Ps. 136
“For His Steadfast Love Endures Forever”
I wanted to plough through the elder qualification list of 1 Tim. 3, especially in view of today’s election. But as I meditated on Ps. 136 according to our Bible reading schedule, I saw how this psalm can be so helpful in orienting our thoughts and attitude for today’s occasion. So I hope that the Lord would bless my delivery and your hearing of this message as He has blessed my preparation of it.
As you must have noticed, this psalm has an interesting structure. Every clause, or a phrase, is followed by the same refrain throughout the psalm: “for His steadfast love endures forever.” This structure lends itself nicely to antiphonal usage, which we employed for today’s Scripture reading. You can almost hear two groups of people--whether two groups of priests or one group of priests and one group of worshippers--reciting this psalm, taking turns. This is something similar to a few other psalms, such as Ps. 24:7-10
Group A: “Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.”
Group B: “Who is this King of
glory?”
Group A: “The LORD, strong and
mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!”
Group A: “Lift up your heads, O
gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the
King of glory may come in.”
Group B: “Who is this King of glory?
Group A: “The LORD of hosts, he is
the King of glory!”
This dynamic is found in one of our hymns as well:
Group A: “Christ, the Lord, is risen today”
Group B: “Alleluia!”
Group A: “Sons of men and angels say”
Group B: “Alleluia!”
Group A: “Raise your joys and triumphs high”
Group B: “Alleluia!”
Group A: “Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply”
Group B: “Alleluia!”
We will speak of the significance of this structure later on. But this characteristic, though conspicuous, must not overshadow other important features in this psalm. Let us consider a few of them.
This psalm is primarily a historical psalm: it recites some of God’s great and mighty acts in history. Vv. 1-3 provide as the thesis: the greatness of God above all gods. Vv. 4-9 recite God’s great work of creation. Vv. 10-25 recite God’s great work of redemption--namely, the Exodus. V. 26 is the conclusion.
As we read this psalm, we find nothing really new in terms of the content. Most of us are familiar with God’s work of creation and redemption. We are familiar with the biblical expressions of those events. And I am sure that it was the same for the Jews, who read it, most likely even more so. What is the point of having a psalm, which doesn’t seem to do much more than rehashing familiar themes in the Bible? And if you read Ps. 135, you discover that many expressions in Ps. 135 are replicated in Ps. 136. Isn’t that a terrible waste of sacred pages?
Of course, God knows of no waste. Everything He does, He does according to the counsel of His will, according to His infinite wisdom. God has purpose for everything He does, including the inclusion of this psalm in the Bible. What is God’s purpose for this psalm? Who can presume to know the mind of God? But God did not leave us in the dark. By searching through other portions of Scripture, as well as examining this psalm itself, we can arrive at some reliable conclusions, though far from complete.
The first is obvious. As we noted earlier, this is a
historical psalm. As the Jews recited this psalm, they were reminded of the
great and mighty works of God in history. To remember the great works of God--this
is repeatedly commanded by God in His Word! This is true particularly with
regard to the Exodus, the salvation proper of the Old Testament. Strewn
throughout the Old Testament is the command to remember how God delivered
I hope you see the enormous value of remembering the great and mighty acts of God. Just this past week our nation was reminded of the September 11th of 2001. It was a sober reminder of what kind of world we now live in and what dangers are still lurking around. It is not a pleasant thing to remember. But it is an important thing to remember, especially as we vote this year for our leaders and on many national, local issues, which will have profound impact on our life in this nation.
Even more important--fundamentally important--is to remember what God has done in history. For it gives us an understanding of the true, objective reality, in which we live. We know that our perception of reality affects how we feel--from joy and exuberance and hope to sorrow and depression and despair--and what decision we make for ourselves and our loved ones--from whom to vote for and whom to marry to where to live and where to invest, to whether or not to evacuate at the face of impending natural disasters. And we know how difficult it is to see what is really going on, how all that is happening fits into the whole picture. Confined to our short-sighted, myopic vision, our perception of reality can be quite limited and skewed. So when unexpected things happen, throwing us off track, we panic and we get angry and we get depressed and we frantically try to do something, etc. We are like a small boat in the path of a hurricane, tossed around by fifty-feet waves of powerful emotions! We need something to anchor us down safely through the storm. So we turn to economists, political analysts and historians and even meteorologists to tell us what is really going on, to give us a bigger picture. But do they know what is really going on? What portion of the reality, how much of the reality, does any of us actually perceive, either individually or collectively? And if none of us has the whole picture, how accurate is our perception of the reality?
