Before we open God’s Word together, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord Jesus, You are the great Shepherd and we are Your sheep. We would hear Your voice. Feed our souls. Unstop our ears. Give us hearts to attend to what You have for us here in this psalm tonight. Thank You for the jewels buried here. Father, help us leave here with some. Sweeten our lives to make us more like You. Hear our prayers, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Psalm 66. You’ll hear an echo of Psalm 121. David Felker preached so ably last week. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Psalm 66:
“To the choirmaster. A Song. A Psalm.
Shout for joy to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. All the earth worships you and sings praises to you; they sing praises to your name.’ Selah
Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations – let not the rebellious exalt themselves.
Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.
I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will perform my vows to you, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”
Amen and amen. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.
Well, we’re not certain if David was the author of this psalm; it doesn’t say so. Spurgeon believes it has to be David. I’m not willing to ride into that ditch with Spurgeon necessarily. There were other inspired psalmists. The psalmist is painting for us with some detail a great picture, and we want to look at the details of that picture tonight. He tells us some particular things to help us navigate our own walk with the Lord and he helps us see the beauty of Christ. Let’s think about those things as I give you this outline. We’ll begin, because I think he talks to us in an escatalogical context – it’s that a beautiful preacher word? Escatalogical context. He’s going to start with escatology, define that for you. We’re going to talk about redemption and response, verses 13 to 19. Redemption, verses 5 to 12. And doxology, verse 20. Just to note that. I might not necessarily have chosen a long psalm if I had thought about communion being tonight. I hope you had a snack before you left the house! We’ve got some work to do!
Escatology. Verses 1 to 4 – like I said, a $64 theological word that means “the study of the last things.” I believe the psalmist is starting us there. He’s painting a scene for us in which all the earth is standing before the Lord God Almighty and is called upon to shout out His glory. The creation shouts for joy. The redeemed shout for joy. Verse 2 and verse 4 both intensify verse 1 calling upon us to celebrate His goodness in a manner proportionate to His excellencies. We watched as the enemies of God come cringing, offering their praise by constraint because praise they must. We’ve seen the cringing of the demons as they face Jesus in the gospels. They hated to recognize Him. You can hear it in the interchange between them and Jesus. They begged Him not to use His power on them. They couldn’t withhold themselves from Him. Mark chapter 5, no sooner had Jesus set His foot on the shore, the Gadarene shore, the Sea of Galilee, then where’s the Gadarene demoniac? He’s not running the other way. He’s coming right to Jesus. He’s coming right to Jesus. As soon as He steps foot on the shore and we see how Legion pleads for his life before the mighty Son of God.
Notice verse 3. “Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds!’” The psalmist is calling us to turn our attention to the Lord God directly, to address Him in our praise. If this opening is indeed a scene that the psalmist is painting of the great day of the Lord, that’s what we practice now in our own worship. We worship here, morning and evening, for practice for the great worship around the throne on the day of the Lord. How much of our worship, as we gather week by week and even personally, how much of our worship is about God rather than to God? The psalmist is telling us, “Say to God, directly engage with Him. As it were, look Him in the face and tell Him how awesome His deeds are.” Can we voice our praise to Him directly as we sing these great hymns? Can we in our hearts voice our praise to Him directly, and in our voices can we say to Him, “Your deeds are awesome! Your enemies that we find so fearsome are nothing. They cow and they run cringing to You.” Can we do that? Can we make that mental shift so that our worship is to God and not just about God? Was handed to Him, is offered to Him?J As it were, if we could see directly, watch Him directly in the face and say, “Let me tell You how wonderful You are, and Your works, how wonderful they are.”
“All the earth worships You,” verse 4, “and sings praises to You. They sing praises to Your name.” The sun shouts as he rises and makes his course across the sky. The trees clap their hands. The brooks and the streams gurgle His praise. The stars sing together. Every creature offers its worship. Why? Why? One worship in this song – redemption. Redemption. “Come and see,” verse 5, “what God has done.” Calvin says, “‘Come and see’ is an appeal to put away our universal thoughtlessness and to pay attention to the great works of God.” If you read much of Calvin, you’re going to find that he repeatedly returns to that theme of our thoughtlessness as we contemplate the things of God, as we make God our study, as we make the works of God on our behalf, as we pay attention to him, you’re going to hear him talk a great deal about our universal thoughtlessness. The Scripture causes us to open our eyes to think, to taste and see that the Lord is good, to wake up and see the amazing works of God on our behalf. “He is awesome.” The King James translates that, “terrible.” The latter part of verse 5, “He is awesome in His deeds toward the children of man.” He’s talking about redemption.
