Commentary - Psalm 105:42-45

Bird's-eye view

This concluding section of Psalm 105 serves as the grand summation and theological capstone for the entire historical recital that precedes it. The psalmist has just walked the congregation through the highlight reel of God's mighty acts on behalf of Israel, from the patriarchal promises to the deliverance from Egypt and provision in the wilderness. Now, in these final verses, he answers the ultimate "why." Why did God do all this? The answer is twofold, and it is crucial. First, God acted because He is a covenant-keeping God; He remembered His promise to Abraham. His actions are not arbitrary or capricious but are grounded in His own sworn word. Second, God saved His people for a purpose. He did not deliver them from bondage in Egypt so they could live however they pleased in Canaan. He delivered them so that they might become a people who would keep His statutes and observe His laws. Grace is the engine, and obedience is the destination. The psalm, and this section, climaxes with the only appropriate response to such a staggering display of covenant faithfulness: "Praise Yah!" or Hallelujah. It is a call to worship that flows directly from a right understanding of redemptive history.

In short, these verses anchor God's historical salvation in His eternal word of promise and direct that salvation toward the goal of a holy and obedient people. It is a beautiful summary of the gospel logic that is found throughout Scripture: God saves us by grace, according to His promise, in order to make us holy. The indicative of His mighty deliverance leads directly to the imperative of our grateful obedience.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 105 is a historical psalm, a category that includes psalms like 78 and 106. These psalms recount the history of God's dealings with Israel, but they are not mere history lessons. They are theological interpretations of that history, designed to teach the congregation about the character of God and their identity as His people. Psalm 105 is overwhelmingly positive, focusing entirely on God's faithfulness to His covenant promises. It stands in deliberate contrast to the very next psalm, Psalm 106, which recounts the same basic history but from the perspective of Israel's persistent rebellion and faithlessness. Read together, they present a full-orbed picture of the covenant relationship: God's unwavering faithfulness set against man's constant sinfulness, highlighting the sheer grace of God. Psalm 105 begins with a call to "give thanks to the Lord" and "make known his deeds among the peoples" (v. 1), and the body of the psalm does exactly that, culminating in this final section which provides the ultimate reason for it all.

Key Issues

The Logic of the Gospel

It is essential that we get the order of operations right, and this psalm sets it out for us with perfect clarity. God does not look down from heaven, find a group of people who are already good at keeping statutes and observing laws, and then decide to give them the lands of the nations as a reward. That is the logic of every man-made religion, and it is the logic of death. The biblical logic, the gospel logic, is precisely the reverse. God remembers His promise, a promise of sheer grace made to Abraham. On the basis of that promise, He acts in mighty power to save. He brings His people out, gives them a land, and blesses them with the fruit of others' labor. And why? What is the intended result? So that they might keep His statutes. Grace comes first, and grace is the foundation for the obedience that follows. The deliverance is the cause; the law-keeping is the effect. We are not saved by our obedience, but we are most certainly saved for obedience. This psalm is a beautiful Old Testament articulation of what Paul would later write in Ephesians: "For by grace you have been saved through faith... not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:8-10).

Verse by Verse Commentary

42 For He remembered His holy word With Abraham His servant;

The psalmist here gives us the ultimate foundation for everything that has been recounted. Why did God judge Egypt with plagues? Why did He part the Red Sea? Why did He provide manna and quail? The reason is not found in the Israelites. It is found in God Himself. He remembered. This does not mean that God had forgotten and the cry of His people jogged His memory. In Scripture, for God to "remember" is for Him to act on the basis of a prior commitment. The entire exodus and conquest was God acting in history in the fifteenth century B.C. because of a promise He had made to Abraham some five centuries earlier. His word is a holy word, set apart and utterly reliable. And it was a word given to Abraham, who is identified here not as a great man of faith, but simply as His servant. The whole stupendous work of redemption is grounded in God's faithfulness to His own unsolicited, gracious promise. He is a God who keeps His word.

43 And He brought His people out with joy, His chosen ones with a shout of joy.

The exodus was not a grim affair. It was not a funeral procession. It was an emancipation proclamation accompanied by singing. God brought them out with joy and with a shout of joy. This is the proper affective response to a gracious deliverance. When God breaks the chains of slavery, whether it is slavery to Pharaoh or slavery to sin, the result is an explosion of joyful praise. Think of the song of Moses and Miriam on the far side of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). This is not the quiet, dignified joy of the stoic; this is loud, exuberant, public celebration. They are His chosen ones, which again emphasizes that their deliverance was based on God's sovereign election, not their inherent worthiness. God chooses, God acts, and the people He chooses and acts for are brought into a state of high joy.

44 He gave them also the lands of the nations, That they might take possession of the fruit of the peoples’ labor,

God's salvation is never ethereal or abstract; it is concrete and tangible. He did not just deliver them from Egypt; He brought them into the Promised Land. And notice the sheer grace of it. He gave them the lands. This was a gift. And it was not an empty gift. They were not given a barren wasteland to develop from scratch. They inherited cities they did not build, wells they did not dig, and vineyards they did not plant (Deut. 6:10-11). They took possession of the fruit of others' labor. Now, this was a righteous dispossession, because the Canaanites were being judged for their centuries of accumulated wickedness. But from Israel's perspective, it was an unadulterated gift. They were given a furnished home. This is a picture of our salvation. We do not build our own righteousness; we are given the perfect righteousness of Christ. We inherit a kingdom we did nothing to earn.

45 So that they might keep His statutes And observe His laws, Praise Yah!

And here we have the grand purpose clause for the whole affair. All the remembering, the delivering, the giving, it was all directed to this end: so that they might be a people who lived according to God's law. He gave them a land of milk and honey so that it might become a land of justice and righteousness. He freed them from the tyrannical laws of Pharaoh so they could live under the liberating laws of Yahweh. The law was not a burden imposed upon them to make their lives miserable; it was the constitution of their new freedom, the blueprint for a society that would reflect the goodness and wisdom of their Deliverer. Grace does not abolish law; it establishes it. And when we see this glorious logic, from gracious promise to gracious deliverance to gracious provision to the gracious goal of holiness, there is only one possible response. The psalm ends as it should, with an explosive command to worship: Praise Yah! Hallelujah! This is not an add-on or a polite sign-off. It is the necessary and climactic conclusion. To understand the gospel is to erupt in praise.

Application

The message of this psalm is a potent corrective to two opposite errors that constantly plague the church. The first is the error of legalism. The legalist believes that his obedience is the cause of God's blessing. He thinks that if he keeps the statutes well enough, God will be obligated to give him the land. This psalm demolishes that by placing God's remembering of His promise at the very beginning. God's grace is the foundation, not the reward for our performance.

The second error is the error of antinomianism, or lawlessness. The antinomian believes that because he is saved by grace, obedience is optional. He thinks God brought him out of Egypt so he could do whatever he felt like doing in the wilderness. This psalm demolishes that by placing the keeping of God's statutes at the very end, as the goal of the whole enterprise. God's grace has a purpose, and that purpose is our sanctification, our holiness. He saved us from sin, not for sin.

We, like Israel, have been brought out of a house of bondage. We have been given an inheritance, the riches of Christ, that we did nothing to earn. And we have been given all of this so that we might live as a people for His own possession, zealous for good works. Our lives of obedience are not the anxious scrabbling of a slave trying to earn his freedom, but the joyful song of a son who has already been set free. And so, when we look at the history of our own salvation, from God's eternal choice to Christ's bloody cross to the gift of the Spirit, our only fitting response is to join the psalmist and all the saints in a great and resounding Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.