Recently I met someone from a church with an interesting name. It is called the Paradox Church. Now, I have no knowledge of why they called it that, except that maybe they are referring to the seeming paradoxes that we read in the Bible. One meaning of the word ‘paradox’ is a statement that runs contrary to one’s expectation.
Well, we find them in a number of places in the Bible and one place is in Psalm 147. The psalmist writes:
Praise the Lord.
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
3 He heals the broken-hearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
make music to our God on the harp.
Here we see the paradox of God, the Eternal One, the Creator of the universe, who determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. And yet, it is said of this same all-powerful Majestic King that He stoops down to act like the compassionate being that he also is, and He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.
The paradox continues as we then read, Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit, and yet this is the same God of whom it is said, The Lord sustains the humble.
Then later in this psalm we read concerning this all-merciful, all-powerful and ever-present God:
8 He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.
Kidner writes that in this psalm there is a “linking of the wonders of creation with the glories of providence and grace… that [the] One who marshals the host of stars, ‘calling them all by name’, is more than equal to the problems of his people, both in power and understanding (v. 5). It turns upside down the familiar argument that in so great a universe our small affairs are too minute to notice… [consider] the immense range of God’s operations, equally wonderful for their vastness and their attention to detail. This is divine care on a scale to evoke wonder and worship.” (# 29)
The psalmist continues concerning these “operations… [in all] their vastness and their attention to detail”:
10 His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
11 the Lord delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
12 Extol the Lord, Jerusalem;
praise your God, Zion.
13 He strengthens the bars of your gates
and blesses your people within you.
14 He grants peace to your borders
and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.
15 He sends his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
16 He spreads the snow like wool
and scatters the frost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?
18 He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.
19 He has revealed his word to Jacob,
his laws and decrees to Israel.
20 He has done this for no other nation;
they do not know his laws.
I guess that many of us have had the experience of “praising God,” particularly in community, when we really have not felt like doing so. This is not the experience of the psalmist as he considers the wonders of God, His being, His attributes, His actions on our behalf, and so he proclaims:
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him! (v. 1)
He speaks here of “the delightfulness of praise itself… the very act of responding articulately to God’s pure glory and goodness is enlivening and emancipating.” (# 29)
May that be your experience today as you consider the paradoxes of this psalm.
Worship and Wisdom - Psalms and Proverbs 