Psalm 66

Well, good morning. Would you turn with me in a Bible to Psalm 66? It's found on page 480, if you're looking in one of the few Bibles.

Psalm 66.

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leaving your house. Either way, the blizzard stopped us in our tracks and disrupted our normal

routines. Second example, if you walk through the middle of the Yale campus,

you might notice next to the Beinecke Library a large prominent memorial. It reads this. It has

golden letters. It says, in memory of the men of Yale who, true to her traditions, gave their lives

that freedom might not perish from the earth. It was built to commemorate the Yale students and

graduates who had served in World War I. Now, when I was a student, I'd walk by this memorial almost

every day between class and lunch, and I would hardly ever give it a second thought. But there

was one day, I think it was Veterans Day, when there was a group of people having some kind of an outdoor

remembrance service in front of it. They had speeches and music and a moment of silence,

and I stopped to listen for about 15 minutes, and I started to think. I thought, if these men

and a bunch of others hadn't fought in that war, the world that I live in today might look a whole

lot different. This country might not be here in the same way. This university might not be here

in the same way I might not be here, at least not in the way I am now. And on that day, I was challenged

to live differently in light of a historical reality that I had overlooked and ignored.

Third example. Seven years ago, on a Sunday night in July, I made a phone call to a recent college

graduate to wish her a happy birthday. At the end of the phone call, I said, I have one more thing that

I want to say. I really admire you and I want to date you. After a slight pause, she answered,

me too. In that moment, both of us were in awe, shock, and delight. She asked me, so what's next?

I said, I have no idea. I haven't thought past this moment. Maybe you can look back to the first time

that you met someone, whether it's a spouse, or a child, or a trusted mentor, or a loyal friend.

Someone who has come into your life and changed it for the better. Now, what do these three examples

all have in common? One's a natural weather event, one's a historical connection, and one's a personal

relationship. But all of them jolt us out of our normal routines and call us into a new way of living.

All of them evoke a certain kind of awe or praise, whether we grudgingly admit that the blizzard is

bigger than we are, or whether we thankfully look back to the sacrifice of people who have come before us,

or whether we joyfully embrace a person who has come into our lives. Well, this psalm that we're

looking at this morning speaks about a God who jolts us out of our normal routines and calls us into a

new way of living. A God who sometimes even throws our life into chaos and then puts the pieces together

in a way that we could never have imagined. And the word that the psalmist uses to describe this God

is awesome in verse 3 and verse 5. In other words, God inspires fear and wonder and amazement and delight.

He is riveting such that when we truly see this God for who He is, we are lifted out of our naturally

self-centered way of life and called into a life of praising God. So that's what this psalm invites us to do.

If you look through this psalm, the beginning of almost each paragraph is an invitation. Shout for joy

to God, all the earth. Come and see what God has done. Come and hear what God has done for me. Bless our

God. Now this psalm progresses, like our three opening examples, from the natural to the historical to the

personal. And so we'll look at these three sections. God's awesome deeds in the natural world, God's

awesome deeds for His people in history, and finally, God's awesome deeds for individual people

like you and me. So first, verses 1 through 4 speak about God's awesome deeds in all the earth,

in the natural world. Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of His name.

Give to Him glorious praise. Now that word glory can refer to several things, both in English and

in Hebrew. It can refer to fame. It can refer to beauty. It can refer to brightness. It can refer to

weight or authority. One writer defines the glory of God as the beauty of His manifold perfections.

In other words, the combination of God's love and His justice, His power and His mercy,

His majesty and His kindness. God's glory is displayed in all the earth. And we can see it.

We can glimpse it. Whether we look into the depths of the natural world, if you look through a microscope

and atoms and subatomic particles, we see a world of intricacy and order and complexity and paradox,

it's something bigger than we can fully understand. And yet it has a beauty to it.

Or when we look outward to the farthest reaches of the universe, we see a universe that reflects God's

immensity and greatness. Do you know just last year, the Hubble Space Telescope observed a star exploding

80 million light years away. That would mean that the light from that star exploding would take 80

million years, and light travels fast, travel much faster than any of us, would take 80 million years

for the light to reach all the way to us. It's just a glimpse of how vast the universe that we live in is,

much bigger than the world that most of us think about and walk in every day.

Or when we look backwards in time, even back to the beginning of the universe,

we get a glimpse of God's awesome work of creation out of an infinitely small singularity,

or in other words, out of nothing came everything that is. And it's a great mystery.

