I’m accustomed to the Bible. I’ve gone to church since I was a small child. Truth be told, my parents undoubtedly took me to church when I was a baby, but I can’t say I remember the experience.
What’s more, in my teens I made some feeble efforts to read the Bible on my own. Finally I succeeded in making that a habit when I was in my early twenties.
All that to say, not only is church language (some people call it churchese) familiar, but so is Bible language.
Some might be scratching their heads. Bible language? There is Bible language?
Well sure there is. Where else do people talk about justification or sanctification or glorification? These are Biblical terms, words used and explained by Paul. And as it happens there are a number of other “Bible words,” that I never really thought about being used—not exclusively, but perhaps primarily—in the Bible.
Take mercy, for example. Who uses that word apart from Christians? It doesn’t really come up too often in normal conversation. I mean, even in legal proceedings, I don’t think mercy is really part of the equation. Most penalties, in our state at least, have mandated sentencing, leaving judges no leeway to be merciful.
As it happens, our society is in a dangerous place of payback, so we don’t hear a lot of neighbors talking about mercy, or customers concerning businesses. Instead, the public is more apt to “cancel” someone or to boycott, or protest, or demand reparations, or to simply take what they consider to be their rightful due. No mercy.
The idea is, no mercy was offered to me, so they ain’t receiving any mercy from me!
Except, no one really says that. Because mercy isn’t really part of the every day vocabulary. It’s part of Bible talk.
I realized this fact about some of the words I don’t think twice about any more, because I’ve been around Bible talk for so long, when a friend approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in reading a Psalm a day with her.
Well, yeah!
One of the things I soon discovered was that a word like mercy is Bible talk. It needs explaining.
And so is the word exalt.
Today we read Psalm 30, which begins with these words (NIV):
I will exalt you, LORD,
for you lifted me out of the depths
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but exalt is a Bible word.
Who else do we exalt in the present culture in the western world? Ourselves, surely, but we don’t generally talk about doing so by using the word. We also exalt stars—of movies, music, TV, sports. But in those instances, we are more apt to say the culture or individual idolizes them, as opposed to exalts them.
What precisely do we mean by exalt? It’s a fair question. Is idolize an accurate synonym? Yes, according to the Oxford-American Dictionary, it is. The most appropriate definition is as follows:
hold (someone or something) in very high regard; think or speak very highly of
The synonyms listed in the accompanying thesaurus are these:
extol, praise, acclaim, esteem; pay homage to, revere, venerate, worship, lionize, idolize, look up to; informal put on a pedestal, laud.
Many of those terms are not quite right when we’re talking about God. Or they also are Bible terms. Take revere or worship. I suppose it is possible that an Englishman would say he reveres the Queen, but generally those words are reserved for speaking about God. And specifically about the Christian God. Do Muslims revere Allah? Maybe, though I don’t recall anything about revering God in the Five Pillars of Islam or in the Islamic law (sharia).
Perhaps Hindus revere their various gods. I know that those they believe are present in the animal kingdom are preserved and protected. Many Hindus don’t eat meat, for instance, and they do all they can to preserve the life of even the lowest insect. I’m a little muddy as to the reason, here. All these animals aren’t gods, in their way of thinking, but they are reincarnated beings who have been brought back as lower forms of life as part of their karma.
So who is exalted?
As it turns out, the Bible talks a lot about exalting God.
So what exactly does exalting God mean, apart from the other Bible-term synonyms or from those that simply don’t work (like idolize).
The best way I can explain it is this: exalting God, exalting Jesus, is something we do to elevate His standing. Of course we can’t actually elevate God’s standing since He is God and already over all things. But we can point to Him, credit Him with what He does, put Him in the spotlight, so to speak, call attention to Him so that others notice Him, too.
And that’s what I think David was saying in Psalm 30. He exalts God, and then He spends the rest of the psalm explaining why.
His number one point is that he’s exalting God, because God put him in an elevated position. I mean, he’d been a mere shepherd boy, only for God to lift him from that position to the place of king over the nation Israel. It really is an amazing transformation, and because of it, David wants to turn the spotlight back on God: He gave me this power and authority—it was not my doing.
So, too, Christians can exalt the LORD, because we once were His enemies, going our own way, either in intentional rebellion against Him or in denial of who He is and His right to rule. But because of Jesus Christ, we’ve been made new.
Now we are friends, sons, heirs, beloved, adopted into His family. On and on.
Because of our transformation, like David’s, it’s only right for us to exalt the LORD.
Even though we may have to find another word to explain what it is we’re going.
Comment and check out her blog at: https://rebeccaluellamiller.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/exalting-the-lord/
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