The High and the Lowly

Let’s turn in our Bibles tonight to psalm 113. Kevin mentioned this morning that we are starting a short series tonight, a series that will take us through psalm 118, so psalm 113 through psalm 118 will wrap up that series I think the Sunday after Easter, so these are leading up towards Good Friday and Easter. Psalm 113. As we read this psalm together remember that this is God’s Holy Word.

Praise the Lord, praise O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and for evermore from the rising of the sun to its, the name of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, who was seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth. He raises the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes with a princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord. Let’s pray together as we turn to this psalm.

Father in heaven we do pray that you would lead us to praise as we learn and discover who you are as our God, as our Lord, open our minds, open our hearts. Father help us to see, help us to listen, may we hear your voice and may we see Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.

My dear friends of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was about two weeks ago that Sherry and I with a whole bunch of other people from Christ Covenant attended the Queen City pregnancy resource banquet at the convention center. Of course, it’s a banquet for a great cause and it was a great meal, a fancy meal, the kind of meal, ya know, where you sit down and there are multiple pieces of silverware all over the place. So I think we sat down and on the left side there were two forks, on the right side of the plate there were two knives. There was another fork above the plate, and ya know, when I sat down and anytime, I get kind of in a situation like this I’m kind of always saying to myself, ya know, which one of these am I supposed to use when. So the salad came out, looking at all these forks I knew I was not supposed to use a knife at that point, but looking at the forks and I grabbed the fork that was above my plate because as I was looking at the forks that fork was a little shorter than the other forks so I grabbed that one and began to eat my salad and when we got all done eating our salads I’m kinda looking around the table and I notice that everybody still had that fork sitting above their plate and obviously I concluded I used the wrong fork. So, I discreetly took one of those other forks and moved it above my plate where I guess it belonged. But when I got in a situation like that or that night what I clearly needed was somebody to reveal to me how I was supposed to use my silverware so that I would respond rightly. I needed a revelation that would guide a response. Well psalm 113 is a psalm that calls for a response. I guess we could say tonight truly that every scripture calls for a response, but psalm 113 does that and the response is obvious here because you see it in the very first verse and you see it in the last verse. The very first line, the very last line of psalm 113 says, praise the Lord. When you read the psalm, you don’t to wonder, like, what’s the Lord wanting me to do with his psalm, how was the Lord wanting me to respond? It’s obvious, very beginning, very end, and when you see that in a psalm or another part of scripture what it’s saying is at the beginning and at the end and everywhere in between God is calling us to praise Him. Every bit of scripture calls for praise, but this psalm particularly does that and psalm 113 does not stand alone in this. It is the first psalm in a series of psalms that call for praise. That’s why we are looking at these psalms over the next number of weeks. Psalm 113 to 118.

We call these Hallel psalms and the word Hallel simply means praise. Most of these psalms either begin telling us to praise the Lord or they end telling us to praise the Lord. And they’re actually called Egyptian Hallel psalms. Psalm 114, the one that we’ll turn to next week clearly speaks about the exodus from Egypt and what God’s people did over the centuries, God’s Old Testament people, they took these psalms, psalms 113 to 118 and they sang them to celebrate the exodus and the Passover feast that went with it. Psalm 113 and psalm 114, they sang those psalms before they ate the Passover meal. Psalm 115 to psalm 118 they sang after the Passover meal. So, these would have been the hymns, the psalms that Jesus and the disciples sang. Think about that, when they gathered in the upper room, the night before Jesus’ death to celebrate the Passover they would have broken open the psalter and they would have sang from psalm 113 all the way to psalm 118.

Mark 14:26 tells us this, when they had sung a hymn, then they went out to the Mount of Olives. That’s psalm 118. Closing the Passover, closing the celebration of the exodus from Egypt, they broke open psalm 118 and sang it together. And so, friends, it’s truly appropriate then isn’t it for us as we make our way to Good Friday and Easter over the next number of weeks that we would look at these psalms that were part of the Passover celebration, celebrating the lamb of God who had come to take away the sin of the world. And this psalm gives us a particular reason for praise. Our response is to praise the Lord, but here’s the revelation, this psalm reminds us that God is the high and exalted one, but at the very same time God is the one who visits and cares for the needy and the low. It is the flow of grace; it is the flow of the Gospel that his psalm reveals to us and what better reason than for us to praise the Lord.

