Psalm 65
Amen, you can be seated. Turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 65. Psalm 65 is a psalm
of King David. In the order of the Psalter,
you may look back to 64 and 63 and on back, and you’ll probably
see that this psalm seems a little out of place. This is a psalm
that is full of joy and gladness. observation for who God is and
what he’s given. But if you back up into the other
Psalms, they’re kind of sad, depressing Psalms. They’re the
ones we might think of, David is in hot water. So he asks for
God’s help. He’s in despair and thinks there’s
nothing for him in this life, but then he remembers God. So this is a Psalm in the order
of the Psalter as we have it, that may seem out of place, but
sometimes, and perhaps this is you, we go through hard, dark,
difficult things in order to see what we have and to see God’s
grace and blessing. And so hopefully this psalm will
stir our minds, but especially our hearts to give thanks to
God. Before we read, let’s do pray.
Lord, we do live in a world that seeks to entice us, to create
dissatisfaction in us, and to say we’re not enough without
this or without that. We want and want. We’re often
like the leech that never has enough. And Lord, we want to
be content. We want to be happy. And we want
to recognize your blessings. So through this psalm, may that
be so. Let it hit our minds for sure, but let it sink into our
hearts how good Gracious and kind of God you are, we pray
in his mighty name. Amen. This is God’s great word. And I think you’ll see when we
get to the end of the psalm, hints of the song we just sang
a few moments ago, sing to the Lord of the harvest. So this
is Psalm 65. Oh God of our salvation, to the
choir master, a Psalm of David, a song. Praise is due you, oh
God and 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 by whom his strength
established the mountains, being girded with his might, who stills
the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and 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 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 they sing together
for joy. Amen. I want us to think about
this psalm today in our brains. There’s words, there’s images
that are gonna pop into our ears and right into our brains, but
I really hope that you will stop and think deep down in your heart
how good and gracious and kind our God is. We all know the great
ultimate question, what is man’s chief end? And I think we know
the answer, man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him
forever. We are to glorify and enjoy God
in this life, but also in the life that is to come. And you
ask, how can I do that? What does that look like? Well,
the children’s catechism makes it very easy. We love God and
keep his commandments right out of Deuteronomy. the law of God
and the old covenant. We love God and keep his commandments.
That’s how we glorify and enjoy him. But I think also the Psalms
teach us how to glorify and enjoy God. We know God and we see his
hand in our lives. We know God’s character, his
actions, and his promises, things yet to be fulfilled. But we also
look back, perhaps like the song we sang, God moves. in a mysterious
way. And we look back and see how
his gracious plan ripened and unfolded. Love the last line
of that hymn. We should not, with a feeble
sense, a finite mind, undiscerning, because we can’t see ultimate
things, an undiscerning mind, try to figure God out. We can
look back and see his hand, but often we’re living touch and
go by faith, as it were, which is not such a bad thing. So how
do we glorify God? How do we enjoy him forever?
Well, we love him, we keep his commands, but we also should
know God and see his hand in our lives. The scriptures teach
a morning and evening routine. We should rise every morning
and thank God for the rest. Thank God for the safety through
the night. We should rise in the morning and say, you’ve kept
me safe in the night, keep me safe in the day, those sorts
of things. And then as we retire in the evening, we also give
thanks for the day. There’s a morning and evening
routine for the Christian life. And that’s especially true on
Sundays. God gives us the day of rest
and worship where we can take time to read and to ponder and
to pray and to give thanks. And that’s where we want our
minds and our hearts to land today. What does it take to give
thanks? What does it take to glorify
and enjoy God? What does it take to think on
Him with our minds and our hearts? Every year in the Old Covenant,
The people would observe the Day of Atonement. I believe it
was on the 10th day of the seventh month. It’s sometime in the fall
of the year. And the Day of Atonement, you’ll
remember, was the day where once a year the priest would go into
the Most Holy Place. He couldn’t go in other days,
but this one grand day, he could go into the Most Holy Place and
he could make atonement for the sins of the entire nation of
God’s people. And so he would go into the most
holy place. He would sprinkle the blood on the cherubim, the
mercy seat, the ark and its covering. And if God was pleased, He would
accept that sacrifice and he would atone for the sins of the
people by the blood of that animal. Of course, looking for the coming
of Jesus, the great Passover lamb. And then the priest would
come out and bless the people. He would come out and pronounce
God’s benediction and blessing on them. They were assured of
their pardon from sin. And then for a week or eight
days from Sabbath to Sabbath afterwards, they would have what
we call the Feast of Tabernacles. In the New Testament, it would
be Pentecost. It would be the end gathering of the fruit, the
bringing in of the sheaves, the gathering of the harvest and
presenting the first fruits to God, the great day of Pentecost,
when 3000 souls were added to the church. It was like the first
fruits, the end gathering from the preaching of the gospel.
