SCRIPTURE: Psalm 149
OBSERVATION:
To sing a new song is to find new ways of telling people how great God is.
Express praise with our whole being – songs, words, dance, musical instruments – and to do it day and night (‘on their beds’).
The Lord delights in those who delight in Him.
The emphasis on vengeance and punishment needs to be read in the context of very violent and unstable times. No police, no political security, only roving bands of criminals, new dictators rising up, always threats and attacks from neighbouring armies. The weak were trampled!
God’s people at that time served as God’s police force, God’s justice system for the nations, ‘to carry out the sentence written against them’.
This was not random, undeserved violence, but justice for the oppressed, against the oppressors. Keep in mind, when God’s people became the oppressors, they too were punished.
APPLICATION:
We are the Lord’s peace-keepers today. We are to tell people how great the Lord is, and show it by our love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, etc.
We are to take up our stand against injustice, to side with the weak and vulnerable, and to deliver God’s justice and mercy through humble servanthood.
We praise the Lord with our mouths and carry a servant’s towel in our hands (this is our double-edged sword).
This is the Lord’s way of convicting the world of its violence and injustice. Like Jesus, the cross (suffering in the service of others) is how we overcome evil in the world.
Those who refuse the message of grace will one day face judgment, the day of final justice. Better to repent now than to regret it later!
No matter how weak or stupid it may appear to the world, we will boast in the Lord, and follow His way of humility and grace!
The Lord delights in those who do this!
PRAYER:
Lord, inspire me by Your great love and mercy, enough to follow You in it. Make me a channel of your peace!
Thanks for sharing this Jackie, and for directing me to read the Message version, I hadn’t read that yet.
Awesome, thanks. Norm
Psalm 149
I’m imagining the most amazing victory party ever! The joy of the Lord is on the lips on all of His people – they dance the way David must have danced, with wild abandon, unfettered and free! God is King, He is our everything!!!
And I love verse 4 – “Because God delights in His people, festoons (what a great word!) plain folk with salvation garlands!” (The Message) Plain folk – that includes me! There’s nothing fascinating or charismatic or amazing about me – yet God is delighted (pleased! charmed! enchanted! thrilled!) in me just the way I am.
That love I have been looking for my whole life shows up in God’s eyes. And He counts me as one of His own, His chosen to spend eternity with Him. I am loved, I Am Loved, I AM LOVED!!!
Our joy is in God’s victory over evil. Satan and all he has tried to do – causing confusion and shame and humiliation and bondage and despair – he is going to get what is coming to him. We already know how the story ends and God is victorious… and the really cool thing is His children get to be there with him in the seats of honor (vs 9 the Message). Why the seats of honor? Because it is our joy and our privilege to fight alongside Him against the injustice, the wrong doing, the hatred, the greed, serving our God to make things right again. How awesome is that?!!?