The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 135:21
Blessed be the Lord out of Zion.
Thankfulness
I. The psalmist’s expressions of thankfulness.
1. We are taught by the whole of this psalm that these expressions spring from a grateful memory. Everywhere around him he beholds some memorial of the Divine goodness, some landmark of the ancient inheritance of his fathers, some footprint of the Divine mercy and power, which has lingered on from generation to generation, through calms and storms, judgments and blessings. And surely we also can recall the past, with its evidences of God’s love and pity.
2. The expressions of thankfulness, observe, are specially appropriate to the Church in her present state of trial. It is “out of Zion” the voice of blessing is to go up to heaven. It is in our gatherings on the Sabbath that the heart is to give free scope to its grateful memories and feelings. The Church of God is still in the wilderness; but though in the wilderness, battling with wrong, and with the visible and invisible enemies of her path, still she is able to raise the anthem--“Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem.”
II. The reasonableness of this thankfulness.
1. This might be urged from the Divine Presence of “the Lord, which dwelleth at Jerusalem.” It was the fact of this recognized Presence, this “Shield,” this “Refuge,” this “Strength,” which gave the deep, full impulse to the thankfulness of the Jewish heart; so should it act with us. There is no comfort so great and so lasting to a right-minded Christian man as the consciousness of the Almighty Presence.
2. The reasonableness of thanksgiving arises, too, not only from a sense of duty, and of manifold blessings bestowed from day to day, but also from the gracious truth that God’s dwelling is to be found on earth; that He has not deserted it, nor given it over to destruction. And the fact that this meaning is conveyed to us by the naming of Jerusalem is very certain. Thus we are not directed to look for the Divine Presence out of our own spheres of existence, far away beyond the limits of our comprehension, but to look for it at our very doors, even within our own hearts. Is not this a cause of thankfulness?
3. In the fact of God’s dwelling at Jerusalem we find another reason for thankfulness in the form of His dwelling, namely, the symbol of “the Shekinah,” the visible glory between “the wings of the cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat.” Thus, in the presence of Christ, our God and Saviour, we have a protection, a shelter, and a security against danger. (W. D. Horwood.).