4. Dedication For Praise To God Psalm 30:4

Text:  “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness.”      Psalm 30:4.

Good morning, singing saint!  Saint’s are not some historical figures, canonized by popes or priests or prelates.  No!  Every soul that has been, will be, and is Spiritually regenerated by the Lord God Jehovah, qualifies to be called a ’saint’.  Fact.  And true saints are all dedicated, set apart, for praise, worship, and thanksgiving to our Holy Lord God.  Let me hear it?  ’Hallelujah!’  We praise Thee, Lord God Almighty!

Verse 4.  “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of His.  David would not fill his choir with reprobates but with sanctified persons who could sing from their hearts.  He calls to you, ye people of God, because you are saints: and if sinners are wickedly silent, let your holiness constrain you to sing.  You are His saints - chosen, Blood-bought, called, and set apart for God; sanctified on purpose that you should offer the daily sacrifice of praise. Abound ye in this Heavenly duty. (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 144)  

When the Lord God granted me repentance and faith - through the reading of His Word contained in a prison issue King James Version Bible - and very soon after that day in 1979, in cell 9 of H Block 6, H.M.P. Maze, Northern Ireland; He gave me a promise I could claim for myself, and it was written there in Psalm 40:3: “And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God; many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”

By simple, childlike, faith I claimed this verse as a promise from the Lord God in prayer, and by His great grace, He has fulfilled this promise to me, over and over again, down through the last 36 years since that day that He saved me.  God’s Word is truth.

Here is what Haddon Spurgeon, ’the prince of preachers’ has to say on this matter:

“Psalm 40:3.  This man who talks about his song, and seems to be very much struck with the fact that he has become a singer, was formerly a man of prayer.  I doubt not that he was still praying while he was praising; but he began to pray before he began to praise.  It is ill to go in the choir first; we must begin our Spiritual experience at the ’penitent form’.  He who sings without having wept may have to weep, by and by, where he can never sing.  Listen to what this man’s experience had been: ’I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.’  That is where God gets His singers, out of the place of praying and weeping.  Where they learn to pray they begin to sing.  Oh, yes, even in Heaven itself, the sweetest voices that there praise God and the Lamb belong to those who came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb!  Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple.  Do not try to get the joy of Christ without first having sorrow for sin…

“This man, who says that God has put a new song in his mouth, began with a new prayer in his heart: ’I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.’  Further, this man, who sings so well that he cannot help talking about it, was once in a very deplorable state where there was no singing for him; but God brought him up out of it…’He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a Rock, and established my goings.’”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Psalms, The C.H. Spurgeon Collection, pages 54-55)   

Many professing Christ in this 21^st Century, seem to have little to sing about!  Singing a praise to God, seems to be seen as ’doing God a favour’!  How sad!

If the Lord God has ’…brought up our souls from the grave…’; if He has, by His free grace and totally unmerited favour, ’…kept us alive…’; and saved us from ’going down to the pit…’ - should this miracle of God’s grace not cause our very souls to be uplifted unto our Saviour in deep heartfelt praise?  How can we cease from singing His praise?  How can we fail to utterly worship and adore the Living Lord God?

“Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness.” (Psalm 30:4)

“Men who know from what they are saved, men who have felt the iron rod of the Law, and have been crushed and broken beneath the millstones of conviction, these are they who appreciate ‘free grace and dying love’ to the full, and speak of it, and sing of it.  I do not find so much of this singing now, and the reason is because there has been so little of the deep experience of which our good old fathers used to speak.”             (C.H. Spurgeon, Psalms, The C.H. Spurgeon Collection, page 55)

Verse 4.  “…Give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness.”  Why give thanks when we remember God’s Holiness?  Why?  Because it is His ’Holiness’ that condemns our sinful souls down into a Christ-rejecter’s Hell, for sin cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven!  Selah…now think deeply on this!  The Thrice Holy Lord God, Who cannot even look upon sin without punishing it sore, now, because of our covering in Christ’s sinless Blood by faith, permits us to stand in His Holy Presence with praises in our mouths instead of screams of terror and fear!  That is why we ’…give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness’.  We remember the horror He has shielded us from, and the great Sacrifice of His Own dear Son at Calvary made to deliver us from all sin.  Thanks be to Thee, dear Lord God!  We lift up our very souls in praise and adoration.

Thought:  IF you and I are ’His saints’, let us ’Sing continually unto the Lord’, and ’give everlasting thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness’.  Amen.