The Word of God provides with the right understanding of the reality. We may not have a complete understanding of the reality--only God does. But we can have a right and accurate understanding of the reality. For it is given by God, who created the world and rules over all creatures and all their actions according to the counsel of His sovereign will. And the great and mighty acts of God anchor the Word of God in history, where we live. So when we review redemptive history, when we recount the great and mighty acts of God in history, we can get a firm and accurate grasp of our reality, which is foreordained by God, created by God, maintained by God, directed by God and will be perfected by God according to His will and for His glory and our good.
What, then, are we to remember? There is too much to remember. This psalm offers three among the myriads: we are to remember the supremacy of God (vv. 1-3); we are to remember His work of creation (vv. 4-9); we are to remember His work of redemption (vv. 10-26).
How does remembering the great and mighty acts of God affect us? This psalm begins with a three-fold command: “Give thanks to the Lord…” (v. 1); “Give thanks to the Lord…” (v. 2); “Give thanks to the Lord…” (v. 3)! And this psalm ends with a final command to give thanks to the Lord (v. 26). If repeating twice is for emphasis, repeating three times is for double emphasis that cannot be surpassed! The three-fold command at the beginning reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that remembering the great and mighty acts of God should produce in us profound thanksgiving to God. Why? Because, when we review all that God has done for us, this is what we see: “His steadfast love endures forever”. When we review the works of God in history, we see His love at work. And this love of God is a steadfast love; it is an enduring love; and it is an everlasting love. For it is God’s covenant love.
And think about who it is that loves us with such a love: it is the LORD, whose name means “I am that I am” (v. 1). He is the God of gods (v. 2) and the Lord of lords (v. 3)! He is the one and only true God and the sovereign Lord of all. If He opens, no one can shut; if He shuts, no one can open. No one can frustrate His plan. No one can thwart His decree. At His command, all things came into being. At His presence the mountains melt like wax. His voice causes the earth to tremble and the waters to divide. All creatures must be still before Him and bow down in humble adoration to this one and only true God.
Now, consider the conclusion of the redemptive historical review: the LORD, the Great I Am, who is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, loves us with His steadfast, enduring and everlasting love. What impact should this knowledge have on our perception of reality? No doubt, all things work together to make up the reality we live in. But surely, not all things are equally significant! There are some forces and incidents that shape the contours of reality more so than others. Compare what clothes you choose to wear and a major natural disaster like Katrina or Ike. Compare which apples you happen to buy at the market and the kind of person you marry and have children with. Not everything has the same weight in its contribution to reality. Then what impact should the fact of the steadfast, enduring and everlasting love of the God of all gods and the Lord of all lords have upon our perception of reality? So huge and so pervasive is its impact that nothing can be properly understood apart from it! It is truly the lens through which we should view and interpret everything that happens in our life. Its brightness should dispel all the darkness of uncertainty and panic and outshine all the joys and happiness we find in this world! Its weightiness should outweigh the weightiness of all our afflictions and sorrows in this world!
And now I want to get back to the most prominent feature of this psalm to highlight this very point. What is the most prominent feature of this psalm? The ever-present, ubiquitous refrain--“for His steadfast love endures forever”. There are twenty-six occurrences of that clause in this twenty-six-verse psalm. Consider also: each verse is a couplet--that is, each verse is made up of two subsections. That means, a half of each verse is the refrain! That means, every articulation of God’s attribute or act is followed by the refrain! At times, a sentence is broken up almost unnaturally and the refrain is inserted between the broken parts. Take a look at vv. 17-20:
“to him who struck down great kings,
for his steadfast love endures forever; and killed mighty kings, for his
steadfast love endures forever; Sihon, king of the
Amorites, for his steadfast love endures forever; and Og,
king of
What is the impact of such a structure? When you think about
it, it is obvious! This peculiar structure communicates its message so clearly,
so ingeniously: every act of God flows out of His steadfast love that endures
forever; every act of God is a demonstration of His steadfast love that endures
forever! Do you see it? Do you hear it? Can you feel it? God making the heavens
and spreading out the earth above the waters were all prompted by His steadfast
love that endures forever! God making the great lights--the sun to rule over
the day and the moon and the stars to rule over the night--were all a
demonstration of His steadfast love that endures forever! God delivering
The structure of this psalm communicates another powerful message. This message becomes clear when we read the psalm in antiphonal way, as we did for our Scripture reading today. The first part of each verse declares something about God--His greatness and His great acts in history. It is as though God is showing us the many ways in which His steadfast, enduring, everlasting love is shown. The second part, the refrain we sing, becomes our response, giving thanks to God by affirming His steadfast love that endures forever! This becomes a paradigm for our life: a life of giving thanks to God for His steadfast love that endures forever!