And so we have this wonderful picture from the Old and the
New Testament of bringing in the harvest. In fact, you jump
to the book of Revelation, even in Jesus’ kingdom and in times
teaching, the second coming of Jesus is going to be like a great
harvest. There’s going to be the harvest
of the people of the earth. The wheat will be separated from
the chaff and the wheat, the faithful ones who believed in
Christ, will be harvested and brought home to heaven and the
chaff will be burned in the fire and Jesus taught that John speaks
of it in the book of Revelation and so we have this picture of
this feast of Celebration to God for what he has done for
us. It was a long and a joyful feast
you know today when We come to Thanksgiving, we’re a couple
hundred years past the pilgrims and the Puritans and the Mayflower
and all the rest. They lived through their hard
journey and their landing, and they wanted to give thanks to
God, much like the old covenant people did. And so they sat down
and had their bounty, their harvest around them, and they gave Thanks.
And we’ve continued to set that day apart. But it’s cluttered
up, isn’t it, with Christmas? It’s cluttered up with Black
Friday. It’s cluttered up with the commercialism of the holidays
and Christmas and other things. And we live in such a world now
where our brains are really fragmented by digital device as our hearts
are fragmented because we really don’t have quiet time to stop
and to think. And so today as this psalm hits
our minds and hits our hearts, we should remember that as covenant
breakers, we might be like David in this psalm where we have experienced
God’s God withholding his blessings. If you look at the previous Psalms,
you see David realized, he realized for himself, but for Israel,
that they had been covenant breakers. And the blessings of God that
we see at the end of this Psalm are not flowing. There’s not
an abundance. And so he remembers that God’s
blessing begins with his mercy. He then thinks that God’s blessing
comes from his might or his power. And then he thinks on God’s bountiful
blessing. And so as we think of this psalm,
look at the very beginning, verse one. Praise is due you, O God
and Zion, and to you shall vows be given. be performed, whatever
the occasion of the psalm, whatever David’s situation in life, the
people of God’s situation in life, we need to remember this.
This is clear to us. God deserves our praise. We owe to God the payment of
our vows. We might think of that as obedience.
And so as we come into God’s house, we are to think through
and even feel through the prayers and praise that are due to God.
And it is to God and God alone that we should perform our vows.
And so, as we pick through this psalm, I want you to think about
it in three ways. The mercy of God, that’s verses
one through four. The might of God, that would
be verses five through eight. And then you’re gonna learn a
new word today. I had to look up a synonym so I could get an M out of it.
The munificence of God, or the benevolence of God. You’re gonna
see that at the very end of the Psalm. God just pours out blessings
on the people during this harvest season. So let’s first think
about the mercy of God. Our God is a prayer-hearing God.
Our God is the one to whom all flesh comes. Our God is the one
who atones for sins. And yes, our God is a choosing
God. We see this in the first couple
of verses. Oh, you who hear prayer. To you
all flesh shall come. Think of the people of old who
were Abraham’s offspring, but then a few people snuck in, right?
