(About His Incarnation)
Psalm 113
Hello, everyone!
Introduction: A young adult asked me the other day if Jesus is really on every page of the Old Testament. After thinking a moment, I say, “Yes, He is on each and every page implicitly, and on very many of them explicitly. In other words, the entire Old Testament is pervaded with the anticipation of a coming Messiah. And many of those pages describe Him overtly and openly, using either prophetic words or predictive types or prototypes.
There is a special collection of six Psalms that contain both implicit and explicit portraits of Jesus, and these are the ones He sang with His disciples in the Upper Room on the final night of His earthly life. They are called the Egyptian Hallel Psalms. The word Hallel is related to the word Hallelujah. It’s a shout of praise. And these Psalms are called the Egyptian Hallel because there are references in them regarding the exodus from Egypt. I introduced this series last week, so if you missed it, circle back and check it out.
The Egyptian Hallel Psalms are Psalm 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118. They were sung publicly at the major temple celebrations in Jerusalem. But they were sung privately in homes by families each year during the Passover meal. Just as we sing Christmas carols around the piano, Jewish families sang the Egyptian Hallel at their Passover meal. Most scholars say Psalm 113 and 114 were sung before the meal; Psalms 115 through 118 afterward. This custom of singing the Egyptian Hallel had its roots in the days between the Old and New Testaments, and scholars feel confident it was in effect before the days of Jesus.
So there is little doubt that when, in the Gospel records, we read that Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn in the Upper Room, it is referring to this collection of Psalms.
Our study today will be the first of those, Psalm 113, so let me read it to you. For this series I’m using the New American Standard Bible.
Scripture: Psalm 113
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 forever.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations;
His glory is above the heavens.
Who is like our God,
Who is enthroned on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and on earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes,
With the princes of His people.
He make the barren women abide in the house
As a joyful mother of children.
Praise the Lord!
1. Praise the Lord (Verses 1-3)
1 Praise the Lord.
What does it mean to praise the Lord? How do we go about it?
- We praise God when we think about Him and consider His person and attributes. The Bible says, “Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3).
- We praise God when others such as choirs and ensembles minister to us in worship music and songs. The Bible says David “appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, even to celebrate and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel…. (I)n unison… the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord, and…they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and… they praised the Lord saying, ‘He indeed is good for His lovingkindness is everlasting….” (1 Chronicles 16:4 & 2 Chronicles 5:13).
- We praise God when we sing to Him in private and public. The Bible says, “Sing to Him, singing praises to Him; speak of all His wonders” (1 Chronicles 16:9).
- We praise God when He helps and delivers us. One of the first references to praise in the Bible is when the Israelites were delivered through the Red Sea. They arrived safely on the eastern shore and burst into song, saying, “This is my God, and I will praise Him” (Exodus 15:2).
- We praise God when we’re facing danger and frightening circumstances. When the armies of King Jehoshaphat were facing an army far bigger than they were, Jehoshaphat sent the choir in front of the army, and they went out praising the Lord; that’s what defeated the enemy and won the victory.
- We praise God when we see what He is doing in the lives of others. Luke 18:43 says when Jesus healed the blind man, the man “began following Him, glorifying God, and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.”
- We praise God when we worship together in corporate settings. The Psalmist said, “In the midst of the assembly I will praise you” (Psalm 22:22).
- We praise God privately and frequently when we say, “Praise the Lord!” in all the circumstances of life. Psalm 34 says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.”
- We praise God when we open a hymnbook at home and sing to Him. Psalm 68:4 says, “Sing to God, sing praises to His name; Lift up a song to Him who rides through the deserts, whose name is the Lord” (Psalm 68:4).
- We praise God when we tell others how great He is. The Bible says, “Bless our God, O peoples, and sound His praise abroad” (Psalm 66:8).
- We praise God when we thank Him for various things He does for us. Psalm 100 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.”
- We praise the Lord as part of our prayers to Him. Jeremiah said, “Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved. For You are my praise” (Jeremiah 17:14).
- We praise the Lord when we take His message to the nations. Jeremiah 33:9 says, “It will be to Me a name of joy, praise, and glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do for them.”
- We praise God when we’re in a cheerful mood. James 5:13 says, “Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises.”
- We also praise God when we’ve been stripped and whipped and imprisoned in stocks. That’s where Paul and Silas were when, “about midnight” they were “praying and singing hymns of praise to God” (Acts 16:25).
Our praise comes from our hearts and minds, but it is often expressed with our songs and spoken words. How often we should be whispering to ourselves and saying to others, “Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!”
It’s only believers in Jesus Christ who can do this. Psalm 113 goes on to say: Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord.
G. K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy that people who reject God and the supernatural and the wonder of the mystery of the divine are madmen. In the kind of sentence only Chesterton could write, he said, “The madman isn’t the man who has lost his ability to think. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his ability to think.”