So, looking at two things tonight, first of all the call to praise and then the rest of the psalm is the reasons for praise, a call to praise and reasons for praise. So, the call to praise first, already mentioned it, you see it in verse 1, you see it in verse 9, praise the Lord. It is the psalm’s way of saying, at the beginning, at the end, everywhere in between praise God, but notice in verse 1 that this call to praise isn’t just in the first line, but it is repeated in this verse, verse 1 three times. Praise the Lord, praise O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord and you no doubt heard before that when you see repetition like this it means emphasis, right, it’s a call for us loud and clear to praise God. It’s maybe something like exclamation points. You put an exclamation point at the end of your sentence and it’s loud or sometimes every once in a while right, you see somebody who sends maybe mistakenly an email to you and it’s all in capital letters. Praise the Lord is what this psalm is saying, don’t miss it. But I want you to notice that this call to praise builds and so the first line, “Praise the Lord”, is a general call to praise. The second line tells us who is to praise, “Praise O servants of the Lord.” Servants in the Bible sometimes can be a reference to angels. So Hebrews 114, “Are not angels ministering servants sent out to serve for the sake of those who are called to inherit salvation. Servants at other times might refer to the Levitical priest, those who are ministering in the temple, maybe that’s who it’s talking about here. Well I think people of God that really this is simply a reference to any and all the faithful in Israel. O servants of the Lord is simply a way of describing God’s people, all of God’s people, all of you, all of us together, we are called to praise the Lord. And then you see that third time, praise the name of the Lord. His name is His revelation, to praise His name is not just to praise His name, the Lord, but it is actually attached to His being. To praise His name is to praise God himself and His name in the psalm is given to us here, isn’t it. It is the Lord, it is the God of the covenant, it is Yahweh, it is the faithful God, the one who saves us, the one who keeps us. Eight times in this psalm the Lord’s name is used. So, there’s no mistaking who it is that we are to praise.

Well, how is He to be praised? In verses 2 and 3 give us the answer to that question. He is to be praised for all times. So blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. So we’re not just a praise at the time of the psalm, but the picture here is of a people from all times, from all centuries gathering together to worship the Lord. This is what we talk about when we confess that we believe in one church. It is the church of all ages, of all times from Noah to Isaiah to the apostle Paul, to the reformation and onward, generation after generation of people praising God. He is to be praised now and forever. In fact, it is the one thing, right, that will not stop when we enter eternity. We praise Him now, we will praise Him then, and our praise will go on and on and on and on forever and forever praising our God, praising the Lord. And so our praise is to be from all times and verse 3 tells us that our praise is to come, or God’s praise is to come from all peoples. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

I don’t think verse 3 here is talking about a time element. In other words, we could understand this verse as to say, from the morning to the evening, from when the sun comes up to the time that it sets at night, all throughout the day we are to praise God. I actually think that this is the spacial description. In other words, it is saying, from where the sun rises to where the sun sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised. Or to put it this way, from one time zone to another to another to another from one continent to the next continent and to the next continent, all across the world as time moves along as the earth rotates and the sun rises in one place and it sets in another place, there God is to be praised. In other words, this is a description of the universal church, not just Israel, but gentiles too. Not just PCA folk, but true believers everywhere. Not just people in North America, but also South America and Africa and Asia, and all around the world. Friends, what a great reminder coming off our missions week a couple of weeks ago. The spread of the Gospel to all the nations so that from the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord would be praised by all peoples. So, this psalm all times, all peoples, universal and eternal praise to God, in other words this psalm is for us, we are to sing this song, we are to join our voices in it, we are to praise the Lord. Well, what are the reasons for that?

