Psalm 149: Saints

 

How many of us would refer to ourselves as saints? The word is a little bit dated unless you come from a religious background that continues to formally recognize and canonize saints. For the most part, if I call someone a saint, it’s a light-hearted way of applauding their endurance. My wife is a saint for living with me and our two sons for all these years. She’s survived an endless amount of sports, sweat, requests for food and jokes at her expense. I’ve said it many times before, but I’ll say it here again, that woman is a saint! Wikipedia gives us a more formal description of a saint: “a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness or closeness to God.” Whether formal or informal, when we think of saints, we are generally referring to the actions, efforts and abilities of another person—they have achieved saint status, but the Scriptures tell us an entirely different story about the saints.

Psalm 149 begins with another exclamation of “Praise the LORD!” It then continues, “Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly!” Where the English Standard Version uses “godly” the King James Version says “saints”. The psalmist is telling us to praise the LORD together, to gather with saints, as saints and turn all our attention to God. But again, what is it that makes us saints, the godly or as the New Living Translation put it, the faithful? 

Verse 2 begins, “Let Israel be glad in his Maker”. This reference to God goes beyond Him as the Creator of all things, it’s the acknowledgement, recognition, and understanding that God made Israel. He chose Abram out of Ur, He closed Sarai’s womb until the moment He had designed, the moment He
had chosen before He spoke time into existence when two people, one past the age of bearing children and the other as good as dead (Hebrews 11) would be used to birth the child that would birth the nation that would birth the Messiah. I know we sing “Father Abraham”, but God is Israel’s Maker. Deuteronomy 7:6b says, “The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” Psalm 149 now gives this more clarity, God didn’t look down upon the earth and choose one of the many nations to be His own, but He took a man and a woman, and miraculously made a nation for Himself. God created all of humanity and then He made Israel for Himself. They are the people of God by His choice, His action, His effort not their own. 

This should thrust us forward to Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” The psalmist was calling Israel to come together and give praise to God for who He was and for who He said they were. Think of Israel for a few more moments. They are the people of God not because they kept the Law, but they were given the Law because they are the people of God. God didn’t choose them because they endured, but Israel endures because God chose them. The promise that all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26) is not about their faithfulness to God but God’s faithfulness to them. Israel was made by grace so that through Israel’s Messiah, all the nations could be saved by grace. 

As much as they were to rejoice over their present position, the psalmist was calling Israel to offer just as much praise because of their future promises, “let the children of Zion rejoice in their King!” This was not about Saul or David, Solomon or those who came after. This was not a psalm that ceased after the exile to Babylon or one that was invalid during the time of the Judges, this was Israel’s song because the Messiah King, who would redeem and rule over all the nations was always Israel’s promise. More than the land they would inherit, the riches they would receive, the wars they would win or the nations they would rule, Israel’s purpose was always focused on one specific promise, the Messiah. They were chosen by God for the Messiah. They were made a nation for all the nations. They existed by God and for God. 

But before we begin to think that Israel was made for us, we must understand that Israel was made from love. The Hebrew word that is used in Psalm 149, that we have translated as “saints” is used three different times, verses 1, 5 and 9. The word that we generally translate as “saints” is Qados, Michael Wilcock write that this word means “belonging to God”. But in Psalm 149 we have the Hebrew word “Hasid” which Wilcock defines, “being loved by God with his covenant love”. This word comes from the word “hesed” which you may recall from Psalms 107 and 108, a word used often in the Psalms that we translate as lovingkindness, loyal love, covenant love, or mercy. In Psalm 149 we find that the saints are those whom God has put His covenant love upon. God didn’t make Israel because He needed a nation to work through, but because He wanted a nation to set His love upon. This may be hard to hear or to understand, but God never needs us. He can work without us, in fact, He could probably work better without us, but He loves us and because of His love has chosen to work in and through and even for us. Israel was made from the love of God, and they were made for the love of God, by the way He loves them He shows His love to others. 

Israel has not been replaced, their gift and their calling is without repentance, their place in God’s heart and in God’s kingdom is secure. We the Gentiles have been grafted in (Romans 11:11-31). We once were far off but have been brought near by the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13). We have not only become, but we have joined the saints of God. Just as God made Israel from His love, He has made us alive to Himself in Christ Jesus by His love. And just as Israel was made from love to show God’s love to the nations, we have been redeemed to join the work of redemption. The greatest promise ever made continues to be Jesus the Messiah. He was promised to come through Israel for all the nations and He has promised to return for His Bride to rule the nations from Israel. We are saints by Jesus, but we are also saints for Jesus. 

As in the day that Psalm 149 was written if we are saints, it is because God loves us. And if we are saints, it is so that God can chose His love through us. I sometimes get concerned that some of us are living for the next bit of love we think we need from God rather than in the great love that God has already set upon us. God has already demonstrated His love for us, when we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). John, the disciple who walked with Jesus and saw the Revelation of the return of Jesus wrote it this way, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God; and so, we are.” (I John 3:1) In all John had experienced, all he had endured and all he was waiting for, he found only one place to set his heart in, he was, and we are loved by God. Being a saint is not about our effort but God’s love, it’s not about the promises of the future but the security of our relationship, it’s not about what we do for Him, but what He has done for us. May we never let what we are waiting for God to do get in the way of rejoicing in what He has already done. No matter the promise for the future, nothing can compare to the reality of this moment, we are His saints because He has chosen to make us His children.