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Introduction

This particular psalm begins the section of the psalter that is known as the Hallel. This section is Ps. 113 through 118. It was the custom of Jews to recite this section verbatim festival occasions of praise. The word hallel means praise, and When we are told in the New Testament that Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn after their last meal together (Matt. 26:30), this was very probably the Hallel. This is where the word hallelujah comes from—an intensive expression meaning (much more than) praise Jah.

And this psalm is the threshold of this section, the entryway to the Hallel psalms.

The Text

“Praise ye the Lord. Praise, O ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and for evermore . . .” (Ps. 113:1-9).

Summary of the Text

The first words of the psalm are an imperative, directed at the servants of God. All the servants of God are to praise Him (v. 1). They are to praise Him, and they are to praise His name. Boast in Him. The name we are exulting in is a name that is to be considered blessed forever and ever (v. 2). His name is to be blessed throughout time. And then, in the next verse, we see that His name is to be praise spatially (v. 3). Throughout all history, and from the east to the west, let the name of the Lord be praised. The Lord is high over all the nations of men, and His glory is higher than the heavens (v. 4). Who can be compared to Him, as He is the one who dwells on high (v. 5). When He looks at earth and the heavens above the earth, He is looking down. He condescends to look at the highest point of the whole created order (v. 6).

Whatever galaxy is at the top of the whole affair is a galaxy that He looks down on. And yet, He sees and considers the poor man, down in the dust, and He raises him up out of the dust (v. 7). He sees and lifts up the needy man from the landfill, from the dump, from the place of squalor and filth (v. 7). When He does this, it is in order that He might place among the princes of His people (v. 8). And in true tenderness, He looks down on a barren woman, and gives her a home to keep, and children to run around in it (v. 8). So we end with the toddlers, and that brings us to the final hallelujah. Praise Jah. Boast in Jehovah. His greatness is ineffable, and stoops to consider the smallest.

The first six verses are offered up in praise of His excellence. The last three verses are offered up in praise of His kindness, compassion and mercy.

The Greatness of God

God’s greatness is such that He cannot look above Himself. He has no superior. His greatness is such that He cannot look around Himself. He has no peers, no equals. Prior to the creation, there was nothing but the Father’s eternal delight in the Son, and that delight returned, and that delight being Himself the Spirit of the Father and the Son. And once He determined to create, He could only look down.

So God is above the nations, outside them. We cannot get Him to fit within anything made by human hands . . . or minds. God is transcendent. This means, among many other things, that He rules the nations of men. We turn this way and that, and we think we have done marvelous things. But the king’s heart is in the Lord’s hand—He diverts it wherever He pleases (v. 4). We see the rhetorical question—who is like the Lord our God? The answer expected is no one (v. 5)

The Misery of Man

Man was created for dominion—created to be fruitful and to fill the earth. And yet, despite being able to do this with physical children, our corruptions were such that the Gentile nations were spiritually barren. “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 54:1, see Gal. 4:27).

It was not just a matter of our inability to produce wholesome fruit. There was also the question of our diseased state. Picture mankind in all his pretended and glory, in all his delusional pomp, as some kind of zombie in an advanced state of decay. And remember also that this unfortunate zombie is also saddled with a singular lack of self-awareness, and he thinks he is awesome.

Where are the recipients of God’s redeeming love to be found? The answer is that they are found on the dunghill (v. 7). They are found as a cinder on the ash heap. They are found as refuse among the offal. They live on the manure pile—in poorer countries, dung was often used as fuel, and that waste station was their home. They were found as a crushed and soggy juice box out at the land fill.

And this leads to the next point, which is enough to stagger anyone who thinks about it.

The God Who Stoops

And so we have seen how God works with the barren women of Scripture—whether Sarah, or Rachel, or Samson’s mother, or Hannah, or Elizabeth, or even the special virginal barrenness of our Lord’s mother, Mary. God typifies His intention for our fruitless world by hearing the prayers of these women, and by answering their cries. And so with Hannah we are privileged to say, “neither is there any rock like our God” (1 Sam. 2:2). This is the same point made in this psalm before us (v. 5).

God cannot look up, or around. He can only look down, and because He is supreme, and because humility is part of His greatness, that humility is supreme. The lowest of the low is plainly within the Lord’s compassionate sight, and God in His mercy determined to send His Son become one of us. To be born in our midst. To be born of a woman, born under the law. To be born on the dunghill.

His intention was to make us princes in the land (v. 8). Is this not what He has done? He has made us kings and priests (Rev. 1:6: 5:10).

