Psalm 71:19

Psalm 71:19

Your righteousness reaches to the heavens

This is one of those statements that many of us have often read and just let it slip by without too much thought. Even if we have stopped and pondered for a moment, we’ve probably decided that the words here are metaphorical or couched in terms that were in common use at the time. However, our journey through the Psalms has opened so many windows into God’s truth that we must now stop and ask what is really being explained here? How does the righteousness of God reach up to the heavens?

The first explanation is simply that His acts of loving kindness are so plenteous that they have piled up and now fill the empty spaces between earth and heaven.  For those of us who know and love the Lord, that is utterly believable.

Maybe David is trying here to exalt God’s righteousness, and the only thing He can compare it with is the highest thing he knows, the heavens. 

The greatest act of righteousness that God has shown us, is through the visit to our earth of His Son. In all that He said and did, Yeshua revealed the righteousness of God. Then He left us and entered heaven having “fulfilled all righteousness.”

Finally, human beings are in dire straits indeed without the righteous actions of God. Our destiny is down, down into the depths of the earth, down into Hades. It is through Christ Jesus that we have been saved from that dreadful fate and now we may lift our eyes heavenwards, to paradise, to a world where sin no longer prevails. 

Who is like our God? Who has done such great things? No one but the Sovereign Lord, our Creator, our Father. Hallelujah!

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