Ruts of Abundance (Psalm 65)

So I wonder if you've had this experience, surely a number of you have, where, especially if it's if you've if you've gone around the sun enough times to start going to like reunion type things, you know, 10, 15, 20-year reunions, high school, college, pledge classes, that sort of thing.

You tend to, when you go back to these types of events, this is the sort of thing where pictures are scattered throughout.

And you look at these pictures and you think, oh gosh, has it already been this long or whatever?

And the thing with a lot of pictures is you know exactly what you're looking at.

Oh, this was my 21st birthday.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Or you might be, you might see a picture and you say, This was this was that pledge party, and this is the night you met your wife.

You guys started dating like the week after this.

Do you remember this?

And you get to some pictures and you say, Well, I know everyone in that picture, and we sure seem to be happy to be together.

Where are we?

Is this a spring break trip?

Is this like that brick wall in the background looks kind of familiar, but that could be anywhere?

And I say that because when you look at the Psalms, which is what we've been doing, sometimes what you find is a snapshot of God's kindness and goodness.

Sometimes you know exactly what's happening.

Psalm 51, for example, you've got the sort of the header.

This is when David sinned against Bathsheba.

You have other headers that get strangely specific.

This is when David was hiding in a cave after he was high, you know, had escaped from danger.

This passage that we're going to look at this morning, which says Psalm 42, but it's Psalm 65.

Surprise.

We don't know what this passage is actually.

What was the original context?

And it's funny to me because a lot of commentators are positive that they know.

Clearly, with all of this water language, this is God's provision after a season of drought.

But others will say, no, no, no.

Clearly, this is a harvest sort of celebration.

Clearly, everybody says clearly, and then they give you a very clear, different sort of interpretation.

So we don't know exactly.

I think we have a snapshot of God's faithfulness to his people, his faithfulness to a wounded people, and he shows them what that faithfulness is like by showing how faithful he has been to creation.

And so let me read this passage and ask for God to help us, and then we'll dig in.

Psalm 65.

Praise is due to you, O God in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed.

O you who hear prayer, to you shall all flesh come.

When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions.

Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple.

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of the farthest seas, the one who by his strength established the mountains being girded with might, who stills the roaring of the seas, and the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.

You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it.

The river of God is full of water.

You provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty, your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain.

They shout and sing together for joy.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray and ask for God's help.

Almighty, ever-living God, we thank you that you've preserved your word for us, these words, for at least 3,000 years.

And we thank you that the Psalms have been the prayer book and the choir book of your church for 2,000 years.

And we ask that you would help us by your Spirit not just to read old and ancient words, even words that happen to be true, but that you would unite us with all of your people in centuries past who have read these words, been shaped by these words, and seen Jesus in these words.

And so we ask that you would dig out for us ears to hear, and that you would give us eyes to see Him.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

So this morning, what I want to do, my outline is twofold.

And I simply want to look at God's prevailing grace, and then I want to look at his pattern of grace.

So God's prevailing grace and his pattern of grace.

And to kind of start looking at his prevailing grace, the first three verses, it's almost as if God had asked the psalmist, What am I like?

What am I like?

Because look at how this starts.

Well, he says, well, in verse 1, he says, you're worthy of praise.

You are worthy of vows.

In verse 2, he says, you hear prayer and people come to you.

Now, notice that there are no imperatives here.

There are no commands.

And you find those all over this Psalter.

That sometimes the psalmist will say, Praise the Lord.

Ascribe glory to God.

Like sometimes there are imperatives, commands.

Do this thing.

It is appropriate for you to do the thing that you were commanded to do.

But here, he's just describing what God is like.

You are worthy of praise.

And people do pray to you and they make vows to you, and you hear our prayers.

He's describing what God is like.

And describing how people tend to respond around this God.

In verse 3, he says, When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for the transgressions.

What are you like?

You are the God who is worthy of praise.

You are the God that people make vows to, and you are the God who atones for iniquities when they prevail against me.

When my sins overwhelm me, you atone for our transgressions.

And we see that the God who is worthy of praise, he atones the sins of those who are unworthy of praise.

Now, if you've been hanging around the church for a while, you expect to hear these types of things, but there's a way to hear it where it kind of goes in one ear and out the other.

Obviously, the Bible talks about a God who forgives sinners, a God who is worthy of praise, a God who atones for sin.

But think about the things about you that people have praised.

And all of us have things at some point or another that we have been praised for.