The one who had the name that was to be praised above every name consented to be born in the lowest spot. He did this in order to get under. And He got under because the purpose was to pick the whole thing up. And so He stood, the cosmos itself stretched across His shoulders. The government was on His shoulders, and unless we look with the eyes of faith we will not see it. And that is because the redemption of all things in heaven and earth was cleverly disguised to look like the horizontal beam of His cross.

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Introduction

This psalm is part of a matched set, together with the previous one. Both this psalm and Ps. 111 are alphabetic psalms, with each portion beginning with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. As a consequence, the two psalms are right around the same length, and there are frequent echoes. The theme of the former is the glory of God, and the theme of the latter is the glory of God as reflected in the life of the godly man.

The Text

“Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever . . .” (Ps. 112:1-10).

Summary of the Text

So what is the godly man like? How does God bless him? First we define the godly man. He is the man who fears God, and this is defined as someone who delights in God’s commandments (v. 1). Notice that this is no servile obedience, but rather a delighted obedience. Not only will he be blessed, but so shall his descendants be—his seed shall be mighty (v. 2). His house will gather in wealth, and his righteousness will continue (v. 3). The upright, in the darkness, will see the sun rise (v. 4). He is a gracious man, compassionate, and righteous (v. 4). He is generous and open-handed. He lends (v. 5). A neighbor who borrows all the time is a perfect nuisance, but we also need to compare him to the tight-fisted guy on the other side who is just like him. He is a perfect nuisance also. But at the same time, this generous man is shrewd (v. 5). He will be a permanent fixture in God’s story. He shall not be moved forever. Remember Abraham? He lived in tents, and the story of his faithfulness will be told to the end of the world. Have you seen the pyramids? Great monuments to “we’re not sure who that was” (v. 6). Rising trouble does not trouble him. He is courageous. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord (v. 7). His heart is established. He shall not fear, and he will see his enemies dealt with (v. 8). Again he is open-handed, not tight-fisted. His righteousness goes on forever, and his horn shall be exalted (v. 9). This blessing that envelops the righteous man is something that grieves the wicked (v. 10). The wicked will gnash their teeth, for all the good it will do. Like a slug on the sidewalk, the wicked will melt away, and their only monument will be the slimy trail they leave behind.

Who is this Righteous Man?

The first thing we must note is that there has only been one person who met this description perfectly—the Lord Jesus. He gathers wealth (v. 3), and Jesus is the heir of all things (Heb. 1:2). He is open-handed and generous (vv. 5, 9). The Lord is the one who brings salvation to the world in order to give it away. His heart is fixed when trouble arises (v. 7). The Lord set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51)—like flint (Is. 50:7). This description of the godly man is therefore a description of the perfect man, and we all know who the perfect man was.

The Path of Imitation

At the same time, we are called by our name of Christian to be followers of Christ. We are to imitate God (Eph. 5:1). We are to copy the Lord. We are summoned to imitate more mature believers as they imitate Christ (1 Cor. 4:16; 1 Cor. 11:1). We are to imitate the saints as their lives are described in Scripture (Heb. 6:12).

As we imitate the Lord, we must also keep an eye on the astonishing promises that were given to Him. Imitating the Lord means imitating His expectations also, and His expectations were grounded firmly in what God had promised Him. These promises are ours also, but they are ours in Christ.

No Wooden Imitation

This psalm, taken by itself and interpreted in isolation, could lend itself to a “health and wealth” doctrine. But remember what you have been taught—God’s servants, the ones we are told to imitate, were saints who overcame great obstacles (Heb. 11:33-35a) and who also endured severe persecution and hardship (Heb. 11:35b-38). And remember that the Lord Jesus Himself has inherited every form of wealth that there is, but that the path to His kingdom of fabulous wealth was a path that went to the cross, wound down through the grave, descended to Hades, and up again to the throne room of the Ancient of Days. God did place universal dominion into His hands, but they were pierced hands.

In Christ Himself

Now Scripture teaches us that we have been given all things because we belong to Christ, and Christ has been given all things.

“Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours” (1 Cor. 3:21–22).

Think of it this way. We are the body of Christ. When He extends His hands to receive what His Father is giving Him, we are those hands. When He walks the earth to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, we are His feet.

“And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).

God has placed all things under His feet—and in the same breath He tells us that we are those feet. The Lord has inherited all the things promised in this psalm, and throughout all Scripture and learning that this is true can be quite a heady experience. But if we are His feet, and all things are His footstool, we have to remember that the feet are pierced. If the Father has placed universal dominion into His hands, and we are those hands, recall that the hands are pierced. If we are the bride of Christ, as we most certainly are, remember that the new Eve was taken from the side of Christ just as our first mother was taken from the side of Adam. If we are His bride, all that He has belongs to us—because we were taken from His pierced side (John 19:34-35).

