a position of true submission to God, he will flee from us. In our previous post, we started exploring some of the weapons that God has given us to enable us to resist. In 2 Corinthians 10:1-4 we found that we resist the devil by taking our thoughts into captivity. We replace imaginations and arguments that try to take a higher place in our minds than the knowledge of God. That knowledge is what God says about us in his Word, and what he has shown us in our relationship with him. We do that by meditating on God’s written word and by considering that truth more relevant to the situation we face than what the world and our experience tell us.
I want to look at a second weapon God has placed in our arsenal. We usually do not view this as a weapon at all, but in today’s verse we see that it is. That is the weapon of praise and worship. Psalm 149 combines the praises of God with a two-edged sword. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6 that the two-edged sword is the Word of God. When we use these two dynamic forces together, they become a formidable weapon against our enemy, the devil.
I want to point out something in this verse that may seem insignificant but is not. God says it is the “high praises” of God in their mouths that is a weapon. We are not talking about singing a few songs at the beginning of a service. We are not talking about a good group of musicians playing entertaining music before the preacher begins. We are talking about the high praises and worship in the mouths of God’s people. This has little to do with the quality of the music and a great deal to do with the heart of the people.
In the last church we started, we became well known for our praise and worship. We had some good musicians, and we practiced so that we played and sang well. That said, we were not great musicians. When visiting ministry came to our church, they always commented on the quality of our praise and depth of our worship. Many assumed that we were especially skilled and that was why we had what we did in our services. They were wrong.
One of our friends who visited us from a place we ministered in India, was so impressed that he wanted to duplicate it in his church. The next time we visited him we found that he had hired professional musicians to play in the yearly conference we had. Not only were they not able to produce what we had in our church, but they produced the exact opposite. The problem was they were trying to accomplish something in the spirit by being professional in the flesh.
I believe good music is a great help in creating the appropriate atmosphere in the church. Nevertheless, the heartfelt, honest offering of praise and worship from the mouths of God’s people will transform both the atmosphere and the people themselves. God will be able to accomplish things in our corporate presence that would be impossible if we just sing songs and have a good time.
The job of the worship team is to lead the people of the congregation into the presence of God. It is not to play impressive music that will serve to draw people to the church. I do not think there is anything wrong with Christian musicians using their gifts to bless God’s people. However, this differs from using music to guide individuals into a personal encounter with God’s presence.
How does this work as a weapon? When we come into God’s presence with a heart to experience him and know him better, something changes in us. Our focus changes. Instead of being focused on our problems, the difficulty of our situation or the negative emotions that we all have sometimes, we turn our hearts, our minds and our eyes to the God who is able to solve every problem and loves us in every situation. I used to tell our people as we began our service, “For the next 45 minutes to an hour you cannot do anything about what you are facing in the natural. You can put yourself into the position to hear from God and be strengthened to overcome when you leave here.” Ps. 121:1 tells us where we can look for help.
Psalms 121:1-2 (NLT) 1I look up to the mountains, does my help come from there? 2My help comes from the LORD, who made the heavens and the earth!
This is exactly what happens when we elevate our eyes in praise and worship. We realize our help does not come from any natural thing. Our help comes from the Lord and when my eyes are on him, I cannot fail. That is what happens when we fill our mouths with praise and worship. Our eyes and our minds are elevated to see from God’s perspective instead of our own. This is a great weapon. In the church service it is an opportunity to corporately change our perspective as we encourage one another. There is a powerful dynamic that is released when God’s people praise him together for all he has done. It gets even more powerful when we move as a group into worship and experience his presence together.
Nevertheless, that is not the only time we should deploy this weapon. We must also praise and worship him in our personal time. We can even praise him as we go through our day. Although music and singing are important tools to help us develop the right attitude of both praise and worship, it is the attitude itself that is the real weapon. When I cultivate thanksgiving by replacing thoughts of what God has not yet done, with remembrance of all that he has done in the past, my perspective is also elevated. When I think of his goodness and, even in my thoughts, draw near to him in appreciation and adoration, I am putting the weapon of praise and worship in play.
In Psalm 149, it combines the dynamic of praise and worship with the sword of the spirit, the Word of God. We have already talked about the power of the Word to help us take control over our thinking. We have also looked at the promises of God as a part of our resistance. When I combine faith in God’s Word with praise and worship, the Word of God begins to be more and more real in my heart and mind. As I recount the great deeds he has done, either from the Bible or my own experience, my faith in his Word rises. As I worship him, declaring who he is and yielding to his presence, my connection to the power in his promises is enhanced.
As this process works in me, I believe his Word more and more. It is not something that is in my mind. It is something that happens in my spirit. I may not understand anything new about the promise than I knew before, but somehow it is simply more real to me. When I combine the knowledge of God’s Word with high praise and worship, something changes in me. The Word, which was once something I appreciated intellectually, becomes flesh in me. Once that happens, there is nothing that can defeat me. Even when it does not seem like anything is changing outwardly, the reality of God’s Word and the working of his spirit inwardly will sustain me until the will of God inevitably comes to pass in my life.
Leave a Reply