You're very good at this subject.

You are trustworthy at work.

You're very funny.

You listen well.

You've been successful in business.

Your kids seem to love you.

There's a million things that we can almost not even receive, but there are we are, we've received praise.

But the dark side of praise, isn't it, that in order for it to have value, it has to be something greater than somebody else.

You've been successful at business more than that guy over there.

You're very good in this subject more than she is.

There's a part of us that turns what is praiseworthy about us into an opportunity to distance ourselves from others.

You see what I'm saying?

But the psalmist says, God, you are worthy of praise, and you've not used what is worthy of praise to separate yourself from us, to retreat from us.

You've actually drawn near to us.

You are worthy of praise, and when my sins prevail against me, those polar opposites, you atoned for my sin.

You drew near to me.

And so here's the thing: we're made in God's image, and yet our sinfulness makes it to where we really have impulses that are different from Him.

God draws near to us when you would think if He was like us, He would say, Look at how terrible you are.

And the irony is sometimes the people of God have done that.

We turn the commands of God, the holiness of God, as a way of looking down on others, separating from others, as if to say, we've done something better than you have.

The God who made heaven and earth, the God who atones for sins, is not like this.

He draws near to us at mercy.

We're told in verse 4 that to experience this mercy is to experience his blessing and satisfaction.

That the psalmist tells us the God who made us actually satisfies us as well.

That is an extraordinary claim.

Easy to say, but to consider that the God who made us actually promises to satisfy us in our hearts.

What is required for us to be satisfied?

There has to be a hunger that is met.

We'll hold on to that thought.

Well, where shall we be satisfied, according to verse 4?

When we're near him, in his courts, in his house, in his temple.

We shall be satisfied when and where we are with him, we are near him.

That what the psalmist is saying is that God's very presence is satisfying.

Now, I don't think that I've mentioned the term parallelism in our little psalm series.

Maybe some of you have heard this.

Parallelism is the way that the psalms work.

It's the way that ancient poetry, especially in the Bible, works.

And what it says is you tend to have two parallel-ish lines.

And so you have something that is stated, and then something that is stated like it, but with a twist.

And that these two lines help you to understand each other.

Right?

So, for example, when you hear, delight yourself, you know, delight yourself in the Lord, for he will give you the desires of your heart.

You know, sometimes you hear people say, Well, this means if you follow God, then he's going to give you all these good things.

No.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

The desires of your heart is the Lord.

The desires of your heart is to delight in the Lord.

And so parallelism works this way.

And so it's, I don't know if you've been around small children who are piggybagging on each other, telling a story.

I don't hear this as much, but I remember, you know, being woken up on a Saturday morning and hearing, you know, one child say, child A, saying, Dad, what if you went to the store and a dinosaur was in there, just like running around?

You know, yeah, that's that would be something.

You know, and the other kid says, Yeah, or if like Donkey Kong was in there, and you're like, ah, I see the theme.

Massive animals going around a place where we're shopping, and they kind of don't just stop there, but it's like, and then this, and then this, and then this.

Guys, you're just saying the same thing over and over again.

You ever done this?

They look at each other.

We're not saying the same thing.

Donkey Kong and dinosaurs are not the same thing.

You're right.

They're not the same thing.

And the way to think about the Psalms and scripture is almost as if fully sanctified children were piggybacking off of each other.

Fully sanctified people were saying, Do you know what God is like?

With a twist.

It's not exactly the same thing, but it shows us how to make sense of it.

So look at verse 4.

Let's try it.

Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple.

To be satisfied with the goodness of God is to be in his presence.

It's not something else.

It's not some God and something else.

To be satisfied by God, to be brought into his presence.

And the Old Testament way of saying that is in the courts of his temple or in his temple.

And the New Testament way of saying that is when we gather as his temple, when we will one day see him face to face.

To be satisfied by God is to be brought near to God.

And this is why the psalmist says in verse 1, praise is due to you.

Because you are beautiful and you are wonderful.

And I find satisfaction when I have been brought near to you.

But not just praise, vows, commitments.

Let me ask you what your relationship is with the word due.

D-U-E.

We've got different temperaments and personalities.

I don't love it.

Right?

What's your relationship with the word obligation is another way of saying this.

And here's what I mean.

You know, when we used to go to the library as a family a lot more than we do now.

And I can remember, again, some Saturday mornings being woken up and dad, let's go to the library today.

