COVENANT LOVE
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Opening Prayer
Mighty God, receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving as I come to you, awed by your power to love and to save.
Read Psalm 146
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Psalm 146
1 Praise the Lord.[a]
Praise the Lord, my soul.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
8 the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
10 The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.
Footnotes
- Psalm 146:1 Hebrew Hallelu Yah; also in verse 10
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
‘[God] will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge.’1
Psalms 145–150 formed part of the daily morning prayer in the synagogue. Most begin ‘Praise the Lord’ and describe different aspects of the call to praise. Here the emphasis is on God as the one true foundation for human society, the only one who can ensure that justice prevails. Although this is a congregational hymn rather than a song of personal thanksgiving, the psalmist is far from being an observer of communal worship. He is determined to share in it personally.
Ezekiel would have appreciated the reference (v. 7) to setting the prisoners (exiles) free, just as he would have enjoyed the mention of the Lord as the God of Jacob, a reminder that the beleaguered exiles were still part of God’s chosen people going back to the patriarchs— Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The warning not to put one’s trust in princes and other humans (v. 3) was also a major theme of Ezekiel’s message to the exiles. Instead, the exiles, along with those singing this hymn of praise, were to put their hope in the Lord (v. 5). A difficult part of Ezekiel’s message was to explain why the covenant-making God of Jacob was not coming to their rescue. It was because God’s people had strayed from God to such an extent that when God ‘frustrates the ways of the wicked’ (v. 9) it included them.
The picture of the Lord that the psalmist paints is wide-ranging. God is the Creator and Sustainer, the covenant God. God frustrates the plans of the wicked, but a major emphasis in the description of God’s attributes is the way he comes to the aid of the needy, identified as the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, the foreigners, the widows, the fatherless, and those who are bowed down. God’s love reaches everywhere.
Apply
How do we speak up for justice in our divided and perhaps inherently unfair society?
Closing prayer
Holy Spirit, help me in all that I am—my thoughts, my words, my actions—to testify and bring glory to Jesus—to proclaim his justice, as well as his grace and mercy.
1 Isa 33:6
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