Psalm 147 Part 1

There is no peace in this world, or the world to come for people who do not praise the Lord. By entering the spirit and worship of heaven, the spirit, and joy of heaven inter us. The goodness of praise comes from the truth that it is, in itself, pleasant and beautiful! True praise is beautiful to God, to His people as a community, and to the individual worshipper. 

The psalmist then goes on to describe the goodness and greatness of God so he and others would have reasons to praise God. The first reason is God’s active care for Jerusalem. This is a reference to its restoration after the exile and the psalm was most likely penned at this time. Neh.12:17 describes the celebration of thanksgiving mentioned in this psalm.  

Israel was recently returned ‘outcasts’ (v2). The world is still full of outcasts who need restoration through the work of Jesus’ church today. They may be the very poorest and despised in the world. They may have made themselves so by their own sin. There are those who judge themselves to be outcasts. They may have turned aside from the church. Outcasts can be those who have fallen into great depression in their spirits, or they may be those among untold millions today who suffer persecution. Then there are the broken-hearted who need healing (v3). Those who hurt – the broken-hearted and wounded – are special objects of His care. Hearts are broken through disappointment. Hearts are broken through bereavement. Hearts are broken in ten thousand ways, for this is a heart-breaking world; and Christ is good at healing all manner of heartbreaks.  

We would expect that God who numbers the 1 billion trillion stars in the observable universe (v4) should be able to bend over the lowly, broken-hearted one and bind it with His sympathy and heal its flowing wounds. This is wonderfully, amazingly divine. His majesty extends in both directions, from the span of the universe to the individual need. The psalmist has allowed us to make the logical conclusion – that if God knows and names all the stars, He certainly knows and names me.