Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name, deliver us and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake.
– Psalm 79:9
Did you hear the connection there between God’s salvation and deliverance and atonement for us and for our sins and for his own glory? God glorifies himself by saving us from our sins. The Lord glorifies himself by delivering us from the power of sin and the penalty of sin. God glorifies his name by atoning for our sins.
Psalm 79:9 Emphasizes God’s God-Centeredness
This is part of the beauty of the Gospel that we must make sure never to miss. Everything God does is ultimately for his own glory, which may rub some people wrong. Wait a minute. Are you saying that God lives to exalt himself? That God is in some way self-centered, that God is God-centered? And if that rubs you wrong in any way, I would just encourage you to ask the follow-up question.
Who else would you rather him exalt? He is God. There’s no one, nothing greater than God. Of course, he lives to exalt himself. This is what it means for him to be God. At any moment he were to exalt someone or something else, he’d no longer be the God who’s worthy of all exaltation. Of course he is God-centered. The whole universe is God-centered, and the beauty of the Gospel is how does God choose to exalt himself?
God exalts himself by sending his Son. Jesus came to us in the flesh to save us from our sins. God exalts himself as our Savior. He makes a way for us to have relationship with him, to be forgiven of our sins and restored to him now and forever. All glory be to God, who exalts himself as our Savior, as our deliverer. Jesus atones for our sins for the glory of God’s name.
Psalm 79:9 Reminds Us God’s Ultimate Goal is His Glory
O God, we praise you first and foremost as the only God worthy of all worship in all the universe. There is no one, nothing like you. Lord, you are infinitely holy and infinitely glorious and infinitely better than all the best things and people of this world put together. You are God. You alone are worthy of our worship and our fear and our trust and our love. We praise you today for the way you glorify your name as our Savior and Deliverer.
Jesus, we praise you for atoning for our sins, for the glory of your name, that we might be in relationship with you, enjoying you in all of your glory and exalting you in all of your glory. God, help us to live for your namesake, even as you live for your namesake, even as you, O God, not only save us and deliver us from our sins, but you glorify yourself as our provider, our protector, our shepherd as we’ve prayed. You glorify yourself as our healer, as our hope, as our joy, as our peace.
O God, glorify your name as Jehovah Shalom and Jehovah-Rapha and Jehovah-jireh, as the Lord who provides, as the Lord who heals, as the Lord who’s our peace. The Lord who’s our help. The Lord who is our shepherd,. Glorify your name in all these ways today. God, we need your grace in our lives and we pray that you pour it out for your name’s sake in us and that you would help us to live today for the glory of your name.
Praying for the Unreached
Help us to point people by your grace in us, to the glory of your name today, that they might know you, our Father in heaven. Hallowed be your name in all the earth through our lives today and among all the peoples of the world.
God, as we pray for unreached people groups, thousands of them who don’t know the glory of your name. God, we pray that you would show yourself as their Savior, their Deliverer. That you would bring the good news of atonement for their sins to three billion unreached people in the world today and you would use us toward that end. Help us to live for the glory of your name, for your name’s sake among the nations. God, we pray that we wouldn’t live for anything less than that today and tomorrow, in our lives and our families and our churches and ultimately among all the nations. We pray all of this according to your Word in Psalm 79:9. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