Everyone acknowledges that. How could it happen? It's a great mystery how God brought the world into

being, but it's a reality. So whether we look inward, outward, or backwards, all the earth displays

the glory of God who made it and preserves it. Now, just like with the blizzard of this past winter,

there are two possible responses to the glory of God, God's awesome deeds in nature. Now, the first

response is in verse 3, is a grudging acknowledgement. Verse 3 says,

So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. In other words, even the people

who don't like you are compelled to respect you. Now, isn't that a sign of someone's greatness?

You know, you might be a Red Sox fan, like I am, but if it's the bottom of the eighth inning,

and the Yankees are up by one, and we're staging a comeback, we've got two runners on base and nobody

out, and Joe Girardi calls in Mariano Rivera. You say, oh no, not him. And you don't give up hope

because you're not on his team, and you're never going to root for him, but you know that he's one

of the best closers in baseball history. Even if you don't like him, you have to respect him.

And the same is true with the God of the Bible. Even people who don't like God and don't want to

follow God still acknowledge God at some level, even unconsciously. Let me give an example of that.

For several years, I was a campus minister at Wesleyan University in Middletown. And if you know

anything about Wesleyan, the college abandoned their Methodist Christian roots about a hundred years ago.

So like many other New England colleges, it's a very secular institution. Most students don't hold

to any religious faith. When I started working there, actually, we had 30 or 40 students in the

Christian fellowship. None of them had been raised in American Christian families. They were all either

international students or people who had come to faith in high school or college apart from the

influence of their parents. It was a fascinating group of people to work with. But Wesleyan is a very

secular university, but it was also a place where students are passionate about justice. Justice for

women. Justice for minorities. Justice for the poor. Justice for people who've been traditionally

oppressed and marginalized by mainstream society. And so students were always organizing some kind of

protest or campaign or collection. And when we did a spring break service project every year,

sponsored by the Christian fellowship. And many years, we had more than half of the people coming

were not Christian believers. But they were motivated to spend a week of their spring break,

instead of just partying and going crazy, building houses in New Orleans or somewhere else that had

experienced a disaster. And so very secular students were very committed, passionately and sacrificially

committed to seeking justice. Now, of course, the assumption underlying that pursuit of justice

is that every human being has dignity and worth. And that it's not right for the strong to trample on

the weak. It's not right for the majority to just eat up the minority because they can and push them to the

side. Now, if you ask most students, do you believe what the Bible says? That there's a divine lawgiver

who stands outside the universe and who will judge the thoughts and actions of every creature?

They would say no. They would say that idea is part of the system of oppression that we're trying to

resist. But then if you ask, how did we get here if God was not involved? Well, they would say through

a process of evolution by natural selection. Well, what is natural selection? The strong eating the weak.

The majority getting rid of the minority. But don't you have a contradiction there?

If there's nothing outside the physical universe and the universe has produced us by a mindless,

violent process, what basis do we have for this passionate and sacrificial commitment to helping

people who are on the margins? What basis do we have to think that that idea of including outsiders

and helping the weak is more than simply our personal, individual, arbitrary, ultimately meaningless

preference? You see, there's a contradiction between a secular ideology and the passion that many secular

people have for justice and human rights. Because human rights only makes sense if you believe something

like what the Bible says, that human beings bear the image of God and therefore have dignity and worth

everyone. And compassion for the weak is rooted in the biblical picture of God as a father to the fatherless

and a defender of people who are vulnerable and the judge of all who are proud. And it's especially

rooted in the Christian belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on our human nature and became the

ultimate outcast so that we might be included as members of God's family.

So if you're here today, if you're a secular person, let me challenge you. If you're a secular person

here committed to human rights and social justice, what I think you're doing is you're importing deeply

Christian values into a worldview that has no independent foundation for such things. It's like you are

building a house according to a floor plan that doesn't include any joists. The joists are the big beams

that hold up the floors. And so you have to borrow the joists from somewhere else. Otherwise, the house

will collapse. And if you're doing that, you're admitting that your framework, your worldview is

insufficient and that you really need something and you really want something that comes from the

Christian God and the Christian faith. And in that sense, you're acknowledging God even if you don't

want to. But you know, this psalm doesn't call us to simply grudgingly acknowledge God. But he calls us

to another response, a response of joyful praise. Sing the glory of his name. Give to him glorious praise.

God's grace. You know, if we look and see God's majesty and God's mercy, God's justice and God's love,

God's fierceness and God's kindness displayed in all the earth, we're drawn out of ourselves.

