IN PRAISE OF THE LORD
Psalm 145
“The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.”
How does God want to be praised? In Exodus 34, when God granted Moses’ request and revealed himself to him, he said this as he passed by Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
This description is the long version of “righteousness”—the core expression of God’s character, including the part about punishing those who reject that righteousness. We must not think of righteousness as the absence of sin; rather, sin is the negation (or repudiation) of righteousness. Righteousness is the core of who God is.
In this psalm that aims to comprehensively praise God for who he is, we read verses extolling his compassion, faithfulness, goodness, responsiveness, nearness, protection, sustenance, glory and might and, briefly, but definitely, “all the wicked he will destroy”.
God wants us to know him for all the positive things he is to us but he does not allow us to ignore, or conveniently overlook the truth that his righteousness includes his wrath against those who reject righteousness.
God abounds in love and faithfulness; he is compassionate and gracious; he forgives. Indeed he is slow to anger but we must never make the mistake and take his mercy for granted and abuse his grace. God is not weak and therefore we must not understand “compassion, faithfulness, goodness, responsiveness, nearness, providing protection and sustenance” to be weak.
The modern Christian makes the mistake of understanding God, and the words that describe God, from the literature of the world that can only capture man’s experience of Godly virtues. Even worse when Christians pass along the wisdom of the world as God’s wisdom. God is infinitely true while man can be weak, capricious and conflicted. God reveals himself to us in words we can understand but to fully appreciate who he is, we need to immerse ourselves in his Word.
How then can we exalt and extol him, and praise him to all around us? Not only with words surely, but to embrace those qualities and principles that he has chosen to be known by and at every point when we fail to honour those qualities, and we surely will, to turn to his Word and to Him, knowing that he “upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.” In this way, we bring word to life and life to word, and our knowledge of him is enriched.
“I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. I will meditate on your wonderful works and I will proclaim your great deeds.”