Psalm 148 draws back the curtain on a universe already in worship. Angels, stars, oceans, mountains, animals, and people are all summoned to do one thing: lift up the Lord’s uniquely exalted name, the glory that towers over everything He has made. Verse 13 reminds us that there is no rival to His name, no equal to His splendor. In a world full of impressive achievements and noisy self-promotion, this verse quietly but firmly redirects our attention to the One whose worth is infinitely greater than anything we can see or build.

A Name Above Every Name

“Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens” (Psalm 148:13). Scripture consistently tells us that God’s name is not just a label; it is a revelation of His character, authority, and covenant love. He declares, “I am the LORD; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols” (Isaiah 42:8). To exalt His name is to honor Him as He truly is—holy, sovereign, righteous, merciful, and unchanging. When His name is lifted high, lies about Him and about us begin to lose their grip.

This exalted name is uniquely bound up with Jesus Christ. The Father “exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11). The praise of Psalm 148 is not vague spirituality; it finds its focus in the crucified and risen Son. To praise the name of the LORD is to bow joyfully before Jesus as Lord, to confess that all creation will one day do the same, and to choose, by grace, to get a head start on that eternal song today.

Living Beneath a Higher Splendor

Psalm 148:13 says His splendor is “above the earth and the heavens.” That means every beauty and brilliance we know—sunsets, galaxies, art, intellect, success—is only a faint echo of His radiance. Our problem is not that we see too much glory in the world, but that we stop our gaze too low and too soon. When we live for the glow of likes, promotions, or possessions, we are trading the blazing splendor of God for flickering candles. No wonder our hearts feel restless and easily disappointed.

God invites us to lift our eyes higher. “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). In heaven right now, the elders fall before God, crying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist, and were created” (Revelation 4:11). When we remember that the highest splendor is not in our circumstances but in our Savior, we can walk through ordinary days—and even painful ones—with a quiet, stubborn joy. We are living under a sky filled not only with stars, but with the majesty of the God who made them and rules them.

Let Everything in Me Praise

If everything in creation is summoned to praise, then every part of your life is invited into that same choir. Your workday, your chores, your conversations, your private thoughts—none of it is neutral ground. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17). To live “in His name” means to act as His representative, under His authority, for His honor. It means asking in each moment: How can this choice, this task, this response become a small act of worship?

This transforms both success and obscurity. When God’s name is our true goal, we can echo, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name be the glory, because of Your loving devotion, because of Your faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1). Hidden faithfulness becomes as significant as public ministry, because both can ring with the same praise. Creation is already obeying the call of Psalm 148:13—the stars shine, the waves crash, the birds sing to His glory. The question is whether your heart, your schedule, your words will join that chorus today.

Lord, thank You that Your name alone is exalted and Your splendor is above the earth and the heavens; help me today to live, speak, and choose in a way that brings glory to Your name.

The cross of Christ is the most revolutionary thing ever to appear among men.

The cross of the Roman times knew no compromise; it never made concessions. It won all its arguments by killing its opponent and silencing him for good. It spared not Christ, by slew Him the same as the rest. He was alive when they hung Him on that cross and completely dead when they took him down six hours later. That was the cross the first time it appeared in Christian history.

After Christ was risen from the dead the apostles went out to preach His message, and what they preached was the cross. And wherever they went into the wide world they carried the cross, and the same revolutionary power went with them. The radical message of the cross transformed Saul of Tarsus and changed him from a persecutor of Christians to a tender believer and an apostle of the faith. Its power changed bad men into good ones. It shook off the long bondage of paganism and altered completely the whole moral and mental outlook of the Western world.

All this it did and continued to do as long as it was permitted to remain what it had been originally, a cross. Its power departed when it was changed from a thing of death to a thing of beauty. When men made of it a symbol, hung it around their necks as an ornament or made its outline before their faces as a magic sign to ward off evil, then it became at best a weak emblem, at worst a positive fetish. As such it is revered today by millions who know absolutely nothing about its power.