We're drawn out of our preoccupation with our present circumstances. We're drawn into the song

which all creation was made to sing. And so everywhere we look, whether you look inward or

outward or backward, we see reflections of the beauty and wisdom and goodness and greatness of God.

And so we don't just admire the mysteries of the natural world, the wave-particle duality or the

singularity at the beginning of the universe or whatever you're studying for your PhD in science,

right? But we praise the one who created and upholds them all. It's sort of like the difference

between admiring an anonymous painting in an art museum and knowing the heart and soul of the artist

who made it. If you know a great artist who is also a person of great character,

their artwork becomes even more gripping, even more powerful, even more intriguing.

Because you know the person who's behind it.

And that's what it means to sing God's glorious praise and to recognize His glory in all the world

and to see that He stands behind all that we see. But also when we look at the brokenness of this world,

the evil in this world, the injustice of this world, we not only have a commitment to seeking

justice, but we have a reason for that and a motivation for that. Because there is a God of mercy

who befriends and defends the weak. And there is a God who will one day come and judge the earth

according to His righteousness. So God's awesome deeds in nature call us to praise.

That's the first section. The second section, verses 5 through 12, focuses on God's awesome deeds for His

people in history. Now just as every earthly nation and every ethnic group has a history,

God's people also have a history. And just as you and I live here in this nation and in this city

partly because of the sacrifices of people who lived long before we ever did, you and I are also here in this church.

And if you're a Christian, you're part of the body of Christ because of what God did for His people

long before you and I existed or joined in.

Now I would venture to say though that most of us rarely if ever think about our connection to God's people

throughout history. Some of us never think about history at all.

Right? We're just focused on the present because that's what's practical and that's what we need to deal with today.

Or maybe our plans for the future.

Or maybe if we do study history,

we usually focus on

and define ourselves

by or in reaction to

the history of our nation.

Or maybe the history

of your ethnic group.

Or the history of your family.

Your genealogy.

More than we define ourselves by

and look into the history of the church.

Or the history of the nation of Israel

in the Old Testament.

But what this section is saying is that

if we are part of the body of Christ,

we're not only connected to one another,

like we talked about when Malcolm became a member today,

but we're connected to God's people

throughout history.

That our identity

and our destiny

are bound up with theirs.

And if God hadn't revealed Himself

to them,

if God hadn't rescued them,

if He hadn't refined

and purified them,

we might not be here today.

And we would not have hope

for the future.

Now we see this especially

in verse 6.

Verse 6

is a reference to the Exodus.

And the Exodus was the event

that defined

the people of Israel

in the Old Testament

more than anything else.

When God rescued them

from slavery in Egypt

and brought them out

and brought them to the,

through the Red Sea.

They departed

and they walked through on foot.

And that's what the psalmist

is talking about.

And he says,

God turned the sea into dry land,

they passed through the river on foot.

But then,

in the next sentence he says,

there we rejoiced in Him.

Did you notice that?

He says,

they passed through the Red Sea

and there we rejoiced.

Now you might say,

well wait a minute,

this psalm was written

centuries after the Exodus happened.

The psalm writer didn't walk

through the Red Sea himself,

but he identifies himself

with the people who did

so long ago.

He says,

when God delivered them,

I was delivered with them.

Because if God hadn't delivered them,

then all of us today

would be particles

flowing downstream

in the Red Sea.

Do you see how important

the history of God's people is?

Do you see how much reason

that we have to praise God,

not just for what He's done

for us individually,

not even only for what He's done

for us as a church right now,

but for what He's done

throughout history,

for all of His people.

That's what the psalmist

invites us to do.

Come and see

what God has done.

Don't limit yourself

to your own personal experience

of God

in your own individual life history.

You know,

especially if you're going

through a time of doubt

or depression

or severe trial

and you're only focused

on your own individual

experience of God,

what you can currently feel

and see

and perceive,

that can be incredibly

constricting

and incredibly myopic.

It becomes a vicious cycle,

right?

You're struggling

and so you start wondering

whether God really exists,

so you look deep

inside your heart,

see if you can find Him

and it looks pretty dark

and then you become

even more doubtful

that God exists

and then you look deeper

inside yourself

and it's,

there's no end.

But the psalmist says,

look outside yourself.

Come and see

what God has done.

Even if you can't see

what He's doing

in your life,

look and see what He's done

for other people.

Look and see what He's done

for His church as a whole,

for His community.

Reality is not defined

by the limits

of your individual

present experience.

