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.
Psalm 67.
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.
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.