Fit to Be Praised

Passage: Psalm 33

Lord’s Day 9 deals with the “Doctrine of God’s Providence”. The essence of Providence is this: God’s in control of everything; therefore nothing we experience – “good” or “bad” – happens by accident. It all comes to us by God’s hand. If we claim the Bible as God’s authoritative self-revelation (in other words, if we believe what the Bible says about God), then we have to live with this tension: God doesn’t always give us what we want – even though presumably God is perfectly capable of doing so.

So why do we stick with this God? Two reasons: First, for better or worse, he’s God. He’s the creator and ruler of all. The ultimate being in the universe. As the Psalmist says, “Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous. It is fitting for the upright to praise him!” If God is who God claims to be, there’s only one fitting response: praise.
Second, he’s on our side. We don’t have the faculties to comprehend the scope of God’s work and God’s purposes. And we don’t need to – we don’t need to know what God’s doing and why. We only need to know this: that God is a Father whose purpose for each of us is good.

The Psalmist concludes, “…the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine…”
If it feels as though you are in the middle of a famine – a time in which your thirst is unquenched and your hopes unfulfilled – take heart. God will not abandon you to it. God’s eyes are upon you, even now. Find your hope in his unfailing love.