Remember, God’s always opened up the way to the Gentiles. There
was Rahab. She was the spy in Jericho that
heard of the might and power of God, and she believed. And so she was spared by the
scarlet cord. Or you think about Ruth, the
grandmother of King David. She was a Moabite. not a person
from a tribe friendly to God, but Ruth the Moabite was brought
in by faith. And then remember Jesus at the
well, the woman at the well, John 4. Jesus says, all who worship
in spirit and truth will worship me and come to me. And so We
have a prayer-hearing God, and it’s to this prayer-hearing God
that all flesh come, even the Gentiles. I’m guessing all of
us are Gentiles. And so we can feel the weight
and the blessing of a statement like this. Our God is an atoning
for sins God. He sees sin and he deals with
it appropriately. He’s a choosing God. That word
gets us in trouble sometimes. the dirty election word, not
the November 5th election, but the idea that God in his wisdom
before eternity chooses some for everlasting life. Here it
pops up right in Psalm 65. And so how might you give thanks
to God for his mercy? Has he atoned for your sins?
Has he chosen you in Christ from before the foundation of the
world? Does he hear your prayers? Does he draw you a Gentile to
himself through the proclamation of the gospel? This is the mercy
of God. And generally we come to Thanksgiving.
We, you know, we thank God for the corn. You know, we thank
him for the potatoes. We thank him for the turkey.
We thank him for the house and the cars and the jobs and things,
but, but really we should back it up and we should think and
thank God for his choosing us. He set his affection on us. You
think back to the garden, how Adam and Eve were made holy and
righteous and obedient. They had not sinned against God
until Satan came and tempted them and said, God is not enough.
The garden of Eden is not enough. And he created with them a discontentment
with their lot under the great and mighty hand of God. And so
they took the fruit because it was delightful for their eyes.
They desired it and they wanted to be gods unto themselves. And
so they took the fruit and they ate it. And they lost that fellowship
they had with God. They lost their communion with
God. They lost their righteousness, their ability to live and please
God and glorify and enjoy him. And of course, we know the gospel,
how Jesus makes us new creations. Our minds, which were affected
by the fall, our hearts, which were affected by the fall, even
our bodies affected by the fall will all be made new. And we’re
by faith in the process of that coming to pass. And in the old
covenant, it took the day of atonement. It took the scapegoats.
It took the sacrificial lamb to put God’s wrath away. But
now we have the Lord Jesus Christ. We have the covenant of grace.
We have the covenant of peace with Almighty God. We have the
Spirit. We have the church. We have the scriptures. And so
we are brought back into the presence of God by the mercy
of God. And our passage tells us that
our prayer hearing God, who draws all flesh, iniquities prevail,
and he atones for our transgressions. And it says, blessed is the one
you choose. Blessed is the one you bring near to dwell in your
courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house.
And so question for you, no matter what this fallen world has given
you or not given you, I think of perhaps the people in Western
North Carolina who’ve been devastated these couple of months with floods.
Or you think of folks living in war-torn countries You think
of people living under oppression and other things that we don’t
suffer through. This world may have dealt you
some hard hands, but God is still there. God is still a choosing
God, a prayer-hearing God, an atoning for sin God. And so our
ultimate delights, as Jesus taught us when we read from Matthew
6, our ultimate delights need not to be in the things of this
world that moth and rust will destroy. that death will end
that relationship with, but our thanks really ought to be rooted
in the presence of God. His mercy has brought us back
to him. And so that’s one way we should
begin our Thanksgiving. It’s through our ultimate salvation. And so there’s the mercy of God.
What about the might of God, the power of God? Verses five
through eight tell us that our God does awesome deeds. You think
about Pharaoh. and the showdown that Moses had
with Pharaoh, God’s mighty axe and Pharaoh’s fake axe, the magicians. You think about how God opened
up the sea and the people walked through and then God closed the
sea and it fell on their pursuing Egyptian army. So God is a God
of awesome deeds. He’s a God of salvation. He’s
the hope of all the ends of the earth. He establishes the mountains.
He stills the seas. Jesus spoke and calmed the seas
and the disciples had peace. He stills the people, the tumult
of the people. He makes the sun rise and he
makes the sun to set. You know, this is really a worldview
section of this piece of scripture, isn’t it? We have people that
hold to deism. God is, yes, a God. He’s there, but he’s not a sovereign. He’s not a God of providence.
