“The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The LORD is great in Zion; He is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise Your great and awesome Name! Holy is He! The King in His might loves justice. You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the LORD our God; worship at His footstool! Holy is He!” Psalm 99:1-5
Devotional Thought For The Day
This is a very odd song of praise to God. It is difficult to divide as it essentially flows as one unit of contemplation. I have split it in half but you might want to read the second half at this point, which we will discuss more fully next week. This psalm speaks of the magnificence, exaltation, greatness, awesomeness, holiness, and justice of the LORD God Almighty, the only True and Living God. The psalmist is contemplating God’s dealing with His people – who though they know Him and are forgiven and saved in His mercy, nonetheless fall into sin, which has to be dealt with. The psalmist marvels at how God has established “equity,” how His dealing with mankind is always fair and equitable, in keeping with justice and righteousness. While we ordinarily associate these latter concepts with God’s Law and His punishment of sin, they actually refer to the justice of the cross, God’s justice executed upon Christ, where He poured out the full fury and wrath that sin evokes in His holiness upon Christ, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. The consequence of this is that God is reconciled to all people [the world] and does not count their trespasses against them [2 Cor. 5:19]. God has established a “righteousness” for all people, imputed to us at the cross of Jesus Christ, to be appropriated through repentance and faith. [2 Cor. 5:21]
This is the faith, trust, and hope of all people of God, all who truly know Him and reverence Him, who exalt Him and praise His awesome Name. After all the Name Jesus means “Savior,” and He was given this Name because “He will save His people from their sins.” [Matt. 1:21] It is this “justice” that “the King in His might” loves, to be “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” [1 John 1:9] The psalmist reminds us of how sure and certain all of this is, how nothing is ever going to overturn or negate this great salvation, for our Great God and Savior “reigns . . . He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the earth quake.” His holiness, which evokes fear and trembling in fallen and sinful human beings, has been pressed to provide redemption, forgiveness, and righteousness as God’s free gift to us – for God is love. It is this “equity” and “justice” that compels the psalmist’s contemplation and praise of God.
Yet there is still the matter of our sin. Certainly it is forgiven, washed and cleansed away in Christ’s precious blood, so that it has no eternal consequence for those who are humble and contrite, who tremble at God’s Word, and who rejoice to receive so great a salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. However, two issues remain in God’s dealing with His dear people of faith. How does God forgive without encouraging our rotten sinful nature to greater sin and disregard for what is good, so that we end up in impenitence and unbelief. And how does God grant some sense of recompense for those who are harmed by our sin. We will take these matters up more fully next week, but the short answer is that He provides “discipline” and certain temporal consequences for our sins, so that the incorrigibly wicked aspect of our being, our fallen sinful nature, is constrained and crucified and put to death [Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:5; Rom. 8:13]. While we are no longer under law but grace – so that we are free from condemnation [Rom. 6:14; Rom. 8:1] – our sinful nature still requires the full brunt of the law lest it reassert itself and take over our being, and when it breaks forth we are still liable to all manner of temporal consequence [including arrest, prosecution, fines, incarceration, etc.].
It is this contemplation of the supreme governance of God that compels the psalmist to songs of praise and exaltation of God the LORD – both His gracious forgiveness and mercy, and His vengeance on our sin. He is “our God,” and we too are compelled to worship at His footstool, to praise His wisdom, power, and love. We are shepherded by His love, disciplined in accord with His wisdom, forgiven by His grace, strengthened in our faith and trust in Him by His Word. How He does all of this given the complexity of human beings and the treachery of our corrupt nature is truly a marvel – thanks and praise be to Him. More on this next week as we contemplate the examples that the psalmist encourages us to meditate upon.
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, help us to properly grasp Your power, love, justice, holiness, and majesty, that we may live humble lives of repentance, joyful and at peace always in Your redemption, eager and compelled to devote our lives to all that is good and right, to all that conforms to true and genuine love. Help us to rejoice in the painful discipline that You provide for our own great benefit, that keeps us from drifting back into utter wickedness and unbelief. Have mercy on us always, and keep in mind the frailty and weakness of our fallen nature. Amen.