Psalm 117

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples! For His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!” Psalm 117:1-2 (NKJV)

You have probably heard of the literary term “oxymoron.”  An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.  For instance, “Jumbo Shrimp.”  How can something be jumbo and shrimpy at the same time?  How about “deafening silence”?  How can something silent be deafening?  Or, “atom bomb”?  Can something with the smallest physical component create the largest explosion?  Describing today’s Psalm involves a bit of an oxymoron.  Psalm 117 is atomic in size.  In two short verses (the smallest chapter in the Bible) yet, it communicates a mushroom cloud of theology!  Its message: Gentiles should praise the Lord because His kindness and His Word (truth) endure forever.  In short, Gentiles can have a relationship with the Lord, too!

Somehow, throughout the generations, that message has gotten lost on the Jewish community.  The understanding of God’s covenant promises among most religious Jewish people does not leave much room for His blessing of the Gentiles.  Perhaps, some rabbis may concede that after the flood of Noah, God made general promises to all mankind, but they hold to the belief that the Jewish soul has the unique capacity to know God personally.  They reject the idea that Gentiles could enter into the same relationship with the Lord.  That idea of nationalism and racism permeated Jewish culture, even in the days of the Apostle Paul.  Paul declared that his former zealousness for Judaism had kept him from seeing the “mystery” of the Scripture, namely, Messiah’s true mission, and that Gentiles could receive eternal salvation along with Jews who received Messiah Jesus as Lord.

“ I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.” Colossians 1:24-29 (NKJV)

“For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’” Romans 11:25-27 (NKJV)