This is our second and final point. What are the reasons this psalm gives for praising God in this way? And there are two reasons. The first, this psalm reminds us that God is great or as the psalm puts it, God is high, God is lifted up, God is exalted. You see the majesty and greatness of the Lord here in verses 4 through 6, the Lord is high above all nations and His glory above the heavens. So, who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth. The majesty and greatness of God are described here in spacial terms, spacial terminology, isn’t it? So, the Lord is high above the heavens. His glory is above the heavens. He looks far down, and all of this is to simply convey the infinite worth of God. It is trying to put it in descriptive ways of saying, who is God, who is like God, he is so high, he is so exalted, he is so majestic. In fact, that is the question at the rhetorical center of this psalm, verse 5. Who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high? This is not the numerical center, but this is the center message of the psalm. You wanna know what the psalm is about, verse 5 tells us what this psalm is about. It’s trying to compare God, it’s trying to give a descriptive of God, it’s saying, “What else could we think of or who else is there who is like the Lord.” We all know what the answer is don’t we? The psalm doesn’t have to give us a direct answer, but it gives us a wonderfully indirect answer, and the answer is no one. There isn’t anyone like the Lord our God.\

People of God I love Isaiah 40. There are some chapters in the Bible that are just like sort of mountain peak chapters for me, Romans 8 is one of those chapters, but Isaiah 40 is another one of those chapters as it describes the greatness of God. Just turn there with me for a couple of minutes tonight. Isaiah chapter 40 and wonderful descriptions of the fact that there isn’t anyone at all like the Lord our God. You see for example, in Isaiah 40, look at verse 9, “Go up to a high mountain O Zion, herald of good news, lift up your voice with strength.” And this is what you are to declare at the end of verse 9, “Behold your God.” What is he like? Behold the Lord comes with might and his arm rules for him. In other words, he’s powerful and yet verse 11, “He tends his flock like a shepherd and he gathers the lambs in his arms”. This mighty arm of God that rules is also the same arm that gathers the lambs so that he can carry them close to his bosom.

Look at verse 12. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand or marked off the heavens with a span and closed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Isaiah 40 says the Lord can take all of the seeds and all of the oceans and He cups His hand, and He can hold all of the water right there. All as folks suggest, 352 quintillion gallons of water and God can just put out His hand and hold it all, that’s how great He is. And He measures the heavens with a span, marks them off with a span. Ya know what a span is, it’s the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your pinky. God takes his hand, and he says, “Lets measure the distance between the earth and the sun, 149.6 million kilometers and God is able to just put his thumb on the sun and put is pinky on the earth, that’s how great God is. He weighs the Blue Ridge Mountains on a scale, takes the Rocky Mountains, He takes the Alps and says, I can just put them in a little balance, that’s how great He is.

Or verse 15. Behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales, behold He takes up the coastlands like fine dust. The Babylonians, the Roman Empire, The British Empire, NATO, the United States of America like a drop in a pail. And he takes the coastlands, God can walk up and down the beaches of the world and just gather the sand and it’s like fine dust to the Lord in His hand. Or verse 17. All the nations are as nothing before Him. They are accounted by Him as less than nothing, an emptiness. Or verse 22. It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and what are its habitants like, they are like grasshoppers, just little things. The one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain spreads them like a tent to dwell in.

What we call all of these descriptions are anthropomorphisms which simply means that Isaiah is trying to put human terms to the greatness of God because we can’t capture it any other way, but Isaiah is just going to great pains to tell us how immense the Lord is, how great our God is, and of course in Isaiah 40 where he says to us, behold Him, right, look at Him, think about Him, dwell upon Him, reflect upon the greatness of your God. He is great, He is high above all the nations. His glory, back to psalm 113 is above the heavens, glory is the invisible manifestation of God’s radiant splendor. One author put it like this, “God’s glory is what you see, experience, and feel when God goes public with his beauty.” It is the sum declaration that God is the greatest being in the universe and His glory, it is high above the heavens.

And then verse 6 he looks far down on the heavens and the earth, who is like God. Makes sense doesn’t it, that God would look far down to see the earth if he’s that high and exalted and the distance between the heavens and the earth, that God would look far down to see the earth, kind of like where is it down there? But you know what the psalm says that he not only looks far down to see the earth, but God also looks far down to see the heavens. He has to squint as it were so high and exalted to see the heavens. It’s not that He’s incapable of it, but it’s that He is so exalted above them. I love the pictures from the Space Station this last week. Some of the astronauts who have been in the International Space Station are finally coming home after nearly a year or something like that, and you see these pictures of the earth, right, and you can see the whole thing. What is it like for God to look down and see the earth? Maybe a little marble, a little speck, but He has to look far down to see the earth and the heavens.

