Funeral: "To praise the Lord" (Ps 117)

FUNERAL MEDITATION: "TO PRAISE THE LORD" (Ps 117)

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Dr. Paul Manuel—2013

Where below you read "the deceased" Pastor Manuel

inserted the name of the individual.

I did not have the pleasure of knowing the deceased well. She had moved to State College several years before I came to the church in Salemville. I met her, though, when she would return to visit friends and would arrange those visits so she could also attend a service here.

 

She may have had several favorite biblical passages, perhaps some in the Psalms I have already mentioned. I have chosen Ps 117 to help us reflect on her life and on our own. Ps 117 is the shortest in the Psalter—only two verses—and easy to skip, but it expresses some fundamental truths about God and about His relationship to His people.

 

I. Call to Praise the LORD

 

The psalmist begins with a call to praise the LORD, inviting others to join with him:

Praise the LORD, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. (Ps 117:1)

II. Cause to Praise the LORD

 

Then he gives two reasons that God deserves such acclaim:

Great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. (Ps 117:2)

A. His love

God's love is one of the most prominent themes in all of scripture. It is one of His chief attributes, coloring so much of what He does that the apostle John says, "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Yet equally important, at least from our perspective, is that God has shown His love "toward us." He does this in many ways, of course, but the most important way is the one Paul identifies in his letter to the church in Rome:

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)

John also speaks in his gospel to the greatness of God's love in Christ what is probably the most familiar passage of the New Testament:

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

This is the ultimate benefit of God's great love—to gain eternal life with Him. The deceased knew this, and she is now enjoying the fulfillment of her faith.

B. His faithfulness

The other reason God deserves praise is that He is faithful, dependable, reliable. We can count on Him to do what He says He will do, to act according to His loving nature, to keep His word to us. God's promises have no expiration date. This is so different from what we experience in other areas of life, where the relationships we form are quite fragile and often suffer from a lack of faithfulness. When we turn to God, the relationship He establishes with us is permanent because it relies on His utterly dependable character. We can then have confidence that "he will never leave [us] nor forsake [us]" (Deut 31:6, 8). This is the assurance the psalmist and the deceased had.

 

This psalm joins the attributes of God's love and faithfulness, the very qualities that make it possible for us to know Him...in this life and the next. There is sorrow at the deceased's passing, yet there is also comfort in knowing that she is, even now, in the presence of God, extoling Him for His great love and eternal faithfulness.

Praise the LORD, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD. (Ps 117:1-2)

For a pdf see here.