You know,

when,

and ultimately,

look at what God has done

in the historical event

that defines Christianity

more than anything else.

The death

and resurrection

of Jesus Christ.

Right?

When Jesus' disciples

saw Him dying on the cross,

they thought,

it's a total failure.

Everything

that we hope for

is lost.

And yet,

in God's plan,

Jesus' death

on the cross

became

the very means

of our salvation.

The way that

all who are lost

can come and be found.

You see,

many times,

God's purpose

in the midst

of severe trials

only becomes clear

long after the trial

is over.

Verses 8 through 12

describe another

severe trial

in Israel's history.

A trial which seemed like

it would completely

destroy them

and wipe them out.

Verse 11,

he says,

we were brought

into the net

like an animal

trapped

and being prepared

for slaughter.

He said,

we had a crushing burden

laid on our backs

like a traveler

weighed down

so much

that he collapses

and can't continue

anymore.

Men riding

over our heads

going through

fire and water.

Whatever it was,

it was intense.

But in the end,

it didn't destroy them.

And instead,

God rescued them

and brought them

into a place

of abundance.

That's what he says

in verse 12.

And from that vantage point,

he could look back

and say,

God was refining us

through that season.

He was testing us

and purifying us.

Tried as silver is tried.

Put through a blazing

hot fire

to cleanse us

from our impurities.

And so he says,

praise God.

Because God brought us

through that.

And not only did he

bring us through,

he turned all these evils

for our good

in the end.

Now, of course,

if you're in the middle

of a severe,

intense trial,

the way out

is not always

so clear.

And God's purpose

within that trial

is not always

so clear either.

You might feel

strangled by the net,

crushed by the burden,

and it lasts

far longer

than you ever expected

and far longer

than you ever thought

you could possibly endure.

But that's why

it's so important

to look back

at all the severe trials

that God has brought

his people through

in the past.

Let me just give

one example

from the history

of this church.

The mid to late 1990s

was a prolonged period

of trial

for this church,

for this body

of believers.

In the period

of a year or two,

around 1994,

the church lost

the building

that they had owned,

the pastor resigned

abruptly,

and the church split.

Lots of people left.

There were only

about 25 people

who stayed,

25 members.

They kept meeting

without a pastor

for the next five years.

And by 1999,

it got to the point

where people were saying,

is this even worth it

at all?

Who would want

to come and be our pastor

anyway?

25 people

who've gone through

all that stuff.

Well, that fall,

they had a prayer meeting.

Where the remaining

members confessed

their past sin,

their failures,

and they sought

to be reconciled

to one another.

And there was a lot

of healing

that took place,

but most people

still felt like

we're too exhausted

to go on.

It's probably better

if we just close

our doors

and go join

other churches.

And so,

one month later,

they were ready to,

after that prayer meeting,

they were ready

to take a vote

and formally decide

to close the church.

But on that very day

that they were

to make that vote,

somebody's neighbor

came over to their house.

And the neighbor said,

our church

just interviewed

a pastor candidate.

And he wasn't

the right fit for us,

but he thinks

that God's calling him

to New Haven,

and I think he's exactly

what you guys need.

Well, the church

met that evening,

and they said,

we can either decide

to close,

or we can take

this offer,

or extend an offer,

and offer all the savings

we have in the bank,

which isn't much,

and maybe let him

and his wife

come and stay

with a few of us

for a little while,

and ask him

to be our pastor.

And that's what they did.

So, long story short,

Trinity went from a church

that was a day away

from closing its doors,

never to exist again,

which means none of us

would be here,

to a church that's

here today,

and alive,

and growing.

We're even thinking

of helping some people

out in New London

plant a church.

Of all things,

praise God

for his provision.

praise God

for sustaining

those people

who stuck it out

through those

wilderness years.

That's what they call them

if you talk to them.

Praise God

for not giving up on us

and refining us.

So, God's awesome deeds

for his people in history

call us

to praise him.

And finally,

God's awesome deeds

for individual people

like you and me.

This is verses 13 through 20.

The psalm begins

with this global picture

of God's awesome deeds

in all the earth.

And then he focuses

throughout history

on God rescuing

and keeping his people.

And finally,

he concludes

on a very personal note.

If you notice,

verses 13 through 20

are all in the first person singular.

Verse 16,

he says,

come in here

and I will tell you

what God has done

for me,

for my soul.

God is not just

the ruler

of all the earth

whose glory is displayed

in all of his creation.

He is also not just

the God of one

very large community

that stretches

throughout history.