Friends, I think this is actually a play on the Tower of Babel story, Genesis 11. “People of Babel we are so great we’re going to make a name for ourselves, let’s build a tower that reaches up into the heavens. It’s top will pierce through the heavens above.” And then you read in Genesis 11, “But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.” I think Genesis 11 is sort of saying this, that God said where’s that tower of yours that’s supposed to reach to the heavens, ah, where is this tower that you think is so great, you are so great, God is so high and exalted, it’s like God can’t even find it, it’s so small. This is the God that is our God this psalm says. Who is like the Lord our God, why praise Him because He is the high and exalted one, there is no one like our God. But there’s one more reason, not only is he great, but the other reason is that God stoops down to visit us and friends I think really this is the surprise of the psalm, that the God who is lofty is the God who looks after the lowly. He could, right, be so exalted that he doesn’t pay any attention to us, he doesn’t see what’s happening, he doesn’t care, he’s just up there high and lifted up. But this psalm says not only is our God awesome, but our God at the same time is not aloof and this is what comes in the last part of the psalm. Who is like the Lord our God, who not only looks far down on the heavens and the earth, but He is the one who raises the poor from the dust. He is the one who lifts up the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes, with the prices of his people He is the one who gives the barren woman a home and makes her the joyous mother of children.

Again, the psalm is building. He visits the poor and raises them from the dust, from the lowest pit, the dust of the ground, God is the one who comes and lifts up the empty. You need an example of this? Think about the story of Ruth, the Moabitess. An outcast, her husband dies, she determined to stay with her mother-in-law in Israel, she’s devoted to the God of Israel, the Lord, but she has no husband, no heir, no right to a heritage in the land, no inheritance. Her food comes from gleaning the leftovers of the reapers and the Lord sends a kinsman redeemer to her, Boaz, and she becomes the great grandmother of David and in the line of Christ God remembers her and God lifts her up from the dust, from nothing. God also lifts up the needy from the ash heap, verse 7, to make them sit with princes. Ya know what an ash heap is, an ash heap is basically a dump. It’s where you dump your garbage and the garbage burns and you end up with ashes, a place of refuse, rejection, extreme poverty, social marginalization. Jobe found himself sitting in the ashes after his property and his children were destroyed and he was inflicted with sores all over his body, a place of scorn, Job you go there, we don’t want anything to do with you. A social pariah forgotten about amongst the ashes.

What does the psalm say, our great God, what does He do, He comes to the needy, He comes to those who are broken, He comes to those who have nothing, and He lifts them up and He makes them sit with princes from rejection to royalty. Friends isn’t that what He did for Mephibosheth, grandson of Saul, crippled in both feet, a forgotten heir. David is king and David asked the question, is there anybody left of Saul’s house? Oh yeah, yeah there is, there’s this grandson, he lives in Lo Debar, which means no word or thing, a nothing place, and that’s exactly what described Mephibosheth. He’s nothing, he’s crippled, he can’t do anything for himself and what did David do, he took kindness on him and he lifted him up so that he sat with princes. In fact, he gave him a seat at the king’s table. The needy he raises and then one more, even more profound, he gives the barren woman a home and makes her the joyous mother of children. Why is this more profound, because the psalm goes from describing two groups of people, the poor and the needy, and now it’s on to an individual. It’s one thing if the Lord sees a community of the downtrodden, but here it says He sees the barren one, God sees the needy, the broken, the empty person. You could go right on down our pews tonight, He sees you, He sees me, there’s on one else here, He knows the individual, the one single person alone with their burdens, their unfulfilled longings. Having no children, having no heritage, having no home, no one to carry on your name, no place among the people of God, but the Lord sees, and He condescends and he stoops and he sees just her and He lifts her up and He gives her a family.

Friends, this is the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother. In fact, psalm 113 quotes from her song in 1 Samuel 2:8. “He raises up the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and to inherit a seat of honor.” What psalm 113 does do that 1 Samuel 2 doesn’t is talk about the barren woman and Hannah didn’t need to talk about that because the Lord had given her a son, the Lord had given her a home, the barren woman was given children.

