Lesson 1: What Praise Actually Is

The word praise gets used constantly in church culture and rarely defined biblically. Most believers have said "let's praise the Lord" thousands of times without ever stopping to ask what that word actually means in Scripture — not in tradition, not in musical style, but in the original language and context of the Bible. In this opening session of From the Gates to the Glory, Apostle Robert Barrett opens the series by building a complete biblical definition of praise from the ground up using Psalm 150 — the final psalm in the entire Bible's songbook and the most concentrated, most physical, most all-encompassing psalm of praise in all of Scripture. From the historical and structural background of how Psalm 150 arrives as the climax of a five-psalm crescendo, to the nine instruments named and what each one reveals about the comprehensive, physical, and all-inclusive nature of praise, to the moment in 2 Chronicles 5 when the Levites played and the glory of God filled the house — this session establishes that praise is not a feeling you wait for, not a musical preference, and not a spectator activity. It is a coronation act. Every voice, every raised hand, every instrument is a declaration that this God reigns. And the only qualification required is the one stated in the final verse of Psalm 150: breath.