J Philip Bible Readings

In New Testament times also we see evidences of the same phenomenon, in the bigotry of the Jews, and indeed of the Christians themselves, in their unwillingness and inability to see that the gospel was designed by God to be for all nations (cf Acts 10, and Peter's prejudice against the Gentiles receiving the blessings of the gospel, and Paul's repeated experience of being shouted down in his preaching the moment he began to speak of the Gentiles inheriting the promises). But Paul could see what the Psalmist saw here, that the whole fulfilment of the divine purposes in the world lay precisely in the fact that the 'middle wall of partition' between Jew and Gentile was broken down in the death of Christ on the cross, and that that death effected a great reconciliation, not only between man and God, but between Jew and Gentile, abolishing the enmity between them and the 'making of twain one new man' (Ephesians 2:15). That is the first lesson of the Psalm. And when we link it with Paul's teaching in Romans 15 we see just how integral to the message of the New Testament it is. Furthermore, we must think of our Lord's use of the Psalm at the time of the Passover - it is one of the Hallel Psalms - and consider what must have been His thoughts as He went forth to His Cross, the cross that would in fact fulfil and accomplish that reconciliation, and send forth the light to all the nations of the earth. The use of the words 'merciful kindness' and 'truth' in 2 is significant. We can truly say that these were the realities that were at work in the fulfilment of the divine purposes in the world to which we have referred. Indeed, they are given as the grounds of the praise that the nations are to offer God, for it is through the mercy shown to Israel that the nations are blessed. The Hebrew word translated 'Merciful kindness' is 'Hesedh', rendered elsewhere as 'loving kindness'. It characteristically refers to God's covenant love, the love in which He binds Himself sovereignly and irrevocably to His people (for one of the most notable and moving descriptions of this love, few passages can compare with Isaiah 54, climaxing in the wonderful tenth verse. What more eloquent commentary or better incentive to praise could be found than these marvellous verses?