Psalm 115
Psalm 115
is a mixed psalm. It is a psalm
glorifying God; but it is also a psalm of teaching. It is a psalm written about concern over the
spirituality of the Hebrew people and an admonition to turn to God. In it there is even a reminder to be spiritual
while we are still alive. So this is a
“mixed bag” psalm.
Let’s
begin where I think we should always begin.
It is to God that we give praise and glory. I love the way that the psalmist puts in the
reminder “not to us, oh Lord.” It is
nice to know that modernity is not the only era of humanity that suffers from
self-centeredness. Not that this is a
surprise, of course. Human beings are
just self-centered creatures. We always
are, and without the Lord’s help we always will be.
Thus, we
are reminded to praise the Lord. We are
reminded to give glory to the Lord. God
does bless us with His steadfast love – in spite of our insatiable desire to
focus on ourselves. God is capable of
doing what He pleases. We’ve heard about
that in the last few psalms. We’ve been
reminded about God’s work through the exodus.
We’ve been reminded about God’s work among David and his life. We’ve been reminded about Abraham. God desired those things to happen and they
did! He is a God that is worthy of
praise and glory.
However,
giving praise to God is not the sole focus of this psalm. We have seen this from the first line. The psalmist is concerned about his
people. The psalmist can see his people
turning more and more away from God and more and more onto their own
desires. After talking about giving
praise and glory to God, the psalmist now turns to focus our attention on our
response to God’s work.
Let me
stop here for a moment and give a bit of back story. Remember from our study of Joshua and Judges
that the Hebrew people were never really able to drive out the Canaanites from
the Promised Land. In fact, we even know
that the Hebrew people took the native Canaanites and married among them. As they did, the Canaanite gods infiltrated
the Hebrew culture for hundreds of years – at least until the Hebrew people
went back under oppression under the Assyrians and the Babylonians {although probably longer than that}. This is the basis for the words that the
psalmist says about foreign gods.
These
idols have eyes, but do not see. They
have ears, but do not hear. They have mouths,
but do not speak. In other words, when
we make a god out of something we give it power over our life. But the truth is that we are giving power to
something that really doesn’t even have the ability to manage that power. Many of us chase a large bank account. What can our bank account do for us? Nothing.
Many of us chase popularity. What
can popularity really do for us?
Nothing. Many of us chase
self-satisfaction. How long does
self-satisfaction really please us? Not
long until we are off to something else.
We make things into gods; those things are really powerless to do
anything for us. God is the only one who
can actually do something with the power that we give back to Him over our
lives.
What’s
worse is that we have a powerful statement of truth in verse 8. Those who make false gods become like
them. In other words, those who put
their trust in false gods become deaf, blind, and mute in this world. This is an incredibly powerful thought. Think about this. If my goal is to create a large bank account,
am I going to actually do anything with that resource or am I going to horde
it? If I pursue becoming popular, do you
think I’m going to actually react out and help someone else? Doing so might just jeopardize my popularity
or help make someone else more popular than me!
Do you see what I am getting at?
When we make something else into a god, it becomes all about hording
that god and keeping it for as long as possible. When we make things into gods, it fuels our
self-monger. What good is a self-monger
to the world? When all we think about is
ourselves, how good are we at seeing the world genuinely, listening to hear the
needs of the world, and speaking words of genuine truth into the world? The psalmist is right. When we make gods out of our own pursuits we
become deaf, blind, and mute to a world that desperately needs us to see, hear,
and speak the truth of God.
I’m
running out of space, so I want to talk a little about the last thoughts in
this psalm. The psalmist is clear to
point out that the dead do not give praise to God. In other words, if we are going to praise God
and give Him glory, we need to do it now while we are alive. You’ve heard the cliché: “No time like the
present?” That’s pretty much what the
psalmist is saying here.
Remember
that this warning is given in the midst of the psalmist watching his people
turn to idols that they have made. The
psalmist is watching his people be more self-monger than anything else. So he gives a warning. The longer they live in their self-monger
nature the less time they will have to give praise and glory to God. In fact, the longer they live in their
self-monger nature the less likely it is that they will be able to give praise
and glory to God at all.
These
words are going to haunt me today. I’m
glad I found them buried in this psalm.
“The dead do not praise the Lord.
Nor do any who go down into silence.
We will bless the Lord from this time forevermore!”
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