Psalm 148

The Voice

Psalm 148

¹Praise the Eternal!
All you in the heavens, praise the Eternal;
    praise Him from the highest places!
²All you, His messengers and His armies in heaven:
    praise Him!
³Sun, moon, and all you brilliant stars above:
    praise Him!
⁴Highest heavens and all you waters above the heavens:
    praise Him!

⁵Let all things join together in a concert of praise to the name of the Eternal,
for He gave the command and they were created.
⁶He put them in their places to stay forever—
He declared it so, and it is final.

⁷Everything on earth, join in and praise the Eternal;
sea monsters and creatures of the deep,
⁸Lightning and hail, snow and foggy mists,
violent winds all respond to His command.

⁹Mountains and hills,
    fruit trees and cedar forests,
¹⁰All you animals both wild and tame,
    reptiles and birds who take flight:
    praise the Lord.

¹¹All kings and all nations,
    princes and all judges of the earth,
¹²All people, young men and women,
    old men and children alike,
    praise the Lord.

¹³Let them all praise the name of the Eternal!
    For His name stands alone above all others.
    His glory shines greater than anything above or below.
¹⁴He has made His people strong;
    He is the praise of all who are godly,
    the praise of the children of Israel, those whom He holds close.
Praise the Eternal!

Isaiah 63:7-9

The Voice

⁷So let me remind you of the Eternal’s enduring love, and why we should praise Him.
Let me tell you again how the Eternal gives and gives and gives.
All God’s wonders and goodness are done for Israel’s benefit
according to His great mercy and compassion.

⁸Eternal One: Surely, these are My people, and they will be true to Me.
My children will not try to deceive Me.

And indeed, God became their Savior.
⁹    And when they suffered, God suffered too;
And the messenger of His presence acted to save them.
    Out of enduring love, compassion, and concern,
God Himself rescued them. Through all those years long ago,
    God picked them up and carried them through.

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Hebrews 2:10-18

The Voice

Here is God’s Son: Creator, Sustainer, Great High Priest. Jesus has to take on our feeble flesh and suffer a violent death. He suffers for what we need.

¹⁰It only makes sense that God, by whom and for whom everything exists, would choose to bring many of us to His side by using suffering to perfect Jesus, the founder of our faith, the pioneer of our salvation. ¹¹As I will show you, it’s important that the One who brings us to God and those who are brought to God become one, since we are all from one Father. This is why Jesus was not ashamed to call us His family, ¹²saying, in the words of the psalmist,

I will speak Your Name to My brothers and sisters
when I praise You in the midst of the community.^[a]

¹³And in the words of Isaiah,

I will wait for the Eternal One.^[b]

And again,

Look, here I am with the children God has given Me.^[c]

¹⁴Since we, the children, are all creatures of flesh and blood, Jesus took on flesh and blood, so that by dying He could destroy the one who held power over death—the devil— ¹⁵and destroy the fear of death that has always held people captive.

¹⁶So notice—His concern here is not for the welfare of the heavenly messengers, but for the children of Abraham. ¹⁷He had to become as human as His sisters and brothers so that when the time came, He could become a merciful and faithful high priest of God, called to reconcile a sinful people. ¹⁸Since He has also been tested by suffering, He can help us when we are tested.

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Footnotes

Matthew 2:13-23

The Voice

¹³After the wise men left, a messenger of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Messenger of the Lord (to Joseph): Get up, take the child and His mother, and head to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you it is safe to leave. For Herod understands that Jesus threatens him and all he stands for. He is planning to search for the child and kill Him. But you will be safe in Egypt.

¹⁴So Joseph got up in the middle of the night; he bundled up Mary and Jesus, and they left for Egypt.^[a]

¹⁶After a few months had passed, Herod realized he’d been tricked. The wise men were not coming back. Herod, of course, was furious. He simply ordered that all boys who lived in or near Bethlehem and were two years of age and younger be killed. He knew the baby King was this age because of what the wise men told him.

Herod knows ordinary babies will die in this purge, but he doesn’t care—Herod is not so much cold-blooded as pragmatic, willing to do whatever is necessary to kill this new supposed King. And so all those other baby boys die. But, of course, Herod’s plan ultimately fails. He doesn’t know the baby Savior has been whisked to safety in Egypt.

¹⁷This sad event had long been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah:

¹⁸A voice will be heard in Ramah,
    weeping and wailing and mourning out loud all day and night.
The voice is Rachel’s, weeping for her children,
    her children who have been killed;
    she weeps, and she will not be comforted.^[b]

¹⁵Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed in Egypt until Herod died. This fulfilled yet another prophecy. The prophet Hosea once wrote, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

¹⁹And after Herod died, a messenger of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt:

Messenger of the Lord: ²⁰You may go home now. Take the child and His mother and go back to the land of Israel, for the people who were trying to take the child’s life are now dead.

²¹So Joseph got up and took Mary and Jesus and returned to the land of Israel. ²²Soon he learned that Archelaus, Herod’s oldest and notoriously brutal son, was ruling Judea. Archelaus might not be any friendlier than Herod had been. Joseph was simply afraid. He had another dream, and in this dream, he was warned away from Judea; so Joseph decided to settle up north in a district called Galilee, ²³in a town called Nazareth. And this, too, fulfilled what the prophets have taught, “The Savior will be a Nazarene.”