I don't want to go to the library today.

I had a long week.

I'm tired.

Dad, but our books are due.

No.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I have to.

I have to.

Now, have I been moved, marveled at the idea that I can go to a house of knowledge where there's free information available to me, where I can take up to 100 books and bring them home for two or three weeks.

Have I been moved by that kind of no.

I have been moved by what is due.

What is due.

And the human condition, such as it is with our sinfulness, is to turn religion so often into being motivated by what is due and not motivated by I am satisfied when the God who atones for my prevailing sins draws near and moves near to me.

David knows our complicated relationship with this word.

Because he knows on the one hand, as we're told in Psalm 139, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that we are, we were created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, as Paul tells us in the New Testament.

But on the other hand, he knows, as he tells us in Psalm 14, that there is no one who does good.

There's no one who searches for God.

And there is an element in which both of these realities are simultaneously at work within every sinful image-bearer, created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and yet fallen to such a degree that every good impulse we have been endowed with has been twisted.

And the psalmist knows this.

That on the one hand, God, you are holy and righteous, that I want to be near you.

And yet at the other time, on the other hand, my iniquities often prevail against me.

But notice what he doesn't say, again, this isn't an imperative-driven psalm.

He doesn't say, praise is due to you, O God, and the people of God better get on that right now.

He doesn't say praise befits you, so get on that, guys.

There's a place to do that.

It's not wrong to do that.

But what's his angle in Psalm 65?

When he sees God, he only sees grace.

When he sees God, he sees something that melts his heart and motivates him in a way that a mere obligation cannot touch.

And surely some of you are thinking, that sounds fine, Joe, but you do not know how far I have fallen.

You know, we hang out and people who hang out in churches, we can we can pretty ourselves up on the outside.

It's not that hard.

You don't know what my light last night looked like.

You don't know what my week looked like or my month.

You don't know how petty and mean-spirited I was in the car this morning to my family as we drove on the way to worship.

Have your iniquities prevailed against you.

You know it's a it's a it's good and right and appropriate not to hide from these impulses or these discoveries, but to look at them honestly.

That's what leads us to apologize, not just to God, but to the people that we sin against.

And that is the Christian practice as we regularly are free to apologize for the ways that we've sinned against each other.

David knows that we, some of us feel as though we've been running from God, but he has good news for us.

The one to whom praise and prayer is due is the one who atones for prevailing iniquities.

And we may know this up here in our heads.

We might be able to write the right answer.

You know, we do catechism questions at home.

We might be able to answer the catechism.

It's entirely different to have your heart warmed by the good news of a God-saving sinner's gospel.

And when your how when your heart doubts the grace of God, making obligations to God, following God, even coming to church, it can feel a lot like looking at all the people with due library books, dutifully getting in their car and driving to the place that their obligations are, that I've got to meet this obligation.

Is that what following Jesus is?

Is that what seeking the kingdom is all about?

I know the right thing to do and I'm just gonna do the right thing.

I mean, knowing the right thing and doing the wrong thing is a problem, but is seeking the kingdom just doing the right thing?

I don't think so.

And we know this when we have those moments when you look at people who seem to be able to just fulfill their obligations and do the right thing.

Like, I don't know if I can get in a car today, metaphorically speaking.

This really isn't the image the psalmist is going for.

I read this psalm and I think about that scene in Luke 18 where parents are bringing their babies to Jesus that he might touch them and bless them, and the disciples bow up like bouncers at a nightclub, like they got ID.

And Jesus says, Don't let the children come to me.

And here's the curious thing.

How do infants come to Jesus?

They are brought, they are carried.

You see the exact same thing here.

In verse 2, to you, O God, all flesh come.

Well, how did they get there?

Verse 4, blessed is the one you choose and bring near.

The psalmist is acknowledging.

You hear prayer, you are intimately involved in your people, you're bringing people to yourself from all over the world.

And you do this not because they have mastered obligation, but because you atone for prevailing iniquities.

You are a God who satisfies by your gracious presence.

And so if you feel like an outsider this morning, either because you're not sure what your relationship with Jesus is, or because you know what you tell people your relationship with Jesus is, and yet you feel a disconnect, this passage has good news for all of us.

Because it's telling us that God brings people who are far from himself to him.

I mean, in this day and age, he's talking about a physical temple.

And he says, people from all over the earth will be brought to you.

What's he getting at?

