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 …”
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