From Chapter 11: Position and Praise

Psalm 108 teaches us the position of praise. David writes (vs.1):

“O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.”

The Hebrew for “steadfast” is a root word, meaning fixed or established. It is used throughout the Old Testament for the eternal works of God’s hands: Proverbs 3:19 tells us how God established the heavens by understanding; the song of Moses tells us of the sanctuary which God has established (Exod. 15:17). Our position in Christ is, equally, the work of God’s hands. He has lifted us to be with Him in these same heavenly places which He has established, and He planned this work before the beginning of time: Heaven was created to be shared with the redeemed. David has caught this revelation prophetically: he may see nothing but darkness all around, but he knows his position; he knows that when he commands his lute and harp to awake (v.2), it is he who will awaken the dawn. Are our instruments of praise asleep? Or are our hearts steadfast because we know where we are seated, and our eyes are on the greatness of our Lord who lifted us to that place?

David writes (vs.3-4)

“I will sing praises to You among the nations,
 For Your mercy is great above the heavens,
And Your truth reaches to the clouds.”

It is a truism to say that we cannot measure or quantify God. But while we know that in the Lord Jesus He touches us at the deepest human level, we need to hold this in tension with the truth that the same person is the one who spoke to Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1), and the description of whom was so beyond the reach of Ezekiel that he could get no nearer than a faltering “appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (Ezek. 1:28).

The following insight was shared prophetically by a member of Wildwood Church recently. I believe it was given to us by the Holy Spirit. The following words are my attempt at accurately conveying what was shared:

“We see a flower as a flower. An insect will perceive that flower very differently; a different insect will perceive it differently again, and every animal likewise, so that one flower becomes a universe of different perceptions in different hues and scents, from all parts of every relevant spectrum: the sum of every impression received by every creature encountering that flower. We, God’s children, are fearfully and wonderfully made. While we see each other through our human eyes, God sees every detail of every aspect of who we are that He has created – the whole universe of who we are, not the little three-dimensional image that we have of ourselves and each other. And similarly the full reality of the nature of God explodes beyond our three-dimensional thinking, to the extent that anything that even comes close to an approximation of the truth will bring us trembling to our knees. And just as this is the inexpressible extent of His majesty and glory, so it is the depth and passion of the love that went to Calvary for our sins.”

This, indeed, is the mercy that is “great above the heavens”, the truth that “reaches to the clouds”, the One who, from everlasting to everlasting, is worthy of our praise.

Finally, in vs.5-6, David continues:

“Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
And Your glory above all the earth;
That Your beloved may be delivered,
Save with Your right hand, and hear me.”

God is who He is: “I am that I am”. He does not depend on our praise to be exalted. But it is out of his circumstances that David is singing God’s praises. God is exalted above all the Earth, but when our praise brings our own situations into line with His dominion the door for our deliverance is thrown open. This is illustrated quite literally in Acts 16:16-30, in the story of Paul and Silas in prison: as they praised God, exalting Him over their imprisonment, the prison doors were thrown open. We have no record of the details of their worship time, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Paul and Silas were declaring God’s praises in the words of the psalm quoted above. Paul writes: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52). When we sound the trumpet of praise, not only are we announcing this incorruptible Kingdom to ourselves (“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” – Ps. 103:2), but to the principalities and powers in the spiritual realms.

From my study window I look out across our garden onto the woodlands of Cannock Chase. It is beautiful; it is tranquil. Nonetheless, we live in a fallen world, and for a couple of weeks in the summer, when the younger generation from the neighbourhood rookery have flown the nest but are still with the colony, they descend on a tree at the end of our garden, and even on the roof above our bedroom, and have loud, raucous conversations at five o’clock in the morning. I am a bird-lover, but my love for birds does not extend to rooks and crows, who, as well as waking me up at dawn, raid nests and kill baby birds. In much literature, and also in my own imagination, crows symbolise death, darkness and the demonic. For many mornings I awoke much earlier than intended, thanks to their alarm call; then one morning, I remembered that these birds of darkness are also great cowards: the slightest disturbance will drive them away. I opened the window and clapped my hands; about twenty-five crows spread their wings as one and flew away, cawing, into the woods. Not long afterwards, I went back to sleep.

There will be times when the crows descend on our lives. But it is given to us, not to the darkness surrounding our circumstances, to “awaken the dawn”. Like Gideon looking down on the enemy, we need to remember to clap away the crows.