Verse 6, “He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot.” He’s thinking of Exodus. He’s thinking of their exodus from bondage in Egypt. He’s thinking of the moment the following generation crossed the Jordan right at Jericho at flood tide when God brought them into the land He had promised hundreds of years before to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, their fathers. “There we did rejoice in Him,” verse 6 says, “who rules by His might forever.” They were free of bondage. They entered the land God had promised, free men, free women. Think back forty years before the joy of Exodus 15. As Miriam led the women in song, as they looked and they saw dead horses and dead Egyptians floating in the sea. As God had brought the waves over the top of them, executing His judgment and keeping His people. “I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed marvelously. The horse and rider, thrown into the sea!” You hear that song. Remember their joy. “There did we rejoice.” And they came into the land that God would help them to possess in the faithful keeping of His Word. It was a redemption that He had promised. It was real, it was sweet, and it was the source of their rejoicing.
It was a redemption in which, verse 7 says, “He kept watch on the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves.” It kind of reminds us of Psalm 2, doesn’t it, as the rebellious are warned, “Kiss the Son lest you perish in the way.” The son’s anger will flare at your rebellion. It kind of reminds me too of a friend of mine that had a mean old dog that lived under the front porch. And you’d go up that front porch at the cost of – you know, you were taking your leg in your hands because that dog was mean and he was the threat to bite. The only thing meaner on that place than that dog was the old grandmother. And she’d come out on that porch and the dog was fine! Of course you’re scared of her too! But the rebellious dog had to cower under the threat of the grandmother’s wrath. It kind of reminds me of that too. You don’t have that in your background, so just take that as free! It was a portion of what was to come. It was a foreshadowing of a much greater deliverance by a much greater Deliverer. It points the psalmist and his singers to a Savior who would bring a yet more perfect deliverance into a yet more perfect land where no enemy waits and no enemy broods.
In the meantime, there’s something to learn about the redemption that Yahweh brings. Look at verse 9. He keeps our soul. “Bless the Lord,” verse 8. “Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard” – look at verse 9 – “who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.” There’s our echo from Psalm 121. David told us last week that God keeps us, but it’s not as though He keeps us on a cushion. It’s not as though He keeps us on a pillow. These next few verses show us how God has tested His people. God tests all the godly, all who are His. He has tested us. He has tried us as silver is tried. Do you know how silver is tried? Silver is tried in an incredibly hot furnace – not once, not twice, but three times. Silver is put through the blazing furnace three separate times to separate it from the oars and impurities that it has bound itself to. It kind of sounds like us. We bind ourselves to all kinds of things that are impure and that are distracting and that are keeping us away from being the men and women, the young people that God has called us to be. He tries us as silver is tried so that the beauty of what He has done shines forth in the end.
He has “brought us into the net.” We feel captured at times; we feel hemmed in. He’s laid “crushing burdens on our backs.” The wicked have exalted themselves over us harshly. “We went through fire and through water.” It’s almost like he is saying, “Is there anything You have not afflicted us with?” The psalmist is telling us about the harsh realities of life before heaven when God is pursuing our holiness above our happiness. We would be a happy people; He would have a holy people. So He tries us. He tests us. He lays burdens upon us. We find the wicked exalting themselves over us harshly. We go through fire and through water. Paul, as he rose from being stoned outside Lystra, told the church, “Be faithful. Trust Christ. It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God.”
What does Paul say in Romans chapter 8 verse 17? He rejoices in our sonship, in our adoption. We are “joint heirs with Christ,” he says, “if we suffer with Him.” You name the name of Christ, God has suffering for you. God has suffering for all His people to try that silver, to burn those impurities. We bind ourselves with all kinds of base things that God burns away from us so that we are His and we long to be His. We don’t want to bond to anything else. We want to be bound to Him and Him alone. In our experience, we’ve grasped and valued our redemption as we have tried or worked our way through the afflictions and trials that God has sent us. Christ is dearer to us because in those moments of deep trial, we’ve called out to Him and He has helped us. Christ is dearer to us. Christ’s sufferings on our behalf means something to us because we have endured suffering. We have suffered too. Not to the magnitude, but we have endured suffering. It makes our heart soft to recognize and to think of what He endured for us.
Yet notice the final clause of verse 12. “Yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.” Our sufferings, our sufferings have a season. And at times, God pauses His painful work and He brings us out to a place of abundance and we rest and we breathe and we thank Him for His goodness and we praise Him. And yes, we may complain to Him. “You brought us through fire and through water. What have you not thrown at us?” But we love Him. We love Him. That’s His goal. Because if we don’t love Him, we love everything else. If we don’t love Him, we love anything else. That’s His goal – that we would love Him. And in the end, when all His refining work is done, He brings us out to a place of abundance, our redemption complete. And we hear Him say from the throne, “Behold, I am making all things new.” No more refining. No more refining. There’s joy. There’s wonder. There’s relief. And there’s worship.
