Hallelujah! What a Great God!
As a child I was taught the prayer “God is great and God is good.” Later as a teenager I learned the music to this prayer, turning it into a song of praise. God is worthy of the praise of His people. This psalm is about the praise of God, beginning and ending with the Hebrew word “Hallelujah.” The psalmist calls on all believers to praise God for His greatness, and gives three reasons for that praise.
The psalmist begins with a call for all who would come near to God to praise the Lord and glorify His name (1-2). In this first section the psalmist gives the first reason to praise God: He is good (3)! His name is pleasing to His people, for they have tasted and seen that He is indeed good (Ps 34:8). Brethren, we have tasted God’s goodness to us through Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:3).
The psalmist then gives the second reason to praise the Lord. God has chosen Israel as His people and for His own possession (4), not based on their worthiness but by His own love and grace (Deut 7:7-8). Brethren, we too were chosen by God before the foundation of the world not based on our worthiness but out of His love and grace (Eph 1:4).
The third reason to praise God the psalmist gives is because God is great (5-18). He emphasises his personal faith when he says “I know the Lord is great!” God demonstrates His greatness in His sovereign control over all creation (5-7) and over His providential working of history (8-14), and in comparison to dumb idols (15-18). He ends with a call for all Israel, and then all who fear (revere) the Lord to praise Him (19-21).