Psalm 147
Amen. You can be seated. Our scripture for today is Psalm
147. If you’re using the Pew Bible,
you can find that on page 525. Psalm 147, as you have already
seen today, was our call to worship. And there’s a prayer collect
from the Scottish Psalter on the front of the bulletin that
helped us prepare our hearts and minds for worship. And now
It is our sermon text for the day. We want to think about Thanksgiving
and having our hearts right before the Lord as he’s given us so
much good. Just a word or two about Psalm
147 as we prepare to read it. It’s the end of the Psalms, Psalms
ending at 150, but 146 to 150, we call the great doxology. Maybe
it’s helpful to think of it as the fireworks finale of the Psalter. You’re aware that the Psalms
often are couched in a context. And if you’ve been with us on
Sunday night in recent weeks, Psalm 147 pairs up very well
with the context from a couple of Sunday nights ago, where the
people of God finished building the city. They finished building
the wall. They finished putting in the gates and the temple was
ready. And the Levites and Ezra and
Nehemiah marched around the city two different ways, met together
at the temple. And the book of Nehemiah says
they sang so loud that the people surrounding the city could hear
their thanksgiving and praise. And may that be so of us as we
think about all that God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Let’s hear God’s word together.
Psalm 147. Praise the Lord, for it is good
to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of
praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem.
He gathers the outcast of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and
binds up their wounds. He determines the numbers of
stars. He gives to all of them their
names. Great is our Lord and abundant
in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble.
He casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving.
Make melody to our God on the lyre. He covers the heavens with
clouds. He prepares rain for the earth.
He makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the beasts their
food and to the young ravens that cry. His delight is not
in the strength of the horse nor his pleasure in the legs
of man. But the Lord takes pleasure in
those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Praise your God, O Zion. For
he strengthens the bars of your gates. He blesses your children
within you. He makes peace in your borders.
He fills you with the finest of the wheat. He sends out his
command to the earth. His word runs swiftly. He gives
snow like wool. He scatters frost like ashes.
He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs. Who can stand
before his cold? He sends out his word and melts
them. He makes his wind blow and the
waters flow. He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any
other nation. They do not know his rules. Praise
the Lord. Amen. The word of the living
God. I think most of you are familiar with the first Thanksgiving
when the pilgrims who sailed over from England on the Mayflower
and the Speedwell stepped off land after some time, they took
a few days to feast and to give thanks to the Lord for all of
his goodness to them. You know, they sought a better
country. They sought to be pilgrims in
this land where they could live and worship as they believed
God had taught them. The Puritans were a grateful
people and they took time to feast and to give thanks. And
this has become a tradition in America, though it has been quite
watered down over the last 15, 20 years with Black Friday and
early hour shopping and all the rest. But it’s good for us. We should take encouragement
in their story. It’s good and biblical to stop
and to give thanks. It’s good and biblical to be
a thankful people. In fact, if you read many of
the Psalms, particularly the ones where David, King David
is in hot water, he’s on the run because Saul is chasing him.
He’s on the run because the Philistines are after him. He’s on the run
because of various enemies. He always says something like
this, God help me. I’m in a bad spot. If you help
me, I will sing your praises. I will tell of my thanksgiving
in the midst of the congregation. So it’s good for us to think
about thanksgiving and offer it to almighty God. It’s good to count our blessings
and to name them. one by one, whether we do that
in church each Sunday or at the table with family and Thanksgiving,
it’s good to be in line with the people of old and to think
on all that God has done and to stop and to pause and to give
him thanks. Well, I mentioned a few moments
ago, the particular historical context of this Psalm is when
the exiles returned from Babylon. You remember that God threatened
through the prophets, his people with exile. You will leave the
promised land. You will lose the blessings of
having your own borders. You will lose the benefits of
this good and prosperous land if you don’t seek my face and
live according to my ways. Well, we know that the Assyrians
in the late or early 700s, took most of Israel, the 11 northern
tribes, took them out of the promised land and hauled them
off to Assyria. Just roughly a hundred years later, Babylon
came in and they hauled off the people of Jerusalem and Judea
and they took them to Babylon. But before they left, they destroyed
Jerusalem. They burnt it. They bulldozed
it. They just did irreparable damage. And the worst of all these tragedies
was What Jeremiah speaks of in Lamentations, not only was the
city laid bare, but the glory of God departed. And so these
people were carted off. They were repatriated in these
foreign lands. And you read of their distress
in places like Psalm 137, where it says, by the waters of Babylon,
we sat and we wept. And our captors taunted us saying,
sing to us the songs of Zion. And they said, we cannot sing
these songs because we are in a foreign land and our mouths
are dry. We are parched. And so it was
a tough thing for Israel to be exiled. But God in his time over
150 years or so brought waves of pilgrims back to the promised
land where they would rebuild Jerusalem. They would rebuild
the temple. They would rebuild the altar
and the wall. Ezra would reconstitute the law
and the people would again make covenant with God to live as
his people, his peculiar nation, his particular people in a particular
way before the enemies and the other nations of God. And so
these last couple of Sunday nights, as we finished Ezra, Haggai and
Nehemiah, we’ve read of these stories and these accounts a
couple of weeks back. When the city was rebuilt and
it was repopulated and it was up and running. And most importantly,
the people had heard the law of God read and had penetrated
their hearts and they renewed covenant with God to live as
his people. They planned this big processional
where the Levites would lead the people around the city. They
would start at one place and march in opposite directions
until they met together. at the temple and they worship
God with such great sacrifices and singing that the nations
around heard them because God had made them glad. When was
the last time we were so thankful? When was the last time we maybe
just popped out in song because God had been good to us? That
was the heart of the people of Israel. And you know, we have
a little saying around here that I think is a very true saying.
