| David
and the other writers of the Psalms were worshippers. They had
great thoughts of God. The marvels of His creation swept them
away in rapturous song. When they considered His greatness,
goodness, and grace, their minds strained to take it all in.
They thought of Him as the Upholder and Controller of all things
and were confounded. The writer of the closing psalms was so
overwhelmed that he called on all creation, animate and
inanimate, to sing the praises of the Lord. All people great and
small, old and young, kings and princes, yes, all angels,
together with beasts, birds, and creeping things should form a
universal choir. He enlists the accompaniment of all kinds of
instruments – harps, trumpets, cornets, timbrels, cymbals, and
organs. His subject is so amazing that he summons the sun, moon,
and stars to join the anthem. The heavens, earth, sea, hills,
mountains, and waters must not be silent. Fire, hail, snow, and
stormy winds have their part. The subject is so breathtaking
that the Lord is worthy of total praise, Ps. 150.
Yet these psalmists did not
have a Bible. They did not know how the Son of God would come
down to planet earth and be born in a cattle shed, His crib an
animal's feed box. They did not know that wise men would see
their God 'contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made Man'. Nor
did they know that in that manger would lie the One 'who built
the starry skies'. Hidden from their eyes was the truth that the
babe in the manger would be ‘the Eternal Word that spoke the
worlds out of the womb of nothing, that the tiny arms of this
helpless child were the hands of Him who laid the timbers of the
universe’ (lan Macpherson).
They did not know that the
Architect and Maker of the universe would one day wear a
carpenter's apron in a place called Nazareth. Or that He would
‘wander as a homeless stranger in the world His hands had
made'. They would have gasped at the thought of God having no
place to lay His head, or that He would sometimes sleep under
the stars while His followers went to their homes.
Did they realize that God would
actually come to earth and heal the sick, give sight to the
blind, restore limbs to the maimed, cast out demons, and raise
the dead? Or, that in spite of all His kindness, He would be
insulted, ridiculed, and driven out of town?
It would have been incredible
to them that He, the Judge of all, would be betrayed by one of
His own, arrested,and put on trial. The civil authorities would
find Him innocent, but He would be scourged until His back was
like a furrowed field and He was no longer recognizable as a
man.
The psalmists did not know in
great detail what we now know. At a place called Calvary men
would nail the One who is truly God to a cross of wood. It would
be unimaginable to these Old Testament poets. They would have
shaken their heads to think that the brightness of God's glory,
the express image of His Person, the Maker and Upholder of the
universe, was there on a cross, purging man's sins, Heb. 1. 1-3.
Frail creatures took the One Who is high and lifted up in glory
and lifted Him up on a pole of shame. The heaven of heavens
cannot contain Him, yet He was bound by nails. It was the
Immortal who was dying.
Imagine the torrent of heavenly
harmony that the psalmist's massed choir would have raised if
they could have sung in the words of Charles Wesley:
Amazing love! How can it be
That thou, my God, should die for me?
Or Isaac Watts’ hymn that
says:
Forbid it, Lord, that I should
boast
Save in the death of Christ my God.
They saw through a glass
darkly. At times they had brief glimpses of what would happen,
but the full revelation was not for them to know.
The thought is this. If they,
with the limited knowledge they had, could have poured out such
torrents of praise, worship, adoration, and thanksgiving to the
Lord, how much more should we with what we know about Calvary
and of the One who died there for us.
Once we grasp the truth of what
our God has done for us, of the sacrifice He made to save us, we
will be spontaneous and compulsive worshippers. No one will have
to coax or cajole us to praise the Lord. Our tongues will be the
pen of ready writers. Our lives will be one unending psalm of
praise to Him. In the words of Charles Wesley, we will 'dissolve
our hearts in thankfulness and melt our eyes in tears'. We will
be 'lost in wonder, love, and praise', and 'drowned in love's
mysterious deep'. Like the psalmist we will call on all creation
to join us in singing the excellencies of Him who called us out
of darkness into His marvellous light.
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