We get to respond. Verse 13 and following. What’s our response to these things? It’s worship. And note in verses 13, 14 and 15 the type of worship the psalmist describes. And before you even notice that, notice the shift in the pronouns. I’m an old English teacher, so pronouns matter differently than they matter in much of what you hear today. But notice, notice we’ve been seeing pronouns that are largely first person plural – we, us, our. He’s been thinking and writing corporately. Now we come to his response to these truths that he’s spelling out to us and the pronouns are all singular – I, my, me. He can’t respond to the Lord for everybody else. He can tell everybody else how they ought to respond, but instead of doing that, he’s going to tell us about his personal response to the God who has redeemed him. He’s going to bring us into that intimate, personal space of his own covenanting with God. Of course he’s going to offer the sacrifices the law requires. You see it there – burnt offerings, “I pay my vows. Fattened animals. The sacrifice of rams. Offering of bulls and goats” – those are the sacrifices the law requires and he is going to pay the vows he has made in those times of trial he’s described to us earlier as he has poured out his soul and pleaded for God’s help. He’s made vows and promises in those times.
Perhaps you have made vows and promises in times of deep trouble. He is going to pay his. I hope you are paying yours. He’s going to prove the genuineness of those vehement and earnest prayers that he lifted to God in the heat of God’s refining furnace. He is going to show the worth of the silver that God has purified in his soul.
As we read through these psalms, we politely pass over his description of worship and perhaps you and I think, “Wow, that’s really tough. I’m glad that I just get to go to Sunday school and I don’t have to do this other stuff.” But you know, our worship is the same. He worships God with the intervening veil of blood because his praise is polluted. His prayers are stained with sin. His performance of his vows is filthy rags in God’s sight and it’s a stench in God’s nostrils. He requires the blood of a substitute to make his presence and his praise acceptable to God and in God’s sight. His sin has got to be covered. In the world of the old covenant, with its types and its shadows, the blood of bulls and goats was the way because it pointed to the greater sacrifice to come.
You and I come to God in the light of the new covenant with its shadows and types fulfilled in the Messiah that our psalmist looked for, Jesus Christ the righteous, the better Mediator of a better covenant. His blood washes our prayers and sanctifies our praise. His blood cleanses our obedience. It makes it a sweet aroma in our Father’s presence. His blood turns away God’s wrath and makes the way for our adoption as His sons and daughters. That lamb didn’t know what was going to happen to him; that bull had no idea what was about to happen to him. Jesus did. He knew what He faced. He knew what His work would be – the pain, the mocking insults, the burden of our sin, the abandoning of His Father. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Bearing the whole of God’s wrath and curse for sin, for your sin, for my sin. He knew what was awaiting Him, and He knew that was the price that had to be paid if we were to be made right with God.
Is He your hope as we stand before this Table that’s filled with the emblems of what He has done for us, His body given for us, His blood shed for us? Is He your hope? Are you hoping anywhere else? Do you have a hope at all in what you can do? Do you have a hope that all, in some idea that God may give you a hall pass? Are you having a hope in anything other than the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, broken and shed for you? That’s your only hope. That’s my only hope. That’s the only way that our prayers are washed and our praise is cleansed. That’s the only way that our obedience is acceptable in God’s sight – not because we brought it but because we brought it through Him. We brought it through Him. And by virtue of His Spirit at work within us, we were able to do that obedience. It wasn’t us. It was God’s Spirit at work in us. Our worship is the same. The difference is, the Savior the psalmist waited for, the Redeemer of God’s elect, has come, and with His blood, He has washed every stain for those whose confidence is in Him and His saving work on our behalf.
There’s another aspect, and we’re about at the wrap up. There is the sacrifice of praise. Do you see this? “Come and hear, all you who fear the Lord, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.” The psalmist is going to brag on God and he is going to offer a sacrifice of praise for what God has done for him. It reminds me of the great day of Pentecost when the Jews from every region of the Roman Empire had gathered around the apostles and heard in their own tongues the mighty works of God. What Peter tells us later in 1 Peter chapter 2 that our function as a royal priesthood, a holy nation, is to offer spiritual sacrifices, sacrifices of praise, sacrifices of prayers for the saints and prayers for those who are not the saints; intercessory prayers, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, a royal priesthood, “that you might proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness, into His marvelous light.” We offer a sacrifice of praise as we give voice to the mighty works of God, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 – “Let no one boast. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” That’s our sacrifice of praise – we boast in the Lord. We boast in the Lord and in His great goodness in redeeming us and making us His own.
Well finally, we just look at doxology. “Blessed be God, blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!” We see the Table spread before us. He has not removed His steadfast love from us. It’s His own Son that sealed it to us. It’s His own Son that invites us to the Table, ruined, broken sinners like us, yet sinners that God is making into silver for His glory and His great honor. Amen and amen.
Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, thank You. Hear our prayer. Hear our praise as we praise You for the great redemptive work that You have offered. We thank You, our Father, that You would stoop to redeem such as us, that You would stoop to redeem a people for Your own possession. We long to join that great throng around Your throne, thousands upon thousands, hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands, who You have redeemed by the blood of Your Son so that we may sing, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” O our Father, thank you. Receive our praise. Receive our thanks. And we say to You, Your deeds are awesome. Your deeds inspire us to worship You. How great You are. Hear us. We make our prayer in Jesus’ name, and prepare us for this Table. Amen.