WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

August 28, 2005 Peter Vibert

Psalm 113 Who Is Like Him?

To this day, when Jewish families sit down to the Passover meal, they begin by reading aloud the first two of a group of Psalms, 113-118, known collectively as “the Egyptian Hallel.” The name comes from the description of the Exodus in Psalm 114, and the fact that several of these Psalms begin and end with the words “Praise the LORD” – in Hebrew “Hallelu Yah” - praise to Yahweh, God’s own name that he revealed to Moses (and which appears as the capitalized word LORD in English Bibles). Psalm 113 begins this series of Passover Psalms with praising the LORD for who he is, and poses a vital question which it also seeks to answer: “Who is like Yahweh our God?” What is Yahweh like, and how does he compare to “the gods of the nations”?

1) Praise the Name of the LORD

People should praise the LORD for who he is, says the Psalmist. First, they should recognize that he is a God who has revealed himself. People are not left guessing: he has told Moses and his people his own name – in ancient belief a knowledge so powerful that it was like magical power to be able to speak the name of a god and thereby bring his or her power to bear in action at that moment. Not only did Israel know the Name of God, but he had “put his name on the people.” The LORD instructed Moses in Numbers 6:24-27 that Aaron and the priests were to bless the people with the words: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” “So,” says the LORD, “they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

So the people to whom God had graciously revealed himself became “his people,” marked with his name, and therefore his servants. They had accepted this role as the servants of the Most High God, and their service to their LORD was now above all to praise and worship him. And so the word “service” became associated with worshipping and praising God, and to this day we speak of a time of communal worship as “a service.” We are servants of the LORD and our primary service is to worship him.

But Yahweh our God is not just the tribal protector of Israel; he is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and therefore his praise should be offered by all people in all places at all times. “Let the name of the LORD be praised both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to its setting... the name of the LORD is to be praised.” God claims not only Israel as his people, but all those he has made, and his plan – as the OT often hints and the NT makes plain – is to bring all people everywhere to know him and serve him and praise him.

2) God Is Great

The LORD God, says the Psalmist, is very great; he is “above the nations,” he is “above the heavens,” he “sits enthroned on high.” However archaic the language is to us, the idea of a great person being “elevated” above all others is a pervasive one in history. A high platform, a high throne, set the important person apart. I was told a story soon after I arrived in this church, by a person who had been a member for many years – for many generations, it would be more correct to say! – that the old raised pulpit in the sanctuary here (you went up about six steps to reach it) was torn out early in the 20^th century because the congregation thought the pastor was getting “too elevated”! (That is why you cannot see the current low pulpit from the back row of the balcony!).

But in the ancient world, the Psalmist could find no higher praise of his LORD than to say he was “elevated above all nations, above the heavens...” So high was he that he had to “stoop down” to see or visit “the heavens,” let alone “the earth.” We might choose different imagery today, but the thought is clear: God is no minor being; he is powerful, he has control, he is one who ought to be obeyed and not trifled with. Praise and worship, and a good deal of “fear,” are appropriate responses to such a being, to such a God.

3) He Stoops to Raise Up

How astonishing, then, are the words that follow: how amazing to the Psalmist and to Israel is the fact that this God has not only stooped down to call them “his people,” but he habitually stoops as low as possible so that he can then raise up the people he finds in the lowest of places: the poor, the needy, the un-loved.

To be poor in the ancient world was to live from hand to mouth; the life of a peasant who scraped a bare living, who could be easily reduced to begging. To be truly poor in the modern world is no different; it is the image of young children scavenging in the garbage dumps of the world’s cities, looking for scraps of food and clothing, and anything they can sell. It is to people like that, says the Psalmist, that Yahweh stoops down, and takes them from the garbage heaps and seats them among princes. That is the character of Yahweh; “elevated” though he is, he never hesitates to come down to raise up people who are in the pits of life.

And you can tell that from the way he has dealt with “his people” Israel. They were a tiny group of wanderers from Ur of the Chaldees, led by an old man named Abram; but from them God made a great nation to be a light to the world, a tool in God’s hand to reveal himself to all people everywhere. The leaders he chose were nobodies; and often characters of no distinction, moral or intellectual. Abraham; Jacob who became Israel; Saul; David – every one a deeply flawed character, every one taken from the low places in life and “seated with princes.”

Then there were the women. Every “mother of the nation,” from Sarah to Rebekah to Rachel, from the mother of Samson to Hannah, the mother of Samuel, were “barren women” – infertile, rejected, unloved, lonely. It was to them that God came in power, and often in response to fervent prayer, and not only made them fruitful, not only made them “happy mothers of children,” but made of their children the great leaders he wanted for his people. The Psalmist knew this, and uses the very words that Hannah used (1 Sam 2:8ff) to describe God’s gracious actions to her.

And this was to be the pattern of God’s dealings with his people in all ages and in all places. The NT dawns with an old barren woman named Elizabeth, suddenly pregnant with John the Baptist. Then it is the miraculous birth of a son to an unmarried teenager named Mary. When this Son of God walks the land, he gathers fisherman and other lowlifes as his companions; he takes women who had been demonically possessed, and makes them prime witnesses to his victory over death. His Church was built on nobodies; people of no distinction; he chose “the lowly things of this world and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are – so that no one may boast before him,” said the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 1:28-29).

4) Our Lives, Our LORD

Where do you live? Wading River, New York, is hardly the garbage dump of the world, and today we know little of real poverty; but you may nonetheless feel at times as though you live on the edge. I have mentioned before that despite our surface success and affluence and our cheery Sunday faces, disease and disaster do not spare us. There are families right here in our congregation who are struggling with attempted suicides, unresponsive depression, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, crime and imprisonment, major illnesses or accidents, sexual problems, marriage breakdowns, alienation and loneliness. Thank God there are also ones celebrating new babies, graduations, marriages, new homes, good friends, wonderful vacations, and enough wealth to be generous with! Truly “as one part suffers, all suffer; and as one part is honored, all rejoice” (1 Cor 12:26).

But if you feel like you are in one of the low points of life; then you may just be ready for God to do something with you that he could never do before. I suspect he has a difficult time getting our attention until things go wrong, and we suddenly find ourselves with time to think about our lives and where they are headed, and most importantly, what God wants of them. What is his will for my life, for our family?

It’s at times like these that we need the hope that comes from knowing that God’ s ways are not like the world’s ways. He does not ask “Who’s Number 1?” He is more likely to ask, “Who’s not?” He does not choose people as the world chooses; he does not sweep past with a retinue of important people as we sit by the side of the road; he stoops, and raises up, and seats among princes. He does not ignore the beggar at his gate, or send out leftovers of food to sustain him, but invites the beggar in for a meal and a shower.

If you are down, or someone in your family is; if you cannot see the road ahead for obstacles, or for your own tears; if you feel unloved and lonely even in the midst of hundreds of people; then take courage, and pray, and God may just find that you are ready for his help, ready to be raised up among the rich and powerful; ripe to be made a joyous mother of something new and wonderful.

What God does such things? What God is Creator and LORD of all, and yet concerns himself with the daily needs of ordinary people? Who stoops so low? Yahweh, the LORD, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – who for us stooped lower than the Godhead had ever stooped before.

How should we, his people, who are called by his name, respond? In praise, in service, and in loving and grateful emulation of our Lord – always looking for the people who are down, so we can lift them up; always seeking out the lonely, the rejected, so that we can make them a joyous part of the family. “Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11).

Let the name of Yahweh our God, and Jesus his Son our Savior, be praised by all people in all times and all places! Who is a God like him?

Let us pray...