In other words, the person who reduces all of life down to what is physical and measurable, who makes everything a matter of cold logic, has lost the ability to worship and praise something greater than himself.
Then Chesterton said this: “A person can understand everything only with the help of what they don’t understand.”
We can understand life only with the help of something that is so vast and true and infinite and praiseworthy that we cannot fully understand it—or Him, being God.
Chesterton said it was like the sun blazing in the sky. He said, “The one thing in God’s creation that we can’t look at is the one that lights up everything we see.”
You cannot look directly into the sun without blinding your eyes, but the sun lights up everything that we see. The eternal God who is clothed in blazing light is the one thing we can never fully understand, yet by knowing God we can understand everything else.
And then Chesterton turned the analogy around. He said that while those of us who know God are bathed in the light of the sun, which we cannot fully see, those who reject God are bathed in the light of the moon, which they can see and understand and measure and analyze. They live in the world of the lunar orbit, which is what makes people lunatics.
In other words, our sanity and wholeness comes from the opportunity of expressing our wonder, awe, and praise toward One who is such an infinite Creator and redeeming Savior that we can never fully understand the depths of who He is.
We simply praise Him and worship Him.
Verse 2 tells us there are two times when we praise the Lord—now at this present time, and forever. Now means today, and forever means a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, a billion years from now—we’ll still be praising the Lord.
Verses 2 and 3 say: Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever. From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.
In other words, praise to God is to arise from every latitude and longitude on earth. Every tribe and tongue, every land and language.
Now the Psalm goes on to tell us exactly why we should praise the Lord. There are two reasons.
2. Praise the Lord for His Greatness (Verses 4-5)
First, we praise God because of His greatness. Verses 4 and 5 say: The Lord is high above all nations; His glory is above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high…?
God is greater than any nation on earth or all the nations combined. He is exalted over all the nations. But He is also greater than the heavens. He is enthroned on high.
Several years ago I spoke at a retreat and my subject was the throne of God. I’ve always wanted to go back and research this theme more fully. I believe Moses and the 70 elders of Israel got just a glimpse of the throne of God and the vast platform in Exodus 24. Isaiah saw and described it in Isaiah 6. Ezekiel got a glimpse of it, and so did Stephen. The last reference of the throne of God is in Revelation 22, which says, “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
Psalm 11:4 says, “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”
Psalm 45:6 says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”
This indicates that God is the ultimate power in the universe, far above human despots and angelic powers. That’s why we sing:
Crown Him with many drowns
The Lamb upon His throne
Hark how the heavenly anthem drowns
All music but its own.
If you want to know what the throne of God looks like, go outside and try to look at the sun in the meridian sky. That’s the closest visible reference point we have to the throne of God. I believe that in Heaven we’ll have enhanced eyesight so we can see it without being blinded, but His throne is a throne clad in brilliance.
3. Praise the Lord For His Grace (Verses 6-9)
But now, we come to a verse that explains to us why this Psalm was sung at Passover. Verse 6 is a critical verse that contains New Testament truth as an acorn contains a whole forest. Verse 6 says: …who humbles Himself.
Various translations render this verb in several ways.
- The King James Version and the New King James Version say: Humbles
- The New American Standard Bible says: Humbles
- The New International Version says: Stoops down
- The Lexham Version says: Condescends
I can’t read this without thinking of what Paul wrote in Philippians 2. It’s like it’s a parallel text. It’s as though the apostle Paul is expounding on Psalm 113: “Christ Jesus… although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name…” (Verses 5-9).
Notice the parallels. Psalm 113 is a Messianic psalm describing a God who is above all nations and above all that is in Heaven and Earth, and yet He humbles Himself to come down to earth to care for His human creation. This is a Psalm Jesus knew by heart, had sung all His life, and which He sang in the Upper Room with His disciples before the Passover Meal. Our Lord was singing a song about Himself, about His incarnation.
I’ve never jumped out of an airplane and I don’t intend to do so, but sometimes I imagine the thrill of skydiving. The most dangerous of all the different varieties of skydiving is Banzai skydiving, in which the skydiver throws his parachute out of the airplane door and then jumps after it. He is wearing no parachute. His goal is to retrieve his parachute in the air, put it on, and glide to the landing zone. There are only rumors about whether this has ever happened. You can find some videos about it, but there is no solid evidence a Banzai jump has ever really occurred.
But the Lord Jesus dove, as it were, from the heights of heaven without a parachute. He landed in an animal feed bin somewhere just south of Jerusalem in the vicinity of the town of Bethlehem. The great God of the highest majesty became a man of the humblest mystery—the only person in all history to have a dual nature and be both divine and human, both God and man.
