Psalm 149
Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
his praise in the assembly of the godly!
Let Israel be glad in his Maker;
let the children of Zion rejoice in their King!
Let them praise his name with dancing,
making melody to him with tambourine and lyre!
For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;
he adorns the humble with salvation.
Let the godly exult in glory;
let them sing for joy on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their throats
and two-edged swords in their hands,
to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishments on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron,
to execute on them the judgment written!
This is honor for all his godly ones.
Praise the Lord!
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Psalm For All Saints Day is Psalm 149.
Praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly. Let Israel be glad in his maker. Let the children of Zion rejoice in their king. Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre, for the Lord takes pleasure in his people, He adorns the humble with salvation. Let the godly exalt in glory, Let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written. This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord.
This Psalm is a little bit of a challenge for us in the American church. It begins with things that we're fine with. Praise the Lord, Sing to the Lord, a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly. The new song is something that happens a lot in the Psalms talking about praising God for something new that he has done. Now many people when they say that they sing, sing to the Lord, a new song, they think, contemporary worship versus traditional worship. What it's really talking about is singing about the new thing that God has done, the new salvation he has brought to his people.
It continues, let Israel be glad in his maker, let the children of Zion rejoice in their king, Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and liar. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He adorns the humble with salvation.
This is us saying let's praise God, praise God with all our instruments with all our singing, because God takes pleasure in his people. And we know he does that because he has sent His Son Jesus to die for us. And all who are baptized into him, have received the robe of Christ's righteousness, and he has pleasure in us. Because he said to his son, you are my beloved son with you, I am well pleased.
The psalm continues, and it moves into a different sort of a different kind of idea. Let the godly exalted glory, Let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two edged swords in their hands. What, wait a second God, swords. Now you have to look back at the history of ancient Israel. Back when the Psalms were written, The kingdom of God had borders, and it had armies. And God punished the people of his kingdom with invasion. And he protected them with soldiers. And so defending the kingdom of God was not a metaphorical thing. It is sometimes the thing that you did with swords look at the story of Gideon, how they destroyed all of the Moabites when, when battle happened that was defending God's kingdom, or how King David conquered all of these areas from the Philistines. This is God's work defending his kingdom. It's a little different today. But this image gives us a question right, especially as it goes on, where it says to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron to execute on them the judgment written. This is honor for all his godly ones.
This continues the idea of of God's people having a military in the Old Testament to defend themselves and go after the nations that oppressed them.
We have to ask ourselves in the church, who is our enemy?
Who are the ones that God fights against? Now?
On a spiritual level, we definitely say that this is not human beings. The Christian Church is not called to go out with two edged swords in their hands to execute vengeance on the nations.
God has already fought for us and he's defeated our true enemy, sin, death and the devil. And he did it when he went to the cross Jesus Christ to die for us, as Colossians tells us that he nailed the our sins the cross and made a mockery
of the devil, as we consider that though, we also have to consider that many Christians find that there are human beings working on the side of Satan to oppress the church. It's a big challenge to separate these two. The Christians in facing a hostile Rome, like it describes in the book of Revelation sees a challenge right there. As Christians are dragged into the arena, and the Romans are shouting kill the atheists, which is what they called us.
Often the Christians would respond, you're judging us now. You will be judged on the last day. And we see that judgment in the Psalm as well. Not a two edged swords in our hand, but a calling on God to come and judge the whole world and give justice to his people and take out all the forces of sin, death and the devil. And on All Saints Day, what we do is we celebrate the communion of saints that we have and look forward with joy and hope for the day that God returns to bring his judgment to Earth. That's it for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai