Psalm 111:9 – “More Covenant Business”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

While I’m pondering holiness I have run across several passages touching on this business of the “everlasting covenant,” which I considered in an earlier post. What catches my eye in Psalm 111:9 is this fact that the psalmist refers to it as the “covenant to [the] ages” or an “everlasting covenant.” As I said earlier, he is clearly not referring to the Mosaic Covenant, which was never intended to be nor ever called an “everlasting” covenant. In my earlier post I suggested it is probably referring to the Abrahamic Covenant, which, in Psalm 105:8-11, is clearly presented as an “everlasting” covenant.

In that post, I dismissed the New Covenant on the basis that I thought the psalmist most logically had to be referring to a covenant current in his time. Now I’m having second thoughts. Perhaps, in the psalmist’s mind, what he is seeing is the Abrahamic Covenant – God’s promises to the Jewish people to be their God, to give them the Land, and to make them numerous (Gen 12:1-3 et al) – but whether he realizes it or not, the New is involved.

The Abrahamic Covenant is extremely important to understand the Bible and the whole flow of human history, and particularly the flow of Jewish history. In Gen 12:1-3, the Lord promised to make Abraham into a great nation and attached to his family the Messianic line (“all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”). In 15:18-20, He specifically promised to give him the land of Canaan. In 17:6-8, He sums up the Covenant as including the three important elements, 1) that He would make his descendants “very fruitful,” 2) that He would be their God and they would be His people, and 3) that the land of Canaan would be their everlasting possession. The story of the Exodus starts with the people of Israel being very fruitful and filling the land, but it was the wrong land, Egypt, not Canaan. Then what followed was the battle between Pharaoh and the Lord over whose people they were. Note that it was actually an expression of the Abrahamic Covenant that the Lord kept sending Moses to Pharaoh to say, “Let My people go.” Pharaoh thought they were his people. The Lord thought otherwise and we know who won! Then the Lord took them into the land of Canaan and in fact gave the land to them. In that case, their possession of the land was brokered under the Mosaic Covenant, which, being dependent on their obedience was destined to fail. However, that only meant that a New Covenant must be struck, in order for the Abrahamic Covenant to be fulfilled. So the Abrahamic Covenant itself is an everlasting covenant and extremely important but it requires another covenant for its implementation.

In my studies of late, what particularly caught my eye was the reference to the New Covenant in Hebrews 13:20, “Now may the God of peace, Who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, …” In this case, I think clearly the reference is to the New Covenant, especially in light of the many passages in the book of Hebrews, including 9:15, “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

I also note that, the New Covenant itself is intimately tied to the Abrahamic Covenant, as in Ezek 37:26,27, “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever,” and Ezek 11:19,20, “ I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.” This “Everlasting covenant” is clearly the New, but many of its elements are those of the Abrahamic.

I think the thing is the point of both the Old and New Covenants was actually the implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant. In other words, God promised Abraham to bless his descendants. The question remained exactly how and when He would enter into covenant with those descendants. Under the Old Covenant, the people actually thought they could pull it off – “All the Lord commands us, we will do!” They (of course) utterly failed, and, whether they realized it or not, their only hope was the blood of Jesus to offer them an unconditional covenant of grace, which is then, the New Covenant. The purpose of the Old Covenant was to implement the Abrahamic, but it was based on the people’s obedience and was hence destined to fail.

The New Covenant is in fact very specifically the unconditional implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant with the Jewish people (and later we learn it can be unconditional because it is based on the blood of Jesus). This unconditional implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant in the New is very clear in a number of passages, including Jer 31:31:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
    “when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
    and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
    though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

So, in conclusion, whether the psalmist realized it or not, if he was referring to the Abrahamic Covenant, then this verse also includes the New Covenant as the “everlasting covenant” which implements the Abrahamic. I suppose I doubt that the psalmist could have known that, still being under the Mosaic Covenant, and probably the main thing in his mind is the Abrahamic and God’s promised blessings to the Jewish people. I’ve never really realized before how the New actually implements the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic is the everlasting covenant but it requires another covenant for its implementation – and that must be an unconditional covenant of grace to in fact implement it all “everlastingly.”

Very interesting!

For whatever it’s worth, I will note that I don’t believe we as Gentile Christians are under the New Covenant. We are certainly blessed under the Abrahamic Covenant, as the Lord told Abraham, “… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3), but the New Covenant is very specifically between the Lord and “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” – the Jewish people. The book of Hebrews contains extensive references to and explanations of the New Covenant, but we should not forget, it is the book of Hebrews. It is specifically written to Jewish believers.

A covenant is a legal agreement. We as Gentiles are not related to the Lord through any kind of legal agreement, rather we are “in Christ.” We are not related to Him legally but rather organically. We are “the body of Christ.” That is precisely why we are related to the New Covenant – not because we are under it but rather because we are in its Mediator. The church enjoys many of the blessings of the New Covenant, particularly the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but that New Covenant obviously has yet to actually be implemented with “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” We enjoy its blessings because we’re in its Mediator.

Strikes me that the Lord’s plans and what He’s doing in this world is so way, way bigger than we even begin to realize. There is so much more going on than our meager struggle to survive. Thank the Lord He’s in charge and making it all fit together!

Psalm 111:9 – “What Do I Know of Holy?”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

For some time I have pondering this last line, “Holy and fearsome [is] His name.”

What does it really mean? Can I actually say those words with understanding, or are they a religious cliché, easily spoken utterly without the slightest idea what the words mean?

What really is holiness? I think most people just understand it as something like righteousness or purity, but it means way more than that. Moses was told to remove his sandals, “…for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.” The ground wasn’t righteous – clearly, in the case of inanimate objects it must mean something more like “dedicated.” And we can see it means more than “righteous” or “pure” in passages like Hosea 11:9-11 where the Lord is condemning the sins of the tribe of Ephraim, then says, “I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor turn and utterly destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath … I will settle them in their homes.” Given our cliché understanding of holiness, we would expect the Lord to in fact utterly destroy Ephraim. But He will not. And why not? Because He’s holy.

I hope if anyone has stumbled across this you can see what I mean. I wonder if we have the slightest clue what “holy” means.

And that’s bad. Even as I type, the Seraphim are around the Throne singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!” They understand exactly what it means and it moves them to endless praise. Yet here I am groping around in a dense fog really not seeing clearly what it means at all. As I ponder, I’m wondering if this isn’t a satanic thing – that he has so duped and deceived and confused the human race that we not only don’t see God in His holiness, we don’t even know what it means! He’s taken this quality of God that moves angels to praise and stolen its very meaning from our hearts.

I keep thinking of a contemporary song, “What Do I Know of Holy?” Its chorus goes:

What do I know of You
who spoke me into motion?
Where have I even stood
but the shore along Your ocean?
Are You fire?
Are You fury?
Are You sacred?
Are You beautiful?
What do I know?
What do I know of Holy?

“What do I know of holy?”

I’m not so sure anyone knows.

I read all kinds of things written and see everyone else struggling to exactly put their finger on it.

This has to be cosmically tragic.

Such an obviously important attribute of our God … and we don’t even know what it means!

I want to.

I want to know Him.

We need Jesus to give us salve for our eyes, “that we might recover ourselves from the snare of the devil” and “see the truth.”

When we think of holiness, I think our misunderstanding of it moves us to be Pharisees. It means to us scrupulously keeping the rules. It means not being defiled. It means separation from everything in this world. Yet that isn’t what it means. Jesus is holiness and the Pharisees were His most bitter enemies. Jesus is the perfect picture of holiness in a man. Yet still, what do I know? Do I even understand it in Him?

What do I know of holy?

I’m going to keep pondering and praying. If the Lord opens my eyes to see something, I’ll come back and write it down.

Psalm 111:9 – “Foreverness”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

One more thought on “He has sent redemption to His people” – Someone somewhere in my life made the observation that usually when God answers a prayer, He uses someone. I would suggest it is equally true that, when the Lord “sends redemption,” it is the same. He uses someone. Of course, in the Great Redemption, He used His Son, the man Jesus. Jesus was of course God in the flesh, but as the Bible is clear, He who was totally God was also totally man. It is entirely accurate to say that, when the Lord would send redemption to the whole world, He sent Someone. When He would redeem Israel out of Egypt, He raised up Moses. When the people had sinned and groaned under their oppressors, He sent one judge after another to deliver them.

Though He is God and totally does not need our help, He set up for Israel a priesthood where men were given the place to stand before the people, to offer atoning sacrifices for their sins, and generally to represent God and His redemption to them. When Jesus would save the world, He Himself provided the Redemption, but then sent His disciples to “preach the Gospel to all creation” in order that that Redemption might be realized in the lives of individual people.

