Psalm 136

Thank the Lord for His eternal mercy!

It is great to have a burden lifted off your back even for a moment, but it is far better to have it taken away for a lifetime. God has done far more through His Son. Not only is our debt paid, but we have been granted heavenly riches due to Christ for His perfect obedience. We have the covenant love of God and the fullness of His blessings for all the ages that shall every be. This is what Jesus, God with God, the Lord of lords, has won for us.

God made everything by the Word of His power. Think for a moment of the six days of Genesis 1. Jesus spoke those days into being. It was through Him that everything was made. Light; waters above and waters below; dry land and all that grows upon the earth... all the realms of creation. Then He made rulers over those realms. Sun, moon, and stars; fish and birds that fill the waters; all creatures that fill the earth, and then people made in His image, male and female, to fill and to rule, having dominion over all in the Name of the God of the seventh day. All this was spoken into being by the divine Voice, the Son of the Most High God, Jesus Christ.

When Joshua of old was preparing to take the city of Jericho, he met a mysterious figure called “the Commander of the Lord's Army.” What was the instruction that this great Being gave to Joshua? “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. And what was the earlier command to Moses before He returned to Egypt to rescue Israel? He was confronted by a divine Voice that came from a burning bush that could not be consumed. “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Jesus is not only the Son of God for creation. He is the Son of God for everything that is salvation. The God of the Passover; the God who provides in the wilderness; the God of the conquest... He is the God who wins everything for us through His life and death as the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth.

He saw us, bloody and even dead by the side of the road. He came to us. He rescued us. He carried us to safety. He gives us Himself, the Bread of life, that we might live forever. It only seems right that we should thank Him for all eternity.