Psalm 146
1 Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, my soul.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
8 the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
10 The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.
This psalm is bookended with Hallelujah’s which is the Hebrew word for “Praise the Lord” (146:1, 10). What is so praiseworthy is what we find between the bookends…a God who is worthy to put our trust in. The psalmist who praises the Lord all of his life says in verse 2 that as long as he lives and as long as he breathes “as long as I live” (NIV) he will sing to God. There are other things the world tries to emphasize…the world puts forth as trustworthy (kings, princes and other temporary and powerless facades) but the Lord is the eternal one and he alone is worthy of our praise.
This psalm basis the trustworthiness of God on two things and we find those two things in 146:6-10. In 146:6 we find that God can be trusted based on his past actions as Creator and how his ability to create shows his power and his faithfulness. But God’s trustworthiness is not just based on past action but is based on the present reality of the Lord’s working in this world as seen in 146:7-10 where we find all the people God works to sustain, to heal and to exalt…it is the poor, the prisoner and the oppressed. It is the blind, the stooped…the fatherless and the widow that God intervenes on the behalf of…God is not half as interested in princes and kings in all their excesses as he is in those who cry to help out of their need.
Last, we know it is the Lord who reigns as king forever (146:10) and because He is on the throne we know we can put our trust in Him.
One Response
Hi Matt, I just did a blog post about growing up in the CofC in the 80’s and re-discovering the Resurrection as an adult. http://www.howellsinmoz.blogspot.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts.