Bulletin Articles
“Who Can Save Us?”
Categories: Iron sharpens ironPraise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 146)
The Psalms don’t get nearly enough attention. Between their quantity, the lack of names and tunes, and the somewhat difficult nature of poetry in general, and Hebrew poetry in particular, they’re too often considered a chore, and forgotten as soon as the book is closed. But all of them are important, and many of them have New Testament ramifications, including Psalm 146. This one actually gets more attention than many of the others, owing to the line, “Put not your trust in princes” (v3), which is a ready reminder to those who foolishly make political leaders into messianic figures—a perennial problem. But the message there is prohibitive: don’t do this thing. With what should we replace that evil tendency?
The main point of the psalm is clear enough by verse 5, which begins, “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,” and makes the comparison to the “princes” of verse 3 both explicit and laughable. God does all of the things people want their politicians to do for them—only, God does them all much better! This is the same problem the Israelites created when they demanded a king from Samuel:
“…that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8.20)
If they want justice, God provides that. If they want military leadership, God provides that, too. As God responded, “they have rejected me from being king over them” (v7), in favor of a flawed human king—but at least they’d be like all the surrounding nations!—as if that were a goal worth pursuing.
But there’s more to this psalm than a point about politics and God’s place above it all. Its final section sounds suspiciously similar to another passage in the Bible:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4.16-21)
As Luke tells us, this is a quote, but not from Psalm 146! Rather, it’s from Isaiah 61, where it applies very obviously to the Messiah—the anointed one. Just like the Lord in Psalm 146, he helps the poor, frees the prisoners, and gives sight to the blind. This should be no surprise to us—Jesus is God, after all. But this happens very often with the Psalms, and the Old Testament in general. Even when we see obvious applications both for the period in which it was written, and for today, God had more in mind, and he hid little tidbits like this one, for us to find and later read through the lens of Jesus, to bring it into clearer focus.
What reasons were given, in the psalm, for not putting our trust in a political leader? Because the best we can hope to find in him is someone who generally seeks justice, tries to help the poor, and gives a few people their freedom. Most won’t even do that, but even if he does, he will eventually die, and “When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Ps 146.4). But now we’ve started reading it with Jesus in mind, and he also died, didn’t he? But what’s the difference? His plans did not perish! His death was not permanent! “The Lord will reign forever,” from Zion, even “to all generations” (v10)! Christ’s resurrection and victory over sin, over Satan, and over death is more than just another miracle performed to get us to believe he’s the Messiah. It’s the fundamental distinction between Jesus, and any other king, even a good one—there is no end to Jesus’ reign, because he will never die again. “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (He 7.25). In man, “there is no salvation” (Ps 146.3). In Christ, the wicked are brought to ruin, but those who put their trust in him and obey him as king are fed, healed, freed, exalted, and loved forever. As the psalm said, “Praise the Lord!”
Jeremy Nettles