The cross effects its ends by destroying one established pattern, the victim's, and creating another pattern, its own. Thus it always has its way. It wins by defeating its opponent and imposing its will upon him. It always dominates. It never compromises, never dickers nor confers, never surrenders a point for the sake of peace. It cares not for peace; it cares only to end its opposition as fast as possible.

With perfect knowledge of all this Christ said:

Luke 9:23 (NIV) "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

So the cross not only brings Christ's life to an end, it ends also the first life, the old life, of every one of His true followers. It destroys the old pattern, the Adam pattern, in the believer's life, and brings it to an end. Then the God who raised Christ from the dead raises the believer and a new life begins.

This, and nothing less, is true Christianity, though we cannot but recognize the sharp divergence of this conception from that held by the rank and file of evangelicals today. But we dare not qualify our position. The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment. A shallow and worldly leadership would modify the cross to please the entertainment-mad saintlings who will have their fun even within the very sanctuary; but to do so is to court spiritual disaster and risk the anger of the Lamb turned Lion.

We must do something about the cross, and one of two things only we can do--flee it or die upon it. And if we should be so foolhardy as to flee we shall by that act put away the faith of our fathers and make of Christianity something other than it is. Then we shall have left only the empty language of salvation; the power will depart with our departure from the true cross.

If we are wise we will do what Jesus did: endure the cross and despise its shame for the joy that is set before us. To do this is to submit the whole pattern of our lives to be destroyed and built again in the power of an endless life. And we shall find that it is more than poetry, more than sweet hymnody and elevated feeling. The cross will cut into where it hurts worst, sparing neither us nor our carefully cultivated reputations. It will defeat us and bring our selfish lives to an end. Only then can we rise in fullness of life to establish a pattern of living wholly new and free and full of good works.

The changed attitude toward the cross that we see in modern orthodoxy proves not that God has changed, nor that Christ has eased up on His demand that we carry the cross; it means rather that current Christianity has moved away from the standards of the New Testament. So far have we moved indeed that it may take nothing short of a new reformation to restore the cross to its right place in the theology and life of the Church.

Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. - 1 Peter 1:13.

"Gird up the loins of your mind." I suppose I do not need to do more than remind you that that figure, applied to travellers, to soldiers, to any men who have a hard task upon their hands, simply expresses the gathering together of all one’s powers, the training one’s self for given tasks. It suggests that there is a great deal in this life that makes it very difficult for us to keep firm hold of the facts on which alone a perfect hope can be built. Unless we tighten up our belt, and so put all our strength into the effort, the truths of the resurrection which beget to a lively hope, of the great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, of the meaning and end of all our trials and sorrows, will slip away from us, and we shall be left at the mercy of the varying anticipations of good or evil which may emerge from the varying circumstances of the fleeting moment. We have, then, to gather ourselves up and set our teeth in the effort to keep hold of Christ, of His work, of its bearing upon ourselves, of the meaning of our sorrows, if we would not have like fluctuations in our heavenly to those which necessarily belong to our earthly hopes.

"Be sober." That means, not only gather yourself together with a consecrated effort, but "keep your heel well down on the necks of lower and earthly desires." The word, of course, points, first, to temperance - not, as we use it, only in respect to one form of sensual indulgence, but to temperance - in regard of all the animal necessities and desires. The fleshly lusts that belong to everybody must be subdued. That goes without saying. But, then, there are others more subtle, more refined, but not less hostile to the perfectness of a heaven - directed hope than are these grosser ones. We must keep down all the desires and appetites of our nature, both of the flesh and of the spirit. For we have only a certain quantity of energy to expend, and if we expend it upon the things of earth there is nothing left for the things above. If you take the river, and lead it all out into the gardens that are irrigated by it, or into the stream that drives your mills, its bed will be left bare, and little of the water will reach the great ocean which is its home. If a gardener wants a tree to grow high, he strips off the side shoots. Our hopes follow our desires. What we deem good is what we hope for; and if our desires all go trailing and grovelling along the earth, our hopes will never rise to the heavens. A gorged eagle cannot soar. Christian men whose heads and hearts are stuffed full of the trivialities of earth have little of the perfect hope which fastens on Christ.