Saved people sing. Saved people have something to
say and something to sing. And when we are saved and we
know it, when we are thankful and we know it, it just comes
out of us. And what a sight this must have
been to the watching world. And I can’t help but think sometimes,
what do people think as they ride by our little church on
a Sunday morning? using Sunday as their next Saturday,
you know, the second Saturday as it’s become. They’re not in
God’s house with God’s people worshiping him. Do they wonder,
what are those people doing? Why are they so full of song
and full of joy? Well, saved people sing, and
that’s exactly what was taking place in Jerusalem, roughly in
the 400s before Jesus came. when God had made them glad for
bringing them back from the foreign land and reestablishing their
life in the city of God. They had been down and out and
now they were up in Adam again, serving the living God. And so
a wonderful Psalm is 147 as it captures the thought of their
hearts, the things of their lips. And perhaps it will be a help
to us today as we think of all that God is and all that God
has done for us. I want you to kind of take a
peek at the Psalm. If you still have your Bibles
open, you’ll notice in verse one and in verse 20, the Psalm
begins and ends the same way. It simply says, praise the Lord. Or if you want to be more technical
about it, you see that Lord is in all caps and it says, praise
Yahweh, praise Jehovah. When I was a kid, we used to
sing a little song maybe in Bible class called Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah. You don’t remember how it went?
Praise ye the Lord. Well, in the Psalms, when you
see praise the Lord in all caps, it’s simply saying, hallelujah,
praise Yah, praise Yahweh. And that’s one of the most frequent
commands in the scriptures to God’s people. It’s a command,
it’s a, what do we say, an imperative. And y’all know what an imperative
is, that’s when your parents say, come. Or when they say go,
or when they say don’t, that’s an imperative. It’s a, you better
do it or else sort of command. Well, this, this is imperative. It’s imperative. It’s a must.
for the people of God to praise Yahweh, their God, for he has
been good to them. And so as we look at this Psalm,
we see it begins and ends with praise the Lord or hallelujah. But several times in the Psalm,
well, not several, maybe twice, in verse seven, and then again
in verse 12, it says things like, sing to Yahweh. Sing to him a
song of Thanksgiving, make melody to Yahweh or praise Yahweh, praise
Yahweh, people of Zion. So several times in our passage,
it tells the people of God to praise God. Now that’s all well
and good. We want to praise God. He’s good
to us. He’s kind to us. He’s gracious, but it’s good
to praise him with specifics. It’s good to praise him, counting
our blessings and naming them one by one. And so in our Psalm
147, there’s three big categories that I think you can look at
to see why we should praise Yahweh, why we should sing to the Lord,
why we should make melody. And those three things are because
of his power. Secondly, because of his provision.
And the third, because we are his people. Those three things
are all through the Psalms. Let’s first think about his power.
God is almighty. When we speak of him in our theology,
we call these the omnis, right? He’s omnipotent, he’s all powerful. He’s omniscient, he’s all knowing.
He’s… everywhere. He’s not limited
by space and not limited by time. He’s not limited by anything
in this world. God is able to save. God is mighty to act on behalf
of his people. And you think about the context
of Psalm 147. They were in a foreign land.