He’s not a God who’s in control of his creation. We think of
God like a Harlem Globetrotter. You take a basketball and you
spin it, get it up on your finger, get it spinning and you toss
it in the air. And people who hold the deism believe God made
the world. Everything in it spun it into existence and it’s eventually
going to wear itself out. But God is over here. He’s not
involved. And you’ll hear people say things
like this. Well, I wish God could have helped.
I wish God could have been concerned about this. I wish God could
have been in control. I wish God was there. And that’s a false
view of God, isn’t it? We believe in the God who is.
We believe in the God who makes and the God who sustains. And
so David is affirming this in these verses five through eight,
by awesome deeds you answer us. You’re the God of salvation.
You’re the hope of the ends of the earth. You’re the God of
the farthest seas. It’s a clash of worldviews, not
just deism. How about evolution? You go to the, say the zoo in
North Carolina and you read the signs that, you know, they’re
down there in the Uarey mountains. They’ll say the Uareys are the
oldest mountains on the face of the earth. They’re kind of
short too, but it took a little time for mountains to grow. They’ll
say, these are the oldest mountains on the face of the earth. And
then you come to a passage like this and you say, well, God,
established the mountains by his strength. He spoke by the
word of his power. Those mountains came to rise.
It’s by his providence that they are there. And so evolution is
a worldview contrary to the scriptures, contrary to Psalm 65. So you’ve
got deism, you’ve got evolution. What about chance? People say,
well, you know, fate has given me what I’ve got. You know, who
can control the fates? It’s by luck, it’s by chance. And we read a passage like Matthew
6, where Jesus says, don’t worry, I know what you need. Don’t be
anxious. We read catechisms like the Heidelberg
one, my only comfort in life and death is that I belong to
my faithful. Savior Jesus Christ, he’s bought me with his blood
and now the hair can fall from my head without it being the
will of my God and Father. And so we don’t believe in chance.
We believe in the sovereign God who by his strength established
the mountains. We believe in the sovereign God
who by his power stills the roaring seas. But he also stills the
tumult of the peoples. You know, I think we live in
a nation where we believe, and I think it’s both parties, that
whoever is in control will control the destiny of our nation. Okay,
so maybe policy matters, right? And bad policy affects us in
bad ways. Good policy affects us in good
ways. But we remember one of the greetings that we use from
time to time in worship. Grace to you in peace from him
who is and who was and who is to come from the seven spirits
Who minister before the throne of God and from Christ Jesus
the faithful witness the firstborn? from among the dead and the ruler
Can you finish it of all the kings of the earth? We think
of Psalm 2 and how the nation’s rage they fought in vain and
and they rise up against the Lord and his anointed and And
we think, well, if the Democrats get an office, it’ll be this.
If the Republicans get an office, it will be that. If we can just
control the Senate. And we have been slaves to the
election tickers, haven’t we? Who’s in charge? Who’s in control?
And we’ve forgotten. It is God who steals the seas,
but it is God who steals the tumult of the nations and the
tumult of the peoples. You know, perhaps we’re watching
the news and we’re worried about Russia. We’re worried about China. We’re
worried about North Korea. We’re worried about who’s got
a nuclear program and shouldn’t have one. We are worried about
borders and armies and we’re worried about all these sorts
of things. And yes, we should be worried. These people are
maniacs, but we need to remember the mercy of God. Yes, the blood
of Jesus, but we need to remember the might of God. He speaks and
all that we see comes into existence. He speaks. He upholds the world
and everything in it by the word of the power of the Son, the
Lord Jesus. And we need to put our faith,
our hope and our trust. And notice we haven’t even gotten to the
stuff yet, right? We haven’t gotten to the corn.
We haven’t gotten to the grain. We haven’t gotten to the whatever
it is we want to give thanks for. We’ve looked at the mercy
of God, the blood of Jesus. We’ve looked at the might of
God and all that he can do. We need to have the right. worldview. You know, these recent months
have brought a lot of natural disasters, and I’m sure this
Thanksgiving season people are going to be wrestling with, is
there a God? And if there is, can he be good?