Today, we hold an election for the particularization of our
church, which will catapult us into another phase in the life of our church. I
believe it is important for us, therefore, to pause and remember what God has
done for us and give thanks. We have seen better days in terms of the size of
our attendance and membership. Personally, it is hard not to feel so terribly
about all my mistakes and failures and sins and my inadequacies and
unfaithfulness in so many areas. We have gone through some tough times over the
years. Even now we face many challenges, both daunting and exciting. But even
in the toughest times, we know that God did not deal with us according to our
sins, nor will he repay us according to our iniquities (Ps. 103:10). In fact, “as high as the heavens are above the
earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the
east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a
father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those
who fear him” (Ps. 103:11-13). There is no denying: despite all our
failures, we are what we are all by the grace of God (1 Cor.
Do you realize the implication of all this for your life? This means that we should be able to look at all that happened even today and see the hand of God’s steadfast, enduring, forever love in them--from our sleep through the night in our beds and opening our eyes to eating and dressing up and driving to church and all that we have done and heard in this worship service. Some of us may be enjoying the bright sunshine of God’s goodness. Some of us may be trying hard to remember that “behind the clouds, the sun is still shining….” But one thing is for sure. Even when we are weathering the storm of God’s discipline, it is still an expression of His steadfast love that endures forever. For His love is good and holy. So then, we should be able to look back on our whole life and come up with a psalm of our own, which also begins, “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever” (v. 1). We should have no shortage of what to fill in after that.
But one event outshines everything else, doesn’t it? That is, of course, none other than our precious redemption in Jesus Christ. For without it, all the good things we experience in this life mean nothing. What is a good life of seventy, or eighty, years if our sins are not forgiven, if we must stand condemned before the Judge of the living and the dead? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, eternally? Praise God, then, that He loves us with a steadfast, enduring and everlasting love! This kind of love cannot be satisfied with loving us for seventy years, or eighty! This steadfast love, this enduring love, this everlasting love of God, must love eternally. This love of God, therefore, must redeem us from death, from eternal damnation, under which we crawl and writhe. This love of God must grant us eternal life; it must give us eternal life so that we can bask in the light and warmth of its everlasting love through all eternity!
In that sense--insofar as the subject of this psalm is God’s eternal love--this psalm stands as an incomplete, unfinished psalm. For God’s everlasting love cannot end in a creation, which is overrun by sin and corruption and death. God’s everlasting love cannot end in a redemption, which is exposed to defeat, exile and death. God’s everlasting love must triumph over our corruption, our sin, our defeat, our exile and our death, including our eternal damnation! This psalm had to await its glorious conclusion--the incarnation of God’s everlasting love in the coming of Jesus Christ as our Redeemer and Lord. Even as the saints of the Old Testament recited this psalm over and over again, they probably had no idea just how steadfast, enduring and everlasting God’s love is for His people! Who could have imagined that God’s love would go so far as to sacrifice His only begotten Son! Having two small children of my own, I find my mind resisting to even imagine what it was like God to do what He did and to feel what He felt when He had to watch His beloved Son die, crying out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
The cross of Jesus Christ shows the costliness of God’s love. Our redemption required more than a little flexing of God’s omnipotent muscle to overpower Satan. Our redemption required nothing less than the ultimate sacrifice on God’s part, the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. For to a loving father, his child is more precious than his own life. This costly love of God was deep enough to reach down from the heights of heaven all the way to the depths of hell and deliver us from its depths. This costly love of God is wide enough to forgive all our sins, from the smallest to the greatest of them; to forgive even the worst of sinners. And this costly love of God is long and enduring enough to last through all eternity--not only to shower its blessings through all eternity but to give us eternal life to enjoy them through all eternity! And have the assurance of this because of the empty tomb of Jesus Christ. For the empty tomb of Christ shows the triumph of God’s love over our corruption, our sin, our curse, our punishment, our death and our archenemy. The empty tomb of Christ points to the new creation, which is indestructible, free from all the frailty of the first creation!
We all have seen those powerful images of the celebration
when the WWII ended, on the streets of
© Copyright 2008 by Jeong Woo "James" Lee
All Rights Reserved.