I could go on and on, but I think it significant to realize the Lord wants to use us to effect redemption in this world. Everywhere we go, everything we do, every person we meet, every word we say, every task we complete could be a tool God uses to in any way effect redemption in someone else’s life. Our faith is not something that happens on Sunday mornings in a church building. It is something to be lived all day every day. Although a few people are specifically called by God to a full-time vocational ministry, for most of us He would say what He said to the demonic of Gerasenes who, having been healed, wanted to go with Jesus and the Apostles. Jesus told Him, “No. Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). It is so very important that we all sincerely try to walk with God all day every day right in the very world He has placed us in, to stay close to Him, to see our world through His eyes, to speak to every person aware they are a person God loves. When He sends redemption into any person’s life, He might just want to use you or me.

As I have gone on to study this verse I thought it interesting that it says, “He has commanded His covenant forever.” My first question was “Which Covenant?” Of course all of our minds would go immediately to the Law, the Mosaic Covenant, but interestingly that is never called an “everlasting covenant.” There are several others, such as the Noahic Covenant (Gen 9:8-17), the Abrahamic (Gen 17:1-14), the Davidic (II Sam 7), and the New (Jer 31). The Lord’s relationship with Adam was never specifically referred to as a Covenant, except in Hosea 6:7, where it says, “Like Adam, they have broken the covenant.”

I would suggest what the Psalmist is referring to is either one of the above in particular or he is just making a gnomic statement of truth about the Lord. If the latter were the case, he would simply be asserting the immutability of God’s decrees – that when He commands something, it is no impulsive response or momentary whim (as is too often the case with human leaders). When the Lord strikes a contract with His creation, it is an eternal arrangement. This of course does not preclude the possibility that the Lord can institute things which are by their nature temporary – such as the Mosaic Covenant, which from the beginning was intended to be only a shadow, to be a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. However, such “temporary” arrangements are a result of our mutability, not His. He is altogether deliberate and intentional. What He does He does in total infinite wisdom. There is no need whatsoever for the Lord’s plans to contain contingencies. He knows the end from the beginning.

I think it quite possible this is all the Psalmist is asserting when He says, “He commands His covenant to [the] ages.” Only a Western mind tenaciously insists on technical specificity. It is a characteristic of our obligate linear logic that He must be referring to one and only one covenant and then to insist we must know which one or we cannot be content. Oriental minds were happy to paint pictures, to make gnomic statements of fractal truth.

On the other hand, I would suggest, if he is referring to one covenant in particular, I suspect it would be the Abrahamic. Again, the Mosaic Covenant, the Law, which I would suggest is the other most likely candidate, was never intended to be eternal. Jesus said not one jot or tittle of the Law would pass away until it was fulfilled. “Until it was fulfilled” – the words in themselves imply it was not eternal and of course Jesus Himself was “the end of the Law to all them that believe.” I think I can safely also say, obviously, the Psalmist is not referring to the New Covenant. In his historical context, he is referring to a covenant in effect at the time and something which would be eternal.

The Abrahamic Covenant certainly meets these qualifications. It would have been "in effect" at the writing of this psalm and it was eternal. The other proof which would lean my heart heavily in that direction would be a similar statement in Psalm 105, which then specifically identifies the Abrahamic as the covenant to which he is referring. In verses 8-11 of that Psalm, the writer says, “He hath remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations; which covenant He made with Abraham, and His oath unto Isaac; and confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying, ‘Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.’”

If, in fact, the writer in Psalm 111 is also referring to the Abrahamic Covenant, it would make perfect sense. It had to be enormously encouraging to the Jewish people to know that their covenant relationship with the Lord was eternal. That covenant included the three elements of 1) a special relationship (“I will be their God and they shall be My people”), 2) numerous progeny (“descendants like the sand on the seashore’), and 3) possession of the land of Canaan (“an everlasting inheritance”). As a footnote, I think it interesting it is Biblically indisputable that the land of Canaan is intended to be the home of the Jewish people forever. In the new creation, the Lord will make a new heaven and a new earth. What’s the new earth for? I would suggest it is specifically for the Jewish people. I suspect that us saved Gentiles will be able to pass back and forth between our home (Heaven) and theirs (Earth). I know that all sounds berserk to anyone who’s never heard it before, but the fact is, again, indisputable that the Jewish people were promised the land of Canaan forever, and that fact of the Abrahamic Covenant is what is specifically asserted in Psalm 105.

So much for all my childish rambling. I think, in either case, whether the psalmist is referring to the Abrahamic Covenant (or any other), or simply to God’s “agreements” in general, the same truth is asserted – that the Lord’s decrees are immutable, that His rule over us is conducted in perfect and deliberate wisdom. As it said earlier, “The works of His hands are truth and justice.”

It is good to stop and ponder once in a while how much we are blessed by this “foreverness," by Him who is rightly called a Rock. As the song says, “The Rock won’t move and His word can’t be undone.” His immutability is actually the very cornerstone of faith itself. We can have faith because He is true. All that He says is true, all that He promises is true, and we can literally recklessly abandon our hearts and lives and families and our very eternal souls into His good and kind care.

I suppose that we, standing here on this side of the Cross, we can read these words in Psalm 111, “He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages” and apply it most directly to our salvation itself. He who bought us says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand. My Father who gave them to Me is greater than all, and nothing is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand” (vv27-29).

Thank God for His foreverness!

As the Psalm began, “Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart …”

Psalm 111:9 – “What Matters”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

“He has sent redemption to His people.” As I have been studying this verse I fear that the familiarity of the words renders them almost meaningless. “Redemption? God gave us redemption? Oh, yeah, sure, I know that.” That is what I find my heart seeming to say. But then I back up and remind myself, “Wait a minute! That is probably one of the most profound, important truths in our fallen existence!”

Part of why I’m typing now is to shake myself out of this lethargy and to help me duly appreciate these words. “He has sent redemption to His people.”

First of all, as we would read back through this entire Psalm, none of it would do us any good without redemption. What good would it do me that God is faithful, that He is truth, that He is a God of grace and compassion if there was no redemption? In fact, the very words of the Psalm would be a terror to me. As the last line of verse 9 says, “Holy and fearsome is His name!” The same God who is faithful to keep His promises to His people is the same God who will fulfill every threat He ever uttered against those who reject Him! The same God who is able to do us good “exceedingly, abundantly above anything we could have asked or thought” is also able to punish “exceedingly, abundantly above anything we could have asked or thought!” As Heaven is inconceivably glorious, hell will be an unthinkable terror!

No matter how good and kind and loving and powerful and faithful God is, none of that helps me unless there is redemption. And the fact is “He has sent redemption to His people.”

Once again, we see how amazing our God is and how perfect is His rule over us. He not only gives us much, but He makes sure He gives us what we need most. As a parent, we love our children as much as human love is even possible. We would not hesitate to die in their place. Especially as they’re growing up, we try to give them everything we possibly can to help them become the adults they’ll need to be. And yet, when years have passed, we look back and realize we should have given them so much more. It is eminently possible that, even in our love, while we tried to give them everything, we failed to give them what they needed most. I look back and realize that I tried to teach my children to obey God but I’m afraid I utterly failed to teach them to love God. Now I find, after years have passed, that the most important thing is to love Him, just as it says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Obedience is properly the expression of love. To be less, to be obedient out of some sense of duty, is certainly better than sinning (and its consequences), but it is far short of the life the Lord intends us to enjoy. So I find that even the greatest of human love can fail in the sense that, though it gave much, it failed to give what was needed most.

Not so with our Lord. “He has sent redemption to His people.” He has given us the one thing that mattered above all else. He could decide not to give us anything else, to let us starve or freeze to death, to leave us to be murdered by our enemies, to go completely bankrupt, blind, deaf, dumb, and lame -- but give us redemption, and in the end we would have received the only thing that really mattered! And that is what He has given!

I Peter 1:8 reminds us, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”

Psalm 130:7 says, “O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with Him is full redemption.”

We can and should put our hope in Him, for the very reason that He has done for us the one thing we needed most. He has given us much, much, much, but in His great wisdom and love, He made sure in all of that He gave us that without which all else would have been in vain. He really is the best King and the best Father.

One scary thought is that, although He has sent redemption, each individual has to decide whether to accept it. He will in fact go on sending His sun to shine and making His rain to fall, to give human beings life and health and families and so many things, but it is incumbent upon each one of us to accept that one thing without which all else is in vain – the gift of redemption. “For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Our good and wise and loving Lord has provided redemption. May we be wise enough to accept it!