And we need to be mindful that we live in a world that is cursed
by sin. We live in a world that is not
right because sin has affected it and infected it. And yes,
this world, it is under God’s thumb. It is under God’s hand.
It is under his control. And yes, it rages. The plates
will shift and there will be earthquakes. The clouds will
disappear and there will be no rain. The snow will come down
and it will be too much. The wind will blow and it will
be too strong. The waters will rise and there’s nowhere for
it to go because it has overrun its banks. And so we need to
remember that our ultimate salvation, our ultimate salvation for this
earth, but also for our souls is through Jesus. And it comes
in the new heavens and the new earth when God will make all
things new. And in that new creation, that Eden-like before sin creation,
there will be no devastating storms or overwhelming floods
or the shift of plates and the quaking of the earth. There will
be no rattling of swords or the sound of cannon fire. There will
be no nations rising against nation. This will be a place
of peace, a place of righteousness. And so we have something to look
forward to and these things we experience in this life ought
to remind us of how great the judgment of God will be. And
so the mercy of God does come up in this psalm. God is atoned
for our sin, the might of God in creation over the nature,
but also over people. And then here’s the fancy word
you’re going to have to look up later, the munificence of God, the benevolence
of God, the overwhelming kindness of God that comes up in verses
nine to 13. And I want you to really remember this today. Remember
the mercy of God, the blood of Jesus. That’s good. You can remember
the power of God over creation and nature and nations, but I
want you to remember the river of God. Verses nine through 13
tell us you visit the earth and water it. You greatly enrich
it. And then here’s the phrase, 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 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. valleys deck themselves with
grain and they shout and they sing for joy. This may perhaps
be the most blessed part of scripture. It points to, it reminds us,
it speaks to us in vivid language of how the river of God provides
for us. You know, nowadays we see populations
pop up on interstates. We used to see populations pop
up on highways. So we got I-40 now, that’s where
everything is. Used to be everything was on Highway 70. And before
that, things were on the wagon trail. And before that, they
were along the stream. So perhaps you go to the Hall
River and you see where little villages were. And then you come
over to Highway 70 and you see where things were. Now you go
out to I-40 and you see, we used to see people live by rivers.
They lived by rivers because rivers were life. The Nile, the
Tigris, the Euphrates. Remember the description of the
Garden of Eden. It was a land that was grand
and it had a couple rivers that flowed from the mountain of God.
And so the river of God is a very big theme in this passage. And
it brings physical blessings, but it also brings spiritual
blessings. This river of God, as far as
the land goes, is God’s providential care for his creation. He gives
so many good gifts. And I love how verse nine ends,
for so you have prepared it. When we think of the doctrine
of the providence of God, we think how God sees beforehand
and meets the needs of his people. He doesn’t just come up with
a really great idea and say, OK, I started it, but now I’ve
gotten in over my head. I can’t finish it. Now, God in
his wisdom in eternity past said, what will bring me the most glory?
I’ll do this thing. I’ll see ahead and I’ll prepare
and provide for it. And so the river of God is the
source of every earthly and every spiritual blessing. So God is
prepared. He’s watered. He’s enriched.
