God’s Word for You

1 Chronicles 16:14-22 The Psalm of the Ark Part 2

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, January 15, 2024

14 He is the LORD our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.

As so often happens in the Old Testament, there is a veiled reference to the plurality of God here, where three words express one and the same God: “He,” “the LORD,” and “our God.” Strictly speaking, this is not one of the key verses that describes this phenomenon. Such verses are divided by Professor Gerhard into four main classes:

1, The First Class, where Scripture speaks about God in the plural, such as when a singular verb is used with a plural noun, as in “In the beginning, God [Elohim is plural] created [singular verb]” (Genesis 1:1). Also, sometimes a plural verb is used with a plural noun to express the plurality of persons in the Godhead, such as in “Elohim [plural] ‘were’ revealed [plural] to him” (Genesis 35:7). Yet again, sometimes a plural participle or adjective is attributed to God: “the voice of the living [pl.] God?” (Deuteronomy 5:26). “Elohim holies [plural] he [singular]” (Joshua 24:19). Notice also the frequent use of ‘osi “makers” in the plural: Job 35:10; Psalm 149:2; Isaiah 44:2.

2, The Second class, where God speaks about himself in the plural, especially with the words “us” and “our” (Genesis 1:26, 2:18, 3:22, 11:7; Isaiah 6:8).

3, The Third Class has those passages where Jehovah speaks about Jehovah, and the Lord speaks about the Lord (Genesis 9:16, 19:24; Amos 4:11; Jeremiah 50:40).

4, The Fourth Class, where the Son of God is mentioned. It is necessary that the Son is truly God, or else he would not be the proper and natural Son of God (Psalm 2:7). See also the Hebrew of Psalm 72:17, “His name was begotten before the sun,” and Psalm 89:26-27, where Father and Firstborn are proclaimed. To this list we add Proverbs 30:4.

15 Remember his covenant forever,
the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,
16 the covenant that he made with Abraham,
his sworn promise to Isaac,
17 which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant,
18 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan
as the portion of your inheritance.”

The covenant referred to here is the often-repeated covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), the promise to give their descendants the land of Canaan. A “covenant” was an agreement or treaty that involved cutting up pieces of a sacrificed animal with the idea: May what happened to this animal happen to me if I do not keep my side of this treaty. The first covenant in the Bible is the covenant or promise God made to preserve Noah’s family in the ark (Genesis 6:17), and the second was made after the flood, when God promised never again to destroy the earth by water (Genesis 9:9-17), which was the covenant of the rainbow. The covenant of Canaan was made to Abraham in Genesis 15:18 and was again established with Isaac (Genesis 17:21).

Here in the Psalm of the Ark, the first word of verse 15 is a command, “Remember.” In the expanded version in Psalm 105, this is made into a statement about God, “He remembers….” Both are true and correct, of course.

There is no longer any religious significance to the land of Canaan or Israel. If a few archaeological discoveries are made there, it hardly matters who is living in the land for them to be appreciated. But just as God’s people once lived in Ur of the Chaldees (Kuwait?), and in Babylon (Iraq), and in Egypt, and in other places, the Gospel has since spread and gone out into all the world (Acts 13:49, 19:20), and the true Israel of God, the holy Christian Church, is wherever two or more people are gathered together in Christ’s name (Matthew 18:20). If anyone has any nostalgia for Israel as a place and has a good idea about how Jews and Palestinians and others can live there peacefully, let them speak up, for they are wiser than most.

19 When they were only a few in number,
of little account, and strangers in the land,
20 wandering from nation to nation,
from one kingdom to another people,
21 he permitted no one to oppress them;
he rebuked kings for their sakes.
22 He said, “Do not touch my anointed ones;
do my prophets no harm.”

God defended Israel before, during, and after their time in Egypt. These lines of the Psalm are about the earlier time, when God protected Abraham and Isaac from the kings of Egypt and Philistia, and also from the chieftains of the Hittites, and during the raids of the kings of the north (when Lot was taken prisoner). Later on, Jacob was preserved from the lies and manipulations of Laban. The line, “do my prophets no harm,” is mostly a reference to Abraham. God called him “a prophet” when he was rebuking Abimelech the Philistine for mistreating Sarah (Genesis 20:7). And of course, Jesus promises that “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward” (Matthew 10:41); therefore those who listened to Abraham and believed his message (especially Isaac his son) should be counted along with him. As for being called “my anointed ones,” “The patriarchs were God’s anointed, not by a special anointing with oil like the later prophets and kings but by God’s choice for them to be in the line of the Messiah, the anointed” (Brug, Psalms 73-150, p. 239).

God looks after his people. “I will punish all who oppress them” (Jeremiah 30:22). “The voice of his thunder rebukes the earth; so do the nor’easter and the tornado.” “He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither; the bloom of Lebanon fades” (Nahum 1:4). With his law he exposes and corrects sin. With his gospel he forgives and motivates man’s obedience. Those who refuse his word will be punished forever.  Those who are healed by his word, whether few in number or of little account, will live with him forever in Paradise.

My father-in-law, Pastor John P. Meyer, preached about Abraham’s covenant:
“As this is true for Abraham, so it is true for you and me. It is our faith in God and his promises of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that makes us righteous before him. ‘By grace you are saved through faith,’ the Apostle Paul writes, and so it is. You and I have a covenant with Almighty God. It is a covenant of salvation. And it is sure. God’s promise makes it sure. Believe it. Don’t be afraid. Believe that through faith in Jesus Christ you have from God: forgiveness, life, and salvation. Yes, like Abraham, ‘Believe the Lord, and he will credit it to you as righteousness.’” (Sermon on Genesis 15:1-6, September 1, 1985).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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