They were at the end under Cyrus, the great and wicked ruler of
Babylon. And when you read the beginning
of the book of Ezra, it says God moved in Cyrus heart to let
the people of God go. And then you read through the
different Kings and rulers who were the occupying enemy of the
promised land during that stretch of 150 years of rebuilding the
city. And you read about Artaxerxes
and, you know, you read stories like Queen Esther who risked
her neck to speak to the King about Mordecai’s evil plan to
eradicate the Jewish population, you read about all the enemies
of God’s people. And then you think about God’s
power, only God’s power, only his might can save his people. And I love how one of the things
that says of God’s abilities, he knows all the stars and he
names them all. You know, I think if scientists
who are pretty smart and now have computers and other good
technology at their at their fingertips, the Hubble telescope
and other things like that. They can do a pretty good study
of the stars. They can put them on a chart.
They can put them on a map. They can even sell you one that
you can, you know, name for your girlfriend or whatever that they
offer these days. But they could never rattle off
their names, alphabetical order, and tell you where they are,
the size of it, the age of it, and all the rest. But God can. And isn’t it comforting to think
of God’s power? He’s able to manage the galaxies,
but he’s also able to manage the hairs on your head and the
lilies of the field. And brothers and sisters, we
ought to have great confidence in our God. We ought to have
great confidence in our God that he is mighty, he is powerful.
He is almighty over all things. There’s not a thing over which
he does not rule or have control. His understanding is great. His
knowledge is wonderful. His management skills are perfect. And so we think of God’s power
over the nations, his power over the galaxies. And we think of
his power in this passage over the climates. Did you catch about
the clouds and the rain and the snow and the ice? and the freezing
and the melting. God is able by his power to rule
over all things. We think of God’s power though,
and maybe the most mighty way. And it’s the power that was able
to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. And it’s by that same power
that he will raise each of us from death to life. We will live
with him eternally forever. And so as we think about songs
and words and hearts of Thanksgiving, we first give thanks to God for
his power. It is wonderful. It is amazing.
And it’s something we can put our hope, our faith and our trust
in. Perhaps you in your own life
are powerless. To see something through, to
act, or to rescue, or to redeem something, or just to fulfill
a hope. Give it to the Lord who is mighty.
Give it to God who is powerful. And that helps us see the second
thing in this passage, his provision. If God is powerful, maybe we
should say since God is powerful, he can provide for us. Jesus
comforts his disciples. Why do you worry like the heathens?
Why do you worry like the people of the world? If I care for the
lilies of the field, if I clothe them better than Solomon and
all his splendor was clothed, if I know the numbers of the
hairs of your head, if I feed the birds of the air, can’t I
provide for you? Now I think of the whole book
of Psalms here as we near the end of it, Psalm 147. Follows
with 148, 149, 150, God’s big fireworks of praise. But these
are connected, aren’t they? And you think back to Psalm 23. God is able to provide. The Lord
is my shepherd, I shall not want. And you read through Psalm 23
and he provides so richly for his children. Well, in this passage,
he speaks of the things he gives to his loved ones. He heals them. He binds up their wounds. He sends the clouds. He sends
the rain. He sends the snow. He sends the
frost. He sends the ice and the cold. He sends the growth of the grass
to feed the cattle. He feeds the ravens that cry
out to him. And I love the phrase. I put it in the sermon title.
He gives us the fattest of wheat, the choicest of wheat. How so well fed we are by God. Well, you know, the promises
of God, the basic way to understand his covenant is he gives us three
Gs. God gives us himself. So we get
God. He gives us grapes. That’s the
promised land, right? You live in a land that flows
with milk and honey. And then he gives you generation. He gives
you grandkids. And so the covenant promises
of God are to be a God to you and to give you grapes and grandkids.
That’s a simple way of looking at it. It’s a memorable one though,
and it captures the big picture of each of those things. But
God provides these for us, and he provides them so richly. Now,
I’m aware of the world we live in. I’m aware of how tight the
times are. Twice in my lifetime, the US
economy has seen inflation like we are under. And God in his
grace, remember he was with the people in the wilderness. Their
shoes did not wear out. Their clothes were not moth-eaten.
They had daily bread. They had the quail, the water
from the rock. God graciously provided for them. And remember he warns us as the
people of Israel failed, don’t be grumpy. Don’t be ungrateful. Our God tailor makes. our daily
bread for us. In fact, as we look through the
Lord’s prayer in the coming weeks on Sunday nights, we’ll get to
the, give us this day our daily bread section of the prayer. And I love how our catechism
says, we pray that God would give us a competent portion of
his daily blessings. And I think if you believe in
the sovereignty of God and the providence of God and the goodness
of God, you’re going to believe that however your life is, In
a particular moment, it was tailor made for you by God. And that’s
why I think that Heidelberg catechism we said earlier today is so wonderful.
