Reasoning from God’s Attributes
Psalm 77:1–20
Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? Psalm 77:13

What Asaph the psalmist remembers about God when he reflects on the years of his working is in the stanza comprising verses 13–15. This is all about God, just as the opening stanzas of the psalm were mostly about Asaph. Here he muses on the attributes of God as seen in Israel’s history. He recalls three matters.

1. God is holy. The holiness of God is a rich concept, having to do more with God’s transcendence than his uprightness. Yet it embraces his moral qualities, and here “holy” must refer to the fact that whatever God does is upright. This has been true in the past. Therefore, it must be true in the present too. However matters may seem to the poet from his personal perspective in history, his review of the past teaches him that God can always be trusted to do the right thing. This is true of all his “ways,” including those in which the poet himself is called to walk.

2. God is great. In the previous stanza Asaph had reflected on God’s “deeds” and “wonders” (v. 11), his “work” and “mighty deeds” (v. 12). This leads him to ask, “What god is great like our God?” with the implied answer, “No god at all,” and to repeat that Israel’s God “works wonders,” “[makes] known [his] might” (v. 14), and bares his “mighty arm” (v. 15). This is important because it tells us that God is not only an upright God (“Your way, O God, is holy”), but also that he is able and does put all his holy decrees into action. In other words, nothing frustrates him, nothing turns him aside from his perfect, right, and moral path.

3. God is caring. How do we know that God is caring? It is because he “redeemed” the people, meaning that God delivered them from their bondage under the slave lords of Egypt (v. 15). Therefore, if God is caring as well as powerful or sovereign, he can be counted on to work in each detail of history for his people’s good. And this means that even allowing the psalmist to fall into the depression with which the psalm began is not carelessness on God’s part, but rather a part of his total loving plan. This is practical theology of the best sort, for it reasons from the immutable character of God to the purpose for his acts in history and takes comfort from such truths.

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.