Sunday Morning Meditation: God’s Greatest Works

Psalm 145: 3-9

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
His greatness no one can fathom.” (v3)

David is at it again. Here he is, harp in hand, singing of the greatness of God. Only this time David says God is so great that mere mortals cannot even comprehend it, no individual expression of praise can possibly contain it. Its not enough for one man to sing of the Lord’s power and might, no, David says,

“One generation will commend your works to another;
They will tell of your mighty acts.” (v4)

David has glimpsed the greatness of God, and has seen that it is beyond the ability of mere individuals to proclaim it. Indeed, David sees generation after generation spilling forth praise, still unable to contain the vastness of God’s glory. Individuals aren’t enough to proclaim his greatness, generations aren’t enough! Will even eternity be long enough for the people of God to exhaustively proclaim the wonder of his great works! I think not. (Rev 19:1-9)

So David joins with the generations of the people of God, responding to their call and answering their summons to give God Glory,

“They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
And I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
And I will proclaim your great deeds.
They will celebrate your abundant goodness
And joyfully sing of your righteousness.” (v5-7)

But what exactly are God’s “wonderful works,” David, what are his “great deeds?” Is it his creation of the universe, the awesome power of thunder and lightning and earthquakes, or the splendor of the sun and moon? Or, perhaps it is His mighty deeds on behalf of his people, the liberation from bondage in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea, or the miraculous provision of water and manna in the desert? Certainly these come to mind when dwelling on the greatest works of God.

Yet, in addition to these, David has something even greater in mind and it is to this greatest of all acts of God that David know turn his attention in the middle climax of this song,

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger and rich in love.
The Lord is good to all;
He has compassion on all He has made.” (v8-9)

David knows, there is no act of God quite so great as his unfailing compassion and mercy. For this reason, generation after generation, we seek to praise him into eternity.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Compassion, David, Mercy, Psalms

Sunday Morning Meditation: Psalm 103:8-13

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”

Sometimes we walk into worship shouldering a terrible debt. Sometimes we enter prayer nursing a hidden wound. We wonder, will He hear me today? Will he see me? Is this the day He finally realizes how dirty, how utterly screwed up I am? We fear this is the day the Lord finally casts His full gaze upon our lives and comes to His senses, rejecting us once and for all.

We know the truth: Our secret thoughts haunt us, and our ugly open words betray us. Our spouses know, our children know. Wherever we go our sin and guilt are right beside us, taunting us, and even in worship and prayer we are sometimes unable to find freedom. Where can we find freedom?

The Psalms are not the songs of the clean and religious; they are the poetry of the barroom and the jail cell. David, the man who sings this song, is no self-righteous zealot; he is an adulterer, a murderer! He is broken and bloodied from his sin, and bearing upon his frame a terrible guilt, and with it, the penalty of judgment. Yet here, in this song of praise to God, he finds freedom from his shame and cries out from the very beginning,

“Praise the Lord, O my soul;
And forget not His benefits
Who forgives all your sins
And heals all your diseases.”

David has found freedom, not just from his guilt but also in spite of his guilt. How? Because, David sings, the Lord is the God who forgives and heals, the God who is slow to anger and rich in love, not the God who receives repayment. David is no longer concerned with paying his debt, because his is a debt he can never repay. The price is too great, the sin too grievous. Rather than paying what he owes David realizes, God “does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities.”

We do not worship an invisible debt collector in the sky, and God is no mere accountant of sin, dispensing punishments and rewards. Instead, God has reserved for himself a role in the universe of far greater majesty and nobility. The Lord is a God of mercy, He does not collect your debt, He pays it! The Lord is a God of compassion, He does not look past your festering wounds, He heals them!

Perhaps harder to grasp, from God’s perch of eternity this work is finished and complete the moment we have placed our faith in him. Hence, David helps us lay hold of this truth by painting for us a picture of the incredible depth and breadth of God’s goodness, sketching distances so great they cannot be measured. How large is God’s love for us David? As high as the heavens are above the earth. How far removed from our sins have we become? As far as the East is from the West.  Tell us David, what is God’s love for us really like? It is like a fathers compassion for his children. “So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him…”

It’s one of the fantastic paradoxes of Christianity that as long as we fear God, we need not be afraid of Him any longer. When we enter in humility, we enter into grace. However, when we enter in arrogance or self-righteousness, we enter into judgment. When we insist on carrying our own debts, we are insisting on our pride, but Christ died to pay our debts and all that is left for us is humility and eternity. Cast your sins upon the Lord, humbly accepting his gift of mercy, boasting in nothing whatsoever except the grace of Christ Jesus and you will find that your debts are as far from you as the east is from the west, and you will be able to agree with Paul, that “in Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Eph 3:12).

Technorati Tags: Christianity, David, Meditations, Psalms