I can be thankful in prosperity and I can be patient in adversity. Whatever my lot in life is, God
is providing and he can do so richly and we can be happy and
thankful to him. Well, God is a God of power.
He’s a God of provision. And I think perhaps maybe the
most important piece of this scripture is that God has a people. Remember when Israel was in exile,
they did not cease to be his people. He still loved them.
He still cherished them. They were still, as the end of
our Psalm says, the only nation on the face of the earth God
had dealt with in such a way. He’s speaking of the covenant.
God did not make a covenant with any other people or any other
nation. It was only Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And as we’ve
been studying in our book of Galatians sermon series, those
of us who believe in Jesus by faith are the offspring of Abraham. And so being part of the people
of God is one of the greatest blessings that we have. Yeah,
it’s great to have grapes. It’s wonderful to have daily
bread, but to be called the people of God is such a great and wonderful
privilege. God has not dealt thus with any
other nation. Our passage tells us that he
has brought back the outcast. He’s removed them from a foreign
and pagan land. Can you imagine what an offense
it was to these people who had lived separately for God, to
have to go and to live among the nations, among the wicked
people. What a hardship that must have been for them to live
in that foreign land. But God has built up Jerusalem. He has allowed them success in
Nehemiah’s building efforts. The walls are raised. The gates
are in place. The city is fortified. It is
up and running. God gathered the outcast Israel
and he lifted up the humble. And it says he put their enemies
down for a hundred years of their rebuilding efforts. They had
wicked enemies like Sanballat and Tobiah. They had all the
surrounding nations that did not want to see the city of God
rebuilt. And isn’t it that way in our
culture today? People don’t want to see the
church succeed. We’ve seen just north of our
border, the government persecution of churches. And it’s real. We’ve seen ministers in jail
for holding worship services. And we saw it here some years
back. The IRS, I think, targeted some
religious organizations and they got their hands slapped and pulled
back. But brothers and sisters, I think we will face a day in
our nation among Christians where we need God to step in. We need
to remain humble, but we need God to take care of our enemies.
And this passage of scripture ought to give us great hope that
God is mighty in power and he is a providing God and he takes
care of his people. In fact, one of the great things
it speaks of Verse 19, he declares his law to Jacob, his statutes
to Israel. One of the great blessings that
God gives is his law. He gives us his boundaries. He
gives us his standards of holiness that we ought to fear him and
walk in his ways. And it gives us a little promise.
I think you find it in verse 10, verse 11 of our passage.
God doesn’t look at the strength of men. God doesn’t look at the
might of men. He looks at those who take pleasure
in him. He looks at those who are humble
and those who hope in his steadfast love. And that mention of steadfast
love perhaps is one of the most overlooked things in a psalm
like this. God’s steadfast love is his covenant faithfulness.
It’s his covenant love, his covenant fidelity. When God makes a promise,
he keeps it. When God makes an obligation,
he fulfills it. And his steadfast love, his never
ending, never stopping love is most clearly shown to us in his
love for his people. We remember that Jesus left the
riches of heaven and he himself became an exile, a stranger. He was a foreigner from a heavenly
city coming into a dark and dying world, a crooked and depraved
generation. And he identified with the people here. In fact,
he so identified with them. He was washed in the river with
their filth at his baptism. He took on all their sins at
the cross. is God laid the sins on the head
of the sacrificial lamb that would be Jesus Christ. And God’s
steadfast love is shown to us. God’s provision, God’s power
is shown to us in the person and in the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we can say with great joy,
like the psalmist says here, God has not dealt with any other
people except his own in this way. It’s a privilege to be a
child and a servant of God. Let us be a people who give thanks
always and often for his every provision. Do pray with me. Lord,
we give you thanks for your everlasting love for us that is found in
Christ. Where would we be without Jesus?
We would be lost. We would be dead in our sins
and trespasses. We would continue in Adam’s sin
and failures, and we would be doomed to death and destruction.
But we give you thanks that in your love and mercy, in your
steadfast love and kindness, you left the riches of heaven
and for our sakes became poor in order that we might become
rich. be your children of everlasting, eternal inheritance. Help us
to be happy and thankful for these great blessings. We pray
in Christ’s name, amen.