He’s blessed. He’s crowned. And by the time
you get to the end of this stanza, there’s an overflow of grain,
even the pastures. are singing for joy. You know,
we live in kind of a fake world, don’t we? We get apples that
are last year’s apples. You know, they freeze them, right? They do stuff to them. By the
time we get them, they’ve been around a while. That’s why we
like to go to the orchard in the late August, early September,
and we like to pick apples. Or it’s why we love spring strawberries. You know, you get those frozen
ones and, you know, they’re sliced and they’re white inside. They’re
not red and juicy. Or other fruits. We live in a
fake world. where by the time we get stuff
that was produced from the land or from the farm, it’s been touched
and stored and trucked around. But maybe some of you can remember
an agriculture life where you really depended on the spring
planting. And the summer rains and the
sunshine, you relied on the heat. And perhaps in the fall there
would be a harvest. And so you would pick it, you
would harvest it, you might can it, you would store it, or you
would sell it and barter for something. You know, you ask
somebody today, where do apples come from? Well, food line, right? That’s a pretty common answer
you get. Where do these come from? The grocery store. And
you think of Israel in the wilderness, how they had daily bread out
in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of nowhere, Egypt,
God gave them. And then Psalm 78, when God is
reminding Israel, they need to tell the generations about how
good and great God is. The Israelites in their wickedness
said, can God spread a feast in the wilderness? And what’s
the answer? He can, and he did. In fact, you read through some
of the places of scripture that speak of the wilderness generation,
their shoes did not wear out. Their feet did not swell. That’s
what the book of Nehemiah tells us. Isn’t that an interesting
point? How many of you have swollen feet today? Please don’t raise
your hand or take your shoes off. But swollen feet, that’s
a pretty big deal. They didn’t have podiatrists,
but God did not let their feet swell. He did not let their shoes
wear out. Their clothes were not moth eaten.
They had manna from heaven. They had quail from heaven. They
had meat to eat, water to drink. And he gave them all that they
needed and he’s done the same for us. And the picture that
you get in this psalm is an interesting picture. We don’t think agriculturally.
But you run a plow through the ground, and what does it do?
It digs a rut, and on either side of that rut, you get little
heaps, right? And you get the picture of that
in this psalm. The furrows are watered, its
ridges are settled by the rain, and so they plow, they plant,
and the rain doesn’t just come down too much and just run it
off and wash it away. But it’s a gentle rain. It’s
a watering rain. It’s a germinating rain. It’s
a gracious rain that God gives. And then he blesses its growth,
you know, back to our fake world. You can buy these hundreds of
thousands of dollars of tractors and farm implements these days,
and they’re GPS-driven. And the GPS steers the tractor.
You’ll see this, you know this. And it tells the machine where
to dig and where to plant. And then you have a crop company,
say like Syngenta out of Greensboro, and they come in and say, what’s
your soil? What’s your seed? We’re in the
whole argument of genetically Modified plants, you know, we’ve
got RFK now gonna get us all healthy again, though He was
seen eating McDonald’s or holding it at least, you know Trump’s
airplane, but we live in a world that’s that’s Gotten really technical
and that’s wonderful We have sprinkler systems and irrigation
systems and all the rest, but we have also modified and messed
with things Where it’s not good for our bodies and here is just
simple agricultural life It rains it works it grows, but where
does the blessing come from? It comes from Almighty God. And
yes, I think it’s a great thing to have dominion over the earth
and for John Deere to make a tractor with GPS. That’s so wonderful.
And I think it’s wonderful to have crop science where we can
grow things without pest and we can raise things without the
fallen world messing with it. And it goes to a point sometimes
where we’re like the creator of Frankenstein. hurt us and
kill us, but they’re also great blessings. But what do we remember?
We remember it’s God who blesses its growth. It is God who crowns
the year with bounty. And then you get this picture,
the ground is dug up, the furrows grow, the rain comes, softens
it, the little tiny seed germinates, there’s a little sprout of green.
Then it grows and grows and grows. And then God crowns the year,
the Feast of Weeks, the end gathering, the Pentecost. He gathers it
with great growth. And it’s such an abundance that
the wagon can’t hold it all. Stuff is dropping off the wagon
and people are gleaning from the wagon as it goes along. The
wagon is so heavy, it ruts up the ground. Can you imagine that
kind of picture? God gives so much. And I wonder
if you stop for a moment and think about how God has blessed
you. Oh, sure. Think of money. That’s
how we operate. Yes. Think of provisions. We
need them. Maybe this year you had a surgery that corrected
something that otherwise would have left you maybe without a
sight, or it would have left you with a heart that would have
failed, or you would have been left with the inability to walk
or to throw a football or something. I know we’ve had heart surgeries
and shoulder surgeries and eye surgeries in this year in the
congregation. Give thanks to the Lord for the
bounty. Yes of money. Yes of provisions. But for people
being made in God’s image, they can clean your teeth. They can
fix a cavity. They can put glasses on your head. We thank the Lord
for shoes and for provisions. You know, it’s been a pretty
rough economy these last several years. And maybe your heating
system hasn’t failed, but it’s aging. Maybe your water heater
hasn’t given out and it’s aging. Maybe your health is better than
it should be, and you’ve not had added health expenses. God
does so many wonderful things, and where’s the balance? Think of that Psalm in 30, King
Edgar says, give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me just
enough, because if I get impoverished, I’ll steal, and I’ll profane
the name of the Lord. But if I get too rich, I’ll say,
you know, it’s by my might. It’s by my checkbook. It’s by
my ingenuity. And so we want to trust God for
daily bread, just enough. So how do we think of all this?
