(REFLECTIONS ON Psalm 144:1-15)

15 How blessed are the people who are so situated;
How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!

As we read today’s Psalm, may the Holy Spirit stir within us, filling us with thanksgiving, remembering how blessed are the people whose God is the Lord! We are blessed, for God is our Lord, and He has adopted us through Jesus Christ as His people. 

While reading through today’s Psalm 144, an image of a kingdom came into my mind. A kingdom is made up of the king and/or queen, but also of all that are under their care. This includes the royal household, leaders, servants, soldiers, and all who dwell within the kingdom.

Today’s Psalm is a prayer to the Lord in the midst of the pressures and dangers associated with leading a kingdom. Such responsibility is too much for human rulers to handle alone. There must be divine intervention, divine protection, and divine direction in order for the kingdom to be guarded and to flourish.

That is why the psalmist considers how blessed it is to have such a great God who is willing to care for Jerusalem.

3 O Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?
Or the son of man, that You think of him?
4 Man is like a mere breath;
His days are like a passing shadow.

This reminds us of the fragility of life, even for a leader chosen and placed over a kingdom by the Lord. It also reminds us of the humility required to recognize that it is only by the grace of the Lord that He would choose a people and a kingdom as His.

How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord! He is the rock of our salvation, stretching forth His hand from on high, providing deliverance and salvation from all the dangers of the world we live in. He is the rock on which we stand, and so the kingdom we belong to, revealed through the church, can stand, because in the end it is His kingdom.

Let us then also sing a new song to our Lord, because how blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Psalm 144