Psalm 107: Some

Psalm 107 is filled with repetition. The first verse is almost an exact repeat of the chapter before. The same key word is used six times. The main statement of the psalm is repeated, word for word, four times. The psalm repeats itself, but it does not say the same thing over and over again. Its repetition is not a lack of depth, but a revelation of breadth, it is not because it does not have much to say but because it wants everyone to be included in what it says.  

After its initial declaration, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”, the psalmist wrote one of my favorite lines in all the Scriptures, “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so . . .” The NIV says, “Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story”. The New Living Translation changes the form but gets to the heart of the statement, “Has the LORD redeemed you? Then speak out!” It is not just a command to praise, but a call to consider, to ponder, to remember where we were and how God, in His goodness, came to us, met us, gave His love to us, and invited us to be His children. 

Redemption, no matter how much it is desired, in the biblical sense, cannot be achieved, it can only be received. To be redeemed, in the Hebrew sense of the word, was to be bought back, avenged, delivered or ransomed. The entire story of the book of Ruth is a lesson in redemption. A childless widow had no way to carry on her husband’s name, no way to find protection or provision, unless a family member, a kinsman redeemer, was willing to take her for his own. This is so foreign to us that it is hard to describe rightly. The book of Romans makes it clear that we were all sinners, that we had all gone our own way, that we were each an enemy of God and incapable of understanding or seeking God for ourselves. Romans 5:8 then says, “while we were still sinners (I like to say while sinners were all that we could be), Christ died for us.” Redemption is not what God gave us when we came to Him in repentance, it is what God offered us when He came to us in our sin.

We often quote Jesus, in John 3:17 saying, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” We take solace in the fact that Jesus did not come to condemn us, that He did not appear to destroy us. Sometimes we abuse this and believe that it means that Jesus did not come to judge us. The next statement that Jesus made to Nicodemus is key, “Whoever believes in him (the Son) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already”. Jesus did not come to condemn us because we were condemned already, He came to redeem us. 

To use the language of Ruth, we were already widowed. To use the language of Exodus, we were already slaves. To use the language of Jeremiah, we were already captives. To use Jesus’ own language in John 3, we were already condemned. Sin was not simply something we did, it was who we were, our nature, the very fabric of our being.  Outside of Christ, Ephesians and Colossians both refer to us as the “sons of disobedience” and “children of wrath”, Jesus told the religious leaders that they were the children of the devil because of their unbelief. Redemption is not how we get to heaven it is how Jesus came to us. He came to us as sinners, as enemies, in bondage and captivity. Our Redeemer came to us because we were unwilling and unable to go to our Redeemer. 

This psalmist was telling Israel to never stop telling the story of what God had done for them. We do not know who wrote this psalm or when it was written so we can take a little license with it. He wrote, “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.” No matter when this was written in Israel’s history, this was their story. Their birth through Abraham, exodus from Egypt, return from the captivity of Babylon, rescue from the hands of many different enemies, Israel had been constantly redeemed. Everyone in Israel, no matter which generation they came from had a story to tell of redemption. 

Are we any different? We have many different stories, but only one outcome: when we were far off, God came to us. We put so much emphasis on the life of sin part of our testimonies that we forget that the point of the story is that the Redeemer always comes to us at just the right time. That is the point of Romans 5:6, “For while we were still weak, at just the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” The story of redemption is not about slavery, widowhood, captivity or even sin, it is about the steadfast love of God. In fact, the steadfast love of God is so important that the psalmist repeats it six times. 

The Hebrew word that is translated as “steadfast love” in this psalm is “hesed”. It is a word that is used 248 times in the Old Testament (six in Psalm 107) and is translated in several different ways, mercy, steadfast love, lovingkindness, and compassion just to name a few. What the word seems to refer to more than anything else is God’s covenant love, His unbreakable and continual devotion to be faithful to His character, His Word and His people. The psalmist began with this word in verse 1, the reason we should give thanks is God’s goodness and God’s goodness is expressed through His steadfast love. After calling the redeemed to tell their story, he then reminds them and reminds us, that we are all redeemed. 

In verse 4 he wrote, “Some wandered in desert wastes”. In verse 10, “Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death”. In verse 17, “Some were fools through their sinful ways”. In verse 23, “Some went down to the sea in ships”. The point was that no matter where we are or where we have been, we all have one thing in common, the Redeemer came to us when we were far from Him. No matter what our sin was, we were sinners. No matter how we had been harmed, sin had harmed us. If we are in Christ, it is only because Christ came and redeemed us. The author repeated the word “some”, he told the story of four different groups of the redeemed so that we would all know, that we are all “some”. We are all the same in that we were far from God and He came to us. We were already condemned, and He brought us redemption. We were not a people and now we are the people of God. Again, we are all “some”. 

This means that we all have a story to tell, a story with different details but the same start, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” But why did He do it? That is the hook of the song, that part chorus must be repeated often, the part that will find its way into the hearts of those who have yet to join the ranks of the “some”, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We were loved in our sin, not in spite of it. We were lost from God, but God was always fully aware of where we were. The story of redemption is always the story of the Redeemer, always the story of His steadfast love, and it is the story of all of us. We are all “some”, but the Redeemer has come for all. Tell the story of His love so that some others can join the song of the redeemed.