He is also a God

who is intimately,

personally involved

in the lives

of individual people

like you

and me.

And in particular,

he is a God

who hears

and answers

our prayer.

And that is a reason

to praise God

for how he has answered

our prayers.

This is what the psalmist

praises God for

in this third section.

Now,

we don't know exactly

what was the prayer

that he prayed.

We do know

that he was in trouble,

verse 14,

he cried out to God,

verse 17,

and God listened

and attended

to his voice

in a very specific way.

Verse 19.

Now,

if you look down

at verse 18,

verse 18 can be

a little confusing.

Because verse 18 says,

if I had cherished

iniquity in my heart,

the Lord would not

have listened.

Now,

what does that verse mean?

Well,

the point of that verse

is to warn us

if we are cherishing

iniquity.

In other words,

if we are desiring

and cultivating

what is vile

and displeasing

to God,

that God may refuse

to answer our request

for help

in other areas.

Because he wants us

to deal

with first things first.

To confess our sin

and receive his forgiveness

and pray

for a renewed mind.

But what this verse

is not saying,

he's not saying

good people deserve

to get their prayers answered.

I'm free of sin

in my life

and therefore,

God has to listen to me.

He knows

that before God

we're all

unworthy sinners.

And it's only because

of God's

unfathomable generosity

that he answers

anyone's prayer.

Verse 20,

the conclusion

of this psalm,

he says,

blessed be God

because

he hasn't

rejected my prayer.

And he hasn't

removed his steadfast

love from me.

And God's the one

who gets the credit

for that.

He says,

God doesn't owe me

anything.

God would have been

perfectly justified

in ignoring my prayer

or rejecting it.

But in his mercy

and love,

he chose

to listen

and answer.

And when God

answers our prayers,

not because he owes us,

but simply because

he loves us,

that calls

for extravagant

praise.

Verses 13 through 15

talk about burnt

offerings.

In the Old Testament,

there are all kinds

of offerings that people

brought to the temple.

And most of the time,

if you brought an animal

as an offering,

the priests

who served

in the temple

would get to eat

the cooked meat.

And sometimes,

you'd even get to

share in it too.

At the big festivals,

they'd have

fellowship offerings.

It basically means

you have a big,

you know,

you kill a cow

or kill a lamb

and share it all together.

And that was the offering.

You got to really enjoy it.

But burnt offerings

were different.

Nobody got to eat

any of it.

A burnt offering

is exactly what it says.

The whole thing

gets burnt

to ashes.

The point

is

it was a symbol

of total

devotion

and total

consecration

to God.

Saying,

God,

everything I have

is totally yours.

In your steadfast love,

you've answered my prayer.

You've held on to me.

You've loved me

even when I didn't deserve it.

You deserve everything I have

so I won't hold

anything back.

And then in verse 16

through 20,

he gives public testimony

to how God

has answered his prayer.

He doesn't just

keep it to himself,

but he tells other

believers

what God has done

for him

so they can join

in praising God

with him.

So let me urge you

to get together

with another

Christian believer

sometime this week

and ask them,

what has the Lord

done for you

lately?

Or you could ask,

what have you been

praying for?

Have you seen

God answer

your prayers?

You know,

sometimes as Christians

we can spend a lot

of time with each other

but never talk

about those things.

We can talk

about everything else.

We can talk

about our kids

or about work

or about school

or about the weather

or about sports

or even theological

controversies

and cultural trends

and church activities

and ministry strategies

and all those things

are fine.

But what the psalmist

says here

is let's tell

one another

how God has answered

our prayers

and what he has done

for our soul.

What he's doing

in our lives

personally.

Because when we see

and tell

how God has answered

our prayers

that's one more way

that we're called

out

and lifted out

of our normal

self-centered focus

and brought

into a life

of God

exalting praise.

Praise God

for his awesome deeds

in nature.

Praise God

for his awesome deeds

in history

and praise God

for his awesome deeds

and his personal love

for you

and me.

may we be a people

who give him

glorious praise.

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

Lord God

we thank you

that you have given us

so many reasons

to praise your name.

we thank you

not only

for your

deeds

in

nature

your deeds

in history

but also

your deeds

for each one

of us.

Lord we pray

that we would hold on

to all those things.

Lord sometimes

we can

only see

one or two

of them

but we pray

that we would see

your awesome deeds

in all those three areas

in the natural world

for your people

in history

and for us

as individuals

and Lord

that we be drawn

to give you

glorious praise

for your

wonderful

awesome deeds.

In Jesus name

Amen.