“O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him, all ye people. 2. For His merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise ye the Lord."
There are times that the fewer the words, the better the statement. This is not true all of the time, but it is certainly true of Psalm 117. This short psalm says so much in so few words that it takes only a few seconds to read it. In fact, when I am reading through Psalms I always enjoy reading the short one, because the next two psalms are very long – particularly Psalm 119. Both of those psalms take a good while to read and to garner all of the truth in them. However, it takes more than a few seconds to meditate on the truth that is contained in the few words of Psalm 117. The first thing about this psalm is that it calls upon us to praise the Lord: “O praise ye the Lord.” Throughout the Bible we are reminded to praise the Lord. In Psalm 117, we are told who should praise the Lord: “O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him, all ye people.” As many times as I have read this psalm, it occurred to me this time that the psalm is calling for the universal praise of God. As you probably know, the Old Testament is primarily about God’s work with the Israelites, but this psalm calls for all of the nations to praise the Lord. Perhaps, it is looking forward to the time when the Messiah would call the whole world to Himself, and to praise almighty God. Notice that the next call to praise is to “all ye people.” What I see here is that the call is for the nations in general to praise God, then for the people of God to praise Him. Today, we call this people groups. This psalm reminds us that God is God of all nations and all of the people groups that make up all nations. It is a call for everyone to praise God. What we need to do is to do our part in praising God on a daily basis. The second thing about this psalm is that it reminds us about the “merciful kindness” of God. Another translation of this line is “faithful love” of God. The wonderful thing is that the faithful love of God leads to His merciful kindness to His people. It really upsets me that God is getting such bad press from some corners today. Unbelievers talk about how terrible He is because of wrath and judgment. What they are missing in their lostness is that this is just part of the nature of God. He faithfully loves us and is always ready to show His merciful kindness to us. If these unbelievers would take a deep breath and believe they would see this aspect of God that calls us to Himself. It was God’s merciful kindness that led Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan. It was God’s merciful kindness that divided the Red Sea for the Israelites. It was God’s merciful kindness that led the Israelites by “a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night” in their journey from Egypt to Canaan. It was the merciful kindness of God that sent His Son into the world to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins so that we could live with Him in heaven forever if we believe in Him. The third thing about this psalm is that it reminds us that “the truth of the Lord endures forever.” There are a lot of people in the world who think they know the real truth. The real truth is embedded in the person of God Himself. In fact Jesus said in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth and the Life.” Jesus was the culmination of the Bible’s drive toward the full revelation of the truth of God. The truth is that God loves the world and that it was in His great loving heart, and His great merciful kindness, to save us through His Son. The truth that we have in the God of the Bible reaches from one end of eternity to the other, or as the psalmist often wrote: “from everlasting to everlasting. We don’t know all of the truth about everything, but we know One who does and we join Him by faith in His great truth that endures forever. The psalm closes with a repeat of the call to praise: “Praise ye the Lord.” Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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