Psalm 149 - The Meek are Beautified with Salvation

Throughout my advanced training at Ellerslie we, the advanced students, had the opportunity to write and share a short meditation on either a Psalm or attribute of God.  These were wonderful times as we would all gather and hear beautiful truths expounded on by our fellow classmates.  I loved hearing each person share what God had been showing them in His Word and how different personalities expressed it.  Recently the meditation I gave this past fall has been on my mind.  So I thought I'd share it here on my blog!  May the Lord bless you through His word and may we each continually be pressed into a deeper measure of humility as we gaze upon our God's face. 

A Meditation on Psalms 149:1-4

"Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. 

Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.

Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.

For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.”

Oh what a beautiful promise that last verse holds, but oh what conviction to my soul.  “He [the awesome, mighty, holy God] will beautify [He will adorn] the meek [the humble] with Salvation." With JESUS.

This promise has a condition; meekness… a humility which comes from a fear and awe of God, acknowledging the correct relation man has to God most high.  Oswald Chambers says: ”Humility is not an ideal, it is the unconscious result of the life being rightly related to God and centered in Him..”

How, in light of God almighty can there be an ounce of pride?  Pride is to set oneself above others, it relies on self sufficiency and is confident in it’s own strength.  We read in James that God resisteth, He literally sets Himself against the proud.  Pride could never come before the Lord and bend in absolute dependency of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  This takes humility and meekness.

Seeing and acknowledging the greatness and holiness of God leads to a deep realization of sin and the need for Salvation.  The meek are conscious of their own weakness and unworthiness.  A soul becomes humble under the awareness of sin, which requires all pride to be pushed aside. It takes humility to confess sin & weakness, and to live dependent on someone else.  But how incredible is the One who we must be dependent on. 

Oh the amazing promise that verse contains; the Lord beautifies the humble.  A man of pride doesn’t even see his great need to be beautified.  He is too busy admiring and boasting in his filthy, ragged coat of good works to look up and see the marvelous coat of righteousness which the Lord beautifies the meek with.  But to those who humbly come to God, realizing and acknowledging their great sin and need for a Savior - Unto him will the Lord adorn the beauty of salvation with, washing him white as snow, creating a new creature.  And thus the meek, being beautified by Christ, walk with a boldness and confidence, proclaiming the blood of Jesus as all their righteousness.

We as Christians must be the most humble people on earth, bringing absolutely no attention to ourselves.  Yet being a people who overflow with joy and boasting in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His salvation that adorns us.  For this is our purpose, to proclaim the glory of God almighty. 

Psalm 149 continues “Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth…!

Oh all ye people, let everything that has breath praise ye the Lord, 

God of our Salvation!