Why should Christians sing to God? There are many reasons. Songs teach us wonderful truths about God and salvation. Songs help us to remember. Try putting a Bible verse to music and you'll find yourself remembering it better. Psychologists tell us that singing is good for our emotional health. When we sing together, we express our unity as God's people. But there is another important reason to sing: God tells us to do so! From the first verse (″let the distant shores rejoice″) to the last (″praise his holy name″), we are called to be glad, rejoice, worship, and praise.

Verses 1-5 paints a glorious and terrifying picture of the God who is worthy of all praise. The psalmist uses imageries that remind us of Israel's days in the wilderness, where God shows His presence by the cloud and pillar of fire (Exodus 13:21). The cloud both reveals and hides God. When the cloud came, Israel knew that God was in her midst. But this cloud hid God from them, protecting ″the people from a lethal dose of God's glory″ (Tremper Longman III, Exodus). The fire symbolises God's judgment on His enemies (Psalm 97:3). Besides cloud and fire, the psalmist also uses lightning to describe God's frightening presence. At Mount Sinai, Israel experienced God in the lightning and thunder and ″everyone in the camp trembled″ (Exodus 19:16). So awesome is God's presence that even mountains, symbols of immovable strength, ″melt like wax before the Lord″ (Psalm 97:5).

Repeatedly we have seen in the psalms that one expression of God's glory is His judgment on the wicked. Promoting righteousness and justice through salvation and judgment, is so central to God and His work that the psalmist portrays them as ″the foundation of his throne″ (v. 2).

In verses 6-9, the psalmist calls on all things to worship God, from the heavens above and all peoples on earth (v. 6), to the false gods and spiritual powers that lie behind them (v. 7; see 1 Corinthians 10:19-20), to his own people in the villages of Judah (v. 8).

The psalm closes by addressing the righteous (v. 11), the faithful followers of the Lord. He exhorts us to hate evil (v. 10). 1 John reminds us, ″if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them″ (1 John 2:15).

Finally, the psalmist rejoices in God's blessings on His people: He guards and protects them (Psalm 97:10); He shines His light on them, driving out darkness and fear; He fills their hearts with joy (v. 11). The only appropriate response is to say ″rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous″ (v. 12).

A non-singing Christian or church is a contradiction. Certainly, there's more to praise and worship than singing songs, but it is not less than that. To be a Christian is to sing.