He's saying what looks like an insurmountable distance is nothing to you because the real issue, the real separation isn't geography, it's a sinful heart before our God.

That's the real distance between us and God.

And that distance that feels insurmountable at times is not insurmountable.

I mean, think about think about when you feel limited to get where you need to be.

I mean, it could be that you have an ailing family member in another part of the country and you you just Physically cannot manage to get there in time to be with them.

And you feel it.

Or it could be that you have just, you know, some of us have friends who've become missionaries to other parts of the world, and going to Scotland or wherever is it's more than a day trip.

Or maybe you've got all the time in the world, but you don't have the resources to get there.

The psalmist is saying, all of the things that make us feel our finitude, all of the things that make us feel that our resources aren't enough, they point powerfully to something that is even more beyond that.

That those realities, as real as they are, they dim in comparison to how far we are from God naturally in our sinful state.

Which means the answer isn't listen to the rules, do the rules, and you will be okay.

Listen to the rules, do the rules, and you can look down on that person who's not doing what you're doing.

But part of us is like, I like that part though.

No.

God is gracious, and he satisfies by his atoning work, and he is the one who brings people who seem the furthest from him, very close to him, in satisfaction.

The psalmist wants to captivate us with a vision of God's grace.

When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions.

And what that means.

And I think we all know that's true, and yet there's still a part of us that is motivated.

If I could just do more good things.

That's not what the psalmist is motivated by.

That's not what Jesus teaches.

That's not what the rest of the New Testament leans into.

Will our lives be changed?

Yes.

Will our hearts grow in affection for Jesus?

Yes.

But it's not like this perfect stock market chart where every day is better than the last.

You can follow Jesus your whole life and then find a recession.

Oh, look at that character.

It's not what I thought it was.

I need the God of the Bible to do for me what I cannot do for myself.

And so then I'm going to look at God's pattern for grace.

And I think I need to probably go a little bit faster through this part.

It's almost as if the psalmist expects someone to ask, Is God really able to do that?

Is he really able to satisfy?

Is he really able to meet the depths of my sin?

Because then he just sort of changed his gears and he says, Well, he made the universe, didn't he?

He made this world.

He made mountains and seas.

He can calm those seas?

Who stills the roaring and the tumult of these seas?

The same God who can still the roaring and the tumult in wayward people.

You know, we saw in Mark 2 several weeks back where a paralytic is brought to Jesus.

And everyone in that room is like, oh, this man needs to walk.

And Jesus says, I forgive your sins.

And you've got to think they were just like, what?

You can't walk.

And he says, Well, that you know that I have the authority to, you know, heal sins, now get up and walk.

And what the psalmist is saying is the God who is at work in creation, draws near in creation, calms storms in creation, is the same God who can atone for prevailing sins.

And he says, look at God's ongoing preservation and creation.

It's not even like he the language isn't God can see through his Hubble telescope and he's managing things from afar.

He's mastered this program.

The language is God has visited.

That God, whatever he does in creation is described as him drawing near.

It doesn't just rain, he waters creation.

That the river over there isn't just a river, it's God's river.

And in response, creation doesn't just keep on going as a clock was programmed to go.

I mean, you have language of hills rejoicing and meadows clothing themselves with sheep.

And the point is, do not miss that the psalmist says creation responds to God's goodness with praise.

Creation itself, the created order itself.

And one of the things that we ought to see, you might be thinking, gosh, the Psalms talk about creation all the time.

They do not want us to get over the fact that God created everything.

It ought to change the way you see everything.

And one of the things that it should show us is there's no spiritual part of life and then normal part of life.

Because according to the Bible, the natural world is supernatural.

It doesn't just rain.

God draws near and waters.

God is intimately connected with this world.

All of life is spiritual.

Which by extension means that our work life is spiritual and our family life is spiritual and our personal life is spiritual.

Everything is under God's providential care.

You crown the year with your bounty.

I love this line.

But several years ago I had a black lab who was wonderful.

And one of the things that Knox would do, we had him for 15 years, and he lived in Alabama with us, he lived in Pennsylvania with us, he lived here in South Carolina with us, and every he loved to just walk the yard.

Walk the yard.

And very neatly and orderly, especially compared to his successor.

And what that meant is that there was always like this six-inch path of dirt where he had just worn a rut through the yard.

Okay?

As wonderful as that dog was, where he walked, you knew it because there was a little bit of destruction.

Your wagon tracks, I mean, think about what a wagon track looks like.

Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

That there isn't a destruction, that there's somehow a wake of beauty and restoration in your path.

And it's not exactly the same thing, and I'm going to break my own rule and use something from the Lord of the Rings, but not any illustration I've ever heard before.

The very beginning of the first movie, Gandalf, this wizard, uh, rolls into town on a wagon, and children come up behind him, and they're so excited.

Why are they so excited?

They expect joy to come from this wagon.

And it seems like, no, there's not.

And then all of a sudden, fireworks sort of shoot off, and they're like, yay! That is a picture that the psalmist is showing us.

That there it's almost as if God visits on a wagon.

And instead of ruts like to take away grass and sod and flower, it's almost as if instead of that, flowers blooming up in its wake.

Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The tracks of God do not kill in its path, it brings to life.

And you see this when Jesus walks.

I mean, he enters into a world that was created absolutely perfect.

It was meant to be developed, right?

This garden was supposed to turn into a city, and we're going to see that Jesus makes it a city in the end anyway.

But this world becomes ridden with disease and sickness and despair, hardship.

And where Jesus walks, blindness is restored.

Paralyzed people walk.

Deaf people hear.

The dead are raised.

His wagon tracks overflow in abundance.

And the psalmist sees that reality already in Psalm 65.

The abundance offered to us in this passage comes at the expense of Jesus not just being the one who can bring about abundance, but the one who takes everything that robs abundance, everything that distorts and disrupts and disintegrates in this world.

Every path that wreaks destruction, Jesus lays across them and lets it endure, it just consume him on the cross.

He knows that atonement happens, and he knows that wagon tracks of abundance happen.

He doesn't yet know that the last great sacrifice in the temple that he is appraising is ultimately going to be Jesus.

Jesus says on that temple.

You can destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days.

And that is what he has done.

To now make us his temple.

That's what the whole book of Hebrews is about and what Paul goes on and on about.

That wagon tracks of abundance are going to continue to bloom and blossom.

And the good news of the gospel is that when Jesus dies and is raised for us, when we put our faith in him, over and over again, Scripture says we are united to him.

United.

Which means we actually get to ride on that wagon with him, as it were.

That is Jesus is going around and moving, and you can't get triumphalistic about this because the reality of sin is not going to be removed from the created order until Jesus returns.

But we get to continually bear witness to that coming kingdom in the ways that we order our personal lives as we seek the kingdom.

By the way, is that we're moved by the grace of God to create a culture in our family, in our workspaces, in this, you know, young church community, that the wagon of Jesus is going around and you want to be where he is.

The psalmist is delighted to be in the presence of God.

And well, where do we find his presence?

In his word.

Very ordinary in his word.

That even now, as his word is opened, it is as if Jesus were in his wagon, going throughout this room, confronting the brokenness in us, but then offering great hope.

The Bible tells us over and over again that Jesus offers himself to us when we pray together in his name.

It's as if Jesus is moving in our midst.

The Bible tells us that when we break bread together, that Jesus really offers himself to us, it's as if he's moving in our midst.

And what that frees us to do is to seek his kingdom.

Continuing to receive him as our king, but then living as though these things were true.

That when you meet somebody that doesn't know Jesus, like it gives you a grid at work.

I want to be just and fair and loving with this person.

That as we consider what it looks like to grow this young plant, church plant, that we think about the people in our lives that God has given us and we say, what would it look like for me to just invite them over for dinner and get to know them and hear their story?

What would it look like for me to say, would you, would you come and sit with me at church and then go out to eat with me?

And let's see the wagon tracks of abundance, don't say that.

Let's see the wagon tracks of abundance work.

But even more intimately, the parts of us that despair over our sin, just inviting Jesus into that corner of our hearts that has been resistant to him and saying, I can't undo this thing by myself.

But would you just come in?

Would you move and reorder?

Would you bring abundance where in and of myself I tend to bring death?

Watch what he does.

As we trust in his presence, in his word, as we pray, as we break bread, as these things happen in faith, the God who takes care of creation will draw near and take care of his people.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the good news of Jesus.

And we thank you that he is praiseworthy and that all of our praise and prayer and vows to him are due.

But more than thanking you for any response we can have to Jesus, we thank you that He is a God who atones for our prevailing iniquities.

And we wish that we could say that prevailing iniquities is always and ever in the past, but the reality is that's just not the case.

And so would you move in our midst?

Would you change us?

Would you use us for your glory?

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.