We may glory in this, and indeed we must glory in it. But we must glory in the full story.

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Introduction

This is a straightforward psalm of praise, but we have to extend our arms all the way out to carry what we are praising Him for. In order to wield this psalm rightly, we will have to beseech God to enlarge our hearts. Enlarge our hearts all the way out, so that we might learn how tiny they are. “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psalm 119:32). This was the source of Solomon’s wisdom (1 Kings 4:29), from botany to biology to battle to business, and the apostle Paul thought in the same terms as well (2 Cor. 6: 11-13).

The Text

“Praise ye the Lord. I will praise the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation. The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever . . .”  (Ps. 111:1-10).

Summary of the Text

God is to be praised, of course, but He is to be praised with a whole heart. Further, it is to be done in the assembly of the upright (v. 1). God’s works are greatness stacked upon greatness, and those who have pleasure in Him have pleasure in them, and therefore study what He has done (v. 2). What we will find as a result of our study is honor, glory, and righteousness (v. 3). God did all this so that it would be remembered (v. 4), and He is gracious and full of compassion. He gives food to those who fear Him, and this is part of His covenantal faithfulness (v. 5). God has demonstrated the power of His works so that we might understand His purpose to give us the heritage of the heathen (v. 6). What He does with His hands is truth and judgments. His commands are certain and sure (v. 7). His commands aren’t going anywhere—they are forever, true and upright (v. 8). He sent redemption for His people, and again this is a matter of covenant faithfulness (v. 9). His name is holy and reverend. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of wisdom (v. 10). Obedience is the path to understanding—those who do what He says will know. His praise is forever.

Sought Out by Those Who Have Pleasure

If we follow the example of Solomon, and seek to have our hearts enlarged to understand more of the ways of God, we have to understand that this will make us hungry in every direction. Largeness of heart is not just for the big things. The God who throws galaxies as though they were grains of sand is also the God who engineered the jumping mechanism on a grasshopper. The God who inhabits eternity is also the God who has nicknames for every electron in the cosmos.

This is the basis for science. It is the basis for history. It is the basis for theology. It is the basis for everything.

We are allowed to be finite (which is a good thing), but we are not allowed to be bored or uninterested. You could go out in your backyard if you wanted and spend the rest of your life getting one PhD after another on the happenings taking place on one blade of grass.

The Heritage of the Heathen

We study the works of God because we love Him. God shows off for us so that we might study and marvel, and as we study and marvel, He gives to us the heritage of the heathen—He gives to us the heritage of those who are uninterested in the works of God, or who are interested in them only for the sake of denying that they have happened. Enlarge your heart, which will mean that you enlarge your eyes. And when you enlarge your eyes, you will come to see that the phrase intelligent designcan only be described as ridonkulous understatement.

Jesus is Lord, and this truth is to be understood both extensively and intensively. There is no place where it is not pertinent and exhaustively authoritative. Jesus is Lord in all, over all, and through all. All science, all history, all philosophy, and all engineering. It all belongs to Him, and so we study His works in it.

The Great Deeps of the Covenant

The greatest ocean, an ocean with immense depths, has places that are just under the surface. This psalm mentions God’s covenant keeping in two places (vv. 5, 9).

When we receive our daily bread—which Jesus instructed us to pray for (Matt. 6: 11)—the answer to that prayer is a covenant blessing. I had a friend, a Baptist at the time, who said that we Presbyterians were covenantal about everything. He said that it was like dealing with covenant peanut butter and covenant jelly. Had I only known my Bible well enough, I could have retorted with this verse. The terms of God’s covenant with us are all-encompassing. There is no place where you may go in order to stand outside the covenant. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). The hairs of your head are all numbered. Because there is no part of your body that is unbaptized, there is hence no part of your life that may remain unsanctified.

But this is only possible because the covenant is oceanic, and God’s tender mercies go all the way down. Consider the implications of verse 9. “He sent redemption unto his people: He hath commanded his covenant for ever: Holy and reverend is his name” (Ps. 111:9).

How is it that redemption has come to you? Your sins, which were dark and grimy, have all been cleansed and washed away. How did this thing happen? It happened because He sent redemption to His people. And how did He do this great thing? He commanded His covenant, and He commanded His covenant forever. But do not confuse this. Remember that the Lord Jesus showed us the identity of this covenant. This covenant has a name, and He was obedient, even to death on a cross. The Lord Jesus held up a cup and said that it contained the blood of the new covenant (Matt. 26:28). He is the covenant.

He sent redemption. He sent the covenant. He sent Jesus.

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