This is the last of five sermons on selected Old Testament psalms, focusing on the nature and character of God, what it means to know God, and how that knowledge of God draws responses from our hearts and minds, changing our attitudes and actions.
Reflecting on Psalm 15, we saw that the God we have come to know through his sovereign self-revelation is holy, and calls us to holiness. In Psalm 62, we were reminded that God is faithful, and calls us to trust him more, and live more faithfully in the world. Psalm 78 teaches us to value salvation history, and to teach it, conscious that the God we have come to know is gracious toward us, and calls us to act with grace toward others. In Psalm 94, we discover that God is just, and calls us to reflect his justice through courageous actions that bring glory to God.
Today, we reflect on Psalm 113, which manifestly draws our attention to the mercy of God. As we engage with the ancient text today, I want us to consider what it means to know God as a majestic God, and to reflect on how we might shape appropriate responses to God’s self-revelation. I want us to imagine how we might express our praise to God, and cultivate true worship of God, in our hearts and minds, through our hands and feet and voices.
Psalm 113 is the seventh psalm of Book 5 of the Psalms (numbers 107-150), and the first of six psalms comprising the Egyptian Hallel. Formally, it is a good example of Hebrew parallelism, comparable to Psalm 1 and having lines of similar thoughts though different words. It is a psalm reflecting the relationship between God and God’s people.
The sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin is most famous today for writing a mammoth book of theology titled Institutes of the Christian Religion, the final edition of which was published in August 1559. The work was intended as a compendium of Christian doctrine, and as a confession or defence offered to a persecuting monarch, King Francis I of France, on behalf of Calvin’s fellow Protestant believers.
For me, one of the most profound sentences in The Institutes is the first: “Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.” Two pages later comes a corollary sentence: “Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.”[1] On these two clear and concise statements hang everything that follows in Calvin’s great work. I mention this today because these two sentences offer an excellent background or foundation to the first three equally deceptively simple words of Psalm 113: “Praise the Lord.”
“Praise the Lord”: an invitation, an invocation, a command to respond to God’s gracious act of self-revelation. Praise implies some true knowledge of the one we are praising, and in this case the praise arises from an awareness of the breadth and depth of God’s glory and majesty, and the wideness of his mercy and grace.
“Praise the name of the Lord, you his servants”: the God we have come to know is the living God, all-powerful yet personal. In mercy, God draws near to us, and reaches out to us, and wants us to know him.
Verses 2 and 3 indicate the psalmist’s desire for God’s universal praise throughout time and space: today, tomorrow, and on into the unknown ages to come; and from the utter east to the utter west, throughout our world.
The people of God, both then and now, are from a particular place, and in a specific location, and love and serve a unique God. But we all acknowledge and have a part to play in God’s universal rule and mission. The missionary impulse of God’s people, at its best, leads on to the universal praise of God through time and space: proclamation of the good news, yes, but also worship; praise as well as presence.
Verses 4-6 emphasise the transcendence, the greatness and glory of our God, who is always worthy of our best worship. As we praise the Lord, we remember that he is, in essence, beyond our comprehension. We remember that he is infinitely greater than us, “exalted over all the nations” (v. 4), incomparable in glory and majesty and power (v. 5), and yet he “stoops down to look on the heavens and earth” (v. 6).
What does this awesome God of glory see as he looks down upon his creation? Does he see a golden temple at the heart of Jerusalem, at the heart of the nation of Israel? Does he see priests and Levites, in spotless gorgeous garments, going about their liturgical duties? Does he see the pious and not-so-pious, filling the temple courts and the marketplaces and the entertainment venues, doing their duty, saying their prayers, giving their coins to the temple treasury?
No! No! Cast your eyes over verses 7-9. As God looks down on the heavens and the earth, his beautiful and majestic creation, he sees a poor person lying prostrate in the dust, and a needy person on the city ash heap, looking for scraps of food, and a childless woman who cries silent tears as the months and years pass, and her dreams of a family slip through her fingers.
In mercy, this great and glorious God reaches out and raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, and seats them with princes. He blesses the childless woman with sons and daughters, settling her in her own home as a happy mother of children (vv. 7-9). God enters the life stories of these people, as he enters our lives, bringing healing, wholeness, and hope of a better future.
God does not draw the line at observing his beautiful physical creation. He “stoops” and enters into relationship with his human creation, demonstrating a unique commitment to us in common grace and in saving grace. We need both in order to be whole people. In this way, Psalm 113 develops the theme of Psalms 111 and 112.
Why does the psalm close with an image of a once childless woman who is now “a happy mother of children”? Why is this, specifically, a cause for praise to the Lord? Anglican writer and speaker Michael Wilcock offers this observation:
Old Testament Israel took one thing for granted that we may sometimes forget. Her poor and needy might never find themselves literally seated with princes, but having no mental picture of crowns and thrones in the world to come, they would certainly see such practical gifts as that of motherhood to the barren woman to be the kind of princely blessing promised in verses 7 and 8.[2]
Recall the story of Abraham and Sarah, leaving everything to follow a dream, and then the exodus, young David’s defeat of Goliath, and on to the establishment of the temple at Jerusalem. Recall the song of Hannah, the barren woman who became the godly mother of Samuel (1 Sam 2:1-10), echoed here in Psalm 113. Reflect on your own life, and how God has reached out to you in blessing in the past.
God acts in grace toward individuals as well as nations. God is majestic, glorious, and all-powerful, as Scripture everywhere attests. God is also omniscient. God sees your need. God will meet your need. He cares for the poor, the needy, the childless. He takes delight in reaching out to ordinary people like you and me. He redeems and restores. He gives us hope.
In the New Testament, Paul reminds the Christians at Corinth that
God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption (1 Cor 1:27-30).
In Ephesians 2:6, we hear an echo of Psalm 113 as Paul reminds the new people of God of the present and future reality of their salvation: “God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” And so, we join our voices with the voice of the psalmist, and all of God’s people, as we gladly sing:
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, you his servants;
praise the name of the Lord.
Let the name of the Lord be praised,
both now and forevermore.
From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the Lord is to be praised.
Praise the Lord!
Sermon 637 copyright © 2015 Rod Benson. Preached at Lithgow Baptist Church, Australia, on Sunday 27 September 2015. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).
References
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book 1: The Knowledge of God the Creator (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 35, 37.
[2] Michael Wilcock, The Message of Psalms 73-150 (Leicester: IVP, 2001), 177.
Image source: Tourism Western Australia.
iDigress 
Your reference to 1 Corinthians 1:27-30 is a lifeline to me in this early morning hour.
You see,I have been separated from the woman I love for some years now. God sees. God knows. GOD cares. GOD Himself is blessing me,even in the words you have delivered to my inbox this morning.
Thank you.
Geoff