Day 36 Tuesday
Read Psalm 136
Worship is never simply a command in the Bible. We are often commanded to worship; Psalm 136 begins, “Give thanks to the LORD,” and repeats the command numerous times throughout the Psalm. But the command to worship never has a sense of a self-absorbed dictator demanding his subjects to worship him. In fact, the Biblical commands to worship are always connected to who God is – worship is described as the natural response to the essential characteristics of God. And perhaps the two most emphasized characteristics of God in the Bible are God as Creator and God as Redeemer. We worship God because He is the Creator and because He is the Redeemer.
Psalm 136 picks up on both of these characteristics of God. The first 9 verses celebrate God as Creator – making the heavens, spreading out the seas, establishing the sun, moon, and stars. Then, beginning in verse 10, the Psalmist shifts his focus to God as Redeemer. Step by step the Psalm describes God rescuing and redeeming Israel from Egypt. These are the same two characteristics explored in Revelation 4 and 5 in John’s vision of worship in heaven. The heavenly hosts praise God because He “created all things” and because redeemed people for God from “every tribe and language and people and nation.”
Creation and redemption go together. In fact, they have to go together; only that which is created can be redeemed. You can’t redeem something that doesn’t exist. God as Creator and Redeemer demonstrates how passionate He is about the world. First He created the world when He didn’t have to. And then, when creation went haywire and rejected God as its creator, God chose to redeem the creation gone wrong. That is why Psalm 136 can’t say “His love endures forever” enough times. Twenty-six verses and twenty-six reminders that His love endures forever.
There is an art form in Japan called Kintsugi where potters will take old fragments of broken pottery, sometimes from generations past, and then they mend the fragments into new cups or bowls, often using gold as the glue that holds the old pieces together. A bowl from a Kintsugi master is often worth far more than the original piece in the first place. The artist Makoto Fujimura suggests this is a beautiful metaphor of how creation and redemption go together - the mending of the shattered and broken into something new and beautiful. His love endures forever.
Prayer
Spend some time thinking through what it means for God to be Creator and Redeemer.
Spend some time praying through Psalm 136.