I don’t want to overstate or overinterpret Psalm 113. The incarnation of Christ is not here explicitly; but it is here implicitly. I didn’t even see this until I was researching this passage in a commentary by Dr. Allen Ross. Sometimes a single sentence from a commentary will hit me across the head like a baseball bat. Dr. Ross said, “Psalm 113 is a psalm of praise for the Lord’s greatness and grace. Anyone who knows of the incarnation could not miss the obvious parallels between the psalm and that Christian doctrine.”
Well, I knew about the incarnation, and yet I had read Psalm 113 and missed that obvious parallel. So while I don’t want to over-interpret this psalm, I also don’t want to under-interpret it.
Quoting again Dr. Ross: Psalm 113 is a psalm of praise for the Lord’s greatness and grace. Anyone who knows of the incarnation could not miss the obvious parallels between the psalm and that Christian doctrine.
Now, the rest of the Psalm tells us what this humble God will do, why He came.
Look at verses 6-9: …Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and on earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of His people. He makes the barren women abide in the house as a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!
A. He Beholds the Things in Heaven and Earth
I’m using the New American Standard Bible for this series, and it uses some of the old King James-type language like “behold.” But it simply means that God came down here to look, to see. One translation says that God humbled Himself and stooped down to see what was going on down here, far beneath His feet.
In other words, the Lord sees what’s going on in your life. He observes the pressures you’re under, the temptations you fight, the bitterness you harbor, the limitations you face, the opportunities you have. And He wants to help you at every point.
B. He Raises and Lifts the Needy
Second, he raises and lifts us. He became a man so He could die and rise from the grave so as to lift us out of darkness and death and into light and life.
C. Makes Them Sit With Princes
Third, he makes us sit with princes. In other words, we become the children of the King. Let me put it to you like this. I’ve thought about this for a while, and I’m not sure it checks off every theological box. But it helps me make sense of it. When we are born again, we are born into God’s Kingdom. And then He adopts us into His family. The Bible uses both those words to describe our salvation experience. Jesus said that we must be born again (John 3:3). The apostle Peter said we are “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
But the Bible also says we are adopted. The apostle Paul said, “You have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15).
I can make sense of this in British terms. Suppose I were born in London. I would be a citizen of the United Kingdom. But suppose the King of England wanted me in his family and he adopted me so that I was not only a citizen of the UK, but I was also a member of the royal family? The Lord wanted us, not just as citizens of His Kingdom, but as members of His family. He raises us out of stark spiritual poverty and makes us sit with princes.
D. He Makes the Barren Joyful as a Happy Mother of Children
We become fruitful and useful and joyful in our lives. Part of that involves bringing others to be born again and adopted along with us. Recently I spoke at a Ministry Summit at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. One of the other speakers was named Victor Marx, and he gave his testimony.
He said he found Christ as Savior while in the Marine Corps. He was as rough and mean as they came, from a highly abusive background. Victor told us he was tortured as a child by his stepfathers. One punished him by holding his head under the water in the bathtub until he was unconscious, then reviving him. I’ve never heard anything so awful in my life. Another stepfather was a convicted murderer who was out of prison but was evil and abusive. Victor grew up with so much hatred that he was thrown out of high school and told never to come back. He joined the Marine Corps and that’s where he found Christ as his Savior.
Victor knew his life had just been changed forever by Jesus and he wanted to tell somebody about it, but he didn’t know how to witness. He found a tract—a little brochure—about the last days and the judgment and the second coming of Christ. He went to the barracks and saw a buddy sitting on his bunk. Victor sat down beside him, gave the tract to his buddy, and said, “Read this.” The buddy sat there and read it and said, “Well, that’s interesting.”
Victor wasn’t satisfied with that so he said, “Read it again.” The Marine read it again and Victor said, “Don’t you want to be ready when Jesus comes again?” The other marine said, “Yes, I guess so. What do I do?”
Victor said, “Look at the end of the track; there’s a little prayer. Why don’t you read that out loud?” Neither man closed their eyes nor bowed their head, but the other Marine read the little prayer at the end of the tract. After he said Amen he looked up and said, “I just felt something. Did you feel that?”
That’s all there was to it. But Victor told us, “Can you believe that man is still walking with the Lord faithfully after all these years?”
It’s amazing how the Lord can use our feeblest efforts to bring forth a spiritual harvest! So…
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 forever.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations;
His glory is above the heavens.
Who is like our God,
Who is enthroned on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and on earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes,
With the princes of His people.
He makes the barren women abide in the house
As a joyful mother of children.
Praise the Lord!
Thanks for digging into the riches of Psalm 113 with me. Next week we’ll continue our study of the Egyptian Hallel with Psalm 114, so you might want to read ahead.
Thanks for tuning in, and may God be with you until we meet again.