How do we think of God’s might? How do we think of God’s munificence? Go look it up today. His benevolence,
his goodness to us. How do we think of God’s mercy?
Well, we think of it all through Jesus Christ. When I was a kid,
I remember we went to Ed Kelly’s on Webb Avenue. Some of y’all
remember that? Ed Kelly’s was the TV and refrigerator place.
I think you go get plasma there now. Or you can go get plasma. Probably said that you can go
buy a TV at Best Buy. But we wanted a VCR. And so we go in
there to buy a VCR. I think one of our neighbors
was a salesman at Ed Kelly’s. And he says, what kind of TV
are you going to hook this thing up to? We still had a black and
white TV. Some of y’all don’t remember
those. And he said, what’s the point of buying a VCR if you’re
going to watch movies in black and white? Okay, my cheap parents
sprung for a color TV and all of a sudden Andy Griffith was
in color, right? Cartoons were in color. It was
like life had really changed. Some of you remember the shift
from black and white in movies to technicolor. And I think The
Wizard of Oz was the great, really the great first movie that used
black and white or darkness. And then when Dorothy goes out
the door and she sees in Technicolor. Now we watch in HD. We buy TVs
based on how many pixels, right? The more pixels and the faster
the refresh rate, we can see the football game in action or
the auto race or whatever in high definition. And here’s the
point. Unless you’re in Jesus Christ,
you see in black and white. But when you come to faith in
Jesus, you see in high definition, you see in technicolor, you see
through Christ-centered eyes that there is a God. He is mighty.
There is a God. He is merciful. There is a God
and he provides so richly for us. And I wonder, as you look
around the world, are you seeing dimly because your faith is weak?
Are you seeing dimly because you’re maybe idolatrous or entitled
or thankless? And so here is a challenge to
see God. Yes, to see his mercy. Yes, to
see his might. Yes, to see his munificence or
his benevolence. Don’t see life from the lens
of your checkbook or your abilities or your resume. And think of
this, think of the river of God. The river of God can give you
apples and corn and wheat, but it’s the river of God that gives
us life in the Holy Spirit. And you think about how Jesus
tells the disciples, wait for the Spirit at Pentecost, wait
for the Spirit at the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Tabernacles,
the Feast of the Ingathering. And maybe your life is a little,
black and white now. And perhaps it’s black and white
because you’re living in sin. Perhaps it’s black and white
and God is withholding his blessings from you. And you need to exercise
faith and repentance and obedience. And perhaps from his river, he
can give you the outpouring of his spirit in such a mighty way.
Yes, you have physical blessings, but you have these spiritual
blessings. that will last into eternity. These are the two things
we greatly need. Yes, we need things for life.
God can give them. But we need things for spiritual
life. And God from his river can give that as well. His river
is full of water and it gladly runs through his people. Let’s
look to him now in prayer. Lord, we ask today for a perspective
change. Help us to think through all
that you are, all that you’ve done, all that you will do. We
want to think through what you’ve blessed us with. We can be half
glass empty people and say, you haven’t given us much. Lord,
but you have given us so much in Christ. You’ve given us so
much in this beautiful world. And you have given us so much
through your strength and your protection. So let us see it
and give thanks. Forgive us when we do not. And we ask for your help and
blessing now in Christ’s mighty and gracious name. Amen. We want
to respond to this psalm by singing. I sing the almighty power of
God. Let’s stand and sing 119.