Friends I wonder tonight if any of you might be going through circumstances where you read this psalm and you say, that’s me, the poor, the needy, the barren, He remembered me. Or you read the psalm, and you cry out, God remember me, I know you are great but remember me. Maybe you’re poor. We read a psalm like this, and we say, well that line that doesn’t really fit in South Charlotte. Maybe it does. Maybe your debt is overwhelming or the income that you have you wonder really if you’re gonna make it or not. Friends, this is real. Sherry and I have been talking with a friend recently whose husband has left her, and we wonder together how she is going to pay the rent, how is she going to keep up with her expenses? Lord, you are great, do you remember the poor, you do, you raise them from the dust. Maybe you’re needy, your family is broken, your marriage is crumbling, chronic pain, facing surgery, grieving a loss, you’re lonely, you’re afraid. God you’re high and exalted, would you remember me, he does. Or maybe tonight you’re barren. It feels like you’re an emotional desert, you’re thirsty, you’re hungry or maybe you’re here tonight literally, the longing of your heart is for God to open your wound, and he hasn’t done that yet. Does God remember you? He does.

You see friends, this is a psalm of great hope that God remembers the forgotten, he doesn’t, let’s be honest, He doesn’t always dramatically turn things around for us, but sometimes He does, and even if you cannot find yourself in one of the descriptions that I’ve described tonight, you at least know this, every single one of us here tonight does, that we are poor, needy and barren when it comes to our spiritual condition and what did the Lord do, the God who dwells in the heavens, what has he done, he has come down to visit us. The one who is high and exalted has come to the poor, He has come to the needy, has come to the barren, has come to the broken, and He has given us life and He has given us life to the full. Nancy Guthrie, she says, “God does His best work with empty. Not people who are full, but people who are empty. Grace is like water.” You’ve heard this before, grace is like water, it always runs downhill, it runs to the lowest point, it runs to the lowest person, grace doesn’t go uphill, grace goes down to the lowest of the low.

Donald Gray Barnhouse said it like this, he said, “Love that goes upward is worship, love that goes outward is affection and it is love that stoops, that is grace”. God is a stooping God, great but stoops down to us, the one who was seated high looks far down. As Spurgeon put it, how great a stoop from the height of his throne to a dunghill. A greatest stoop from the height of his throne to a dunghill, that’s our story, isn’t it, that our great God has come down to the dunghill where we find ourselves apart from Christ. Friends, Psalm 113 not only echoes Hannah’s song, but is also finds an echo in Mary’s song, The Magnificat.

Luke 1. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, exalted those of humble estate, He has filled the hungry with good things, the rich He has sent away empty, He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy. God, she says, brings the high down and God takes the lowly and he lifts them up. And of course, she was writing all this about the coming of her son, the Christ, our savior. That’s why what this psalm says is true for us, that this God who we ought to praise, why do we praise Him, not only because He’s great, but we praise Him also because He has come down to visit us from the heights to the depths and friends, that’s exactly the pattern of Jesus’ life, isn’t it? As Paul reminds us in Philippians 2 that Jesus being in a form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped. God himself high, great, is glory above the heavens, above all the nations, he did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but He came down and He made himself nothing and he took the form of a servant, and He humbled himself to death even, death on a cross. Psalm 113 friends is nothing less than this, the downward sweep of the Gospel to us. That’s what it’s about. It describes what God did for Israel in the exodus from Egypt. This indeed is an Egyptian Hallel psalm because where was Israel when God came to visit them, they were nothing, broken, poor, needy, 400 years of exile and the Lord, this great God came down and visited them and he says, I’ll life you up, I’ll take you out, I will set you free. People of God that is exactly what God has done for us in our sin in Christ. He has come down to visit us. And so you see why this psalm begins and ends with praise the Lord because what else can you do for a God who does this for you, praise Him, bless His name, praise the name of the Lord. Let’s pray together.

Father in heaven we are humbled tonight by your grace, the stoop of your grace, the downward sweep of the Gospel to us in our lowest state all because of Christ you came to redeem us, to lift us up, to set us free, we praise you that you have done this and so Lord we do pray that as your people and tonight but as we move our way through these psalms that we would indeed praise the Lord. From this time forth and from evermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting, may the name of the Lord be praised. In Jesus’ name. Amen.