Psalm 65
Let’s hear from God’s word together.
This is Psalm 65. This is a song of David, and
it says in verse one, praise is due you, O God and Zion, and
to you shall vows be performed. O you who hears prayer, to you
shall all flesh come. When iniquities prevail against
me, you atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose
to bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied
with the goodness of your house and 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 mountains,
being girded with might, who stills the roaring seas, 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 a shout to shout for joy. You visit the
earth and you 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 and the hills gird themselves with
joy. The meadows clothe themselves
with flocks and the valleys deck themselves with the grain. They shout and they sing together
for joy. Amen. This is God’s word. May
he bless it to our hearts and minds this night. Well, um, Around
Thanksgiving time, we sing good old harvest hymns. Did any of
y’all, any of y’all grow up in farming communities? I know,
I know Jean did. Did y’all sing, uh, bringing
in the sheaves? Yeah, every, every, uh, yeah, it probably
got good and warmed up, but we sing, um, songs like we did tonight. Um, come you thankful people
come. Um, there’s, there’s some hymn about the plow and the seed.
I think we sang from time to time, but Psalm 65 is the Salters. version of bringing in the sheaves.
It’s the sort of the bringing in the sheaves of the old covenant
people, the Psalter version. And so it calls us to shout for
joy at God’s blessing and abundance. Now, how many of you grew up
on a farm? Any of you? Okay, did you bring
in the harvest? And did y’all have a feast at
the end time? Y’all are too tired? You just went to McDonald’s?
Okay. What’s that? The wrong harvest. So it’s a time of joy and celebration
when the crops come in. And in the Old Covenant, in the
Old Testament, when they celebrated that, they held what was called
the Feast of Tabernacles. And it was an eight-day celebration
where they kept the Sabbath. They partied all week, you might
say, and then they kept another Sabbath. And that was the Feast
of Tabernacles. But the offering, we just said
something about the ceremonial law, according to the Belgic
Confession, was put away by Christ. But in the ceremonial law, they
would bring to God the first fruits of their harvest. And that’s how they celebrated
and worshiped and observed God’s goodness. And so this Psalm speaks
of the splendor of the beauty of the earth. It speaks of how
the Lord provides for his people, how he sends rain, he sends fruit. It’s, in a sense, one of those
creation praises. And so Psalm 65, thankfully and
magically and wonderfully, just breaks right up into three nice
little segments. And it speaks of God’s character
or his actions towards his people. It speaks of God and His grace,
it speaks of God and His might, and it speaks of God and His
giving His people plenty. So we’ll look at it that way.
First, look at verses one through four. It speaks of God’s grace. It says, praises do you, O God
and Zion, and to you shall vows be performed. You who hear prayer,
“‘Til you shall all flesh come. “‘When iniquities prevail against
me, “‘you atone for transgressions. “‘Blessed is the one you choose
to bring near “‘to dwell in your courts, “‘and we shall be satisfied
with the goodness of your house “‘and the holiness of your temple.'”
So we have here the God of grace. Now we know the invitation that
Jesus offers. He says in his earthly ministry,
and this is the message we proclaim, “‘Come to me, all ye who are
weary “‘and who are heavy burdened. and I will give you rest. Jesus
offers freely the goodness of the grace of the gospel. Now,
not all the world comes. Not all those who hear that call
answer it. But we have here, in a sense,
a universal call for people, men and women and boys and girls,
Jew and Gentile, peoples of all the earth to come to God for
praises do him and vows should be performed to him. But he is
the one who hears the prayers of all the earth. The second
stanza is gonna speak of that universal offer of God’s grace
to those who will trust him and rest in him. But this is a picture
we get here in this Psalm of the God of grace. God opens his
doors wide to those who are in need and he offers the gospel.
He offers Jesus, he offers his grace. But what is necessary
for access? We might say this is a universal
call, but who comes? I mean, we’re good Calvinist,
right? We’re good particular atonement type people. Who comes?
It’s the ones who God in his wisdom has seen fit to call,
but what does it specifically say in verse two? It says, oh,
you who hear prayers to you shall flesh come when the iniquities
prevail against me, you do what? You atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose
to bring near. And so what must we have in order
to come before the presence of Almighty God? Can you just say,
here I am? No, we must have atonement. We must have our sins covered
over. We must have blood sprinkled
on the mercy seat on our behalf. And that is the only way entrance
was gained in the old covenant. And that is the only way entrance
to the presence of God is gained in the new covenant. Atonement
is necessary. And so we see in verse three,
when iniquities prevail against me, it doesn’t say we atone for
our transgressions, but it says God atones. God always provides
the way. Go back to the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve sewed up little fig leaves. They tried to cover
up their sin and their shame, and God said it won’t do. And
he killed an animal, he sacrificed, he shed blood, and he gave them
coverings. from animals that were sacrificed. And on and on, those examples
go in the Bible until we come to the one who can truly cover
our sins, and that is Christ. And so we see the mercy of God,
the grace of God, here in verses one through four. We can come
to him in prayer, we can come to him with our needs, we can
come to him in our hour of angst and sorrow and hardship, and
we can receive his mercy. So that’s the God of grace. The
second stanza, verses five through eight, shows us the might of
God. He’s a God of might. And there’s
three powerful images in this little stanza from creation. There’s the mountains, and there’s
the seas, and then the third one is not an act of creation,
it’s the nations. But God is a God of might over. these three main areas. So it
says, 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, 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 shout for joy.” And so God is the God
of might, is the God of power. He’s over the mountains, He’s
over the seas, and He’s even over the nations. Think for just
a moment about each of those. He speaks and it’s as if the
mountains rise up out of the earth. Now, if you’re been stuck
in North Carolina all your life, and the tallest mountain you’ve
ever seen is Mount Mitchell. It’s a little more than a mile
high, and that’s pretty good, right? But maybe you go out in
the western part of our country, and you get some of those, what
do they call them, the 14ers. They’re three times Mount Mitchell.
But maybe you’ve been around the world, and you’ve seen Kilimanjaro,
or Everest, or some of these large ones. The mountains can
rise thousands and thousands of feet in elevation. And this passage teaches us that
it is God who established the mountains, verse six tells us.
In a sense, he had them rise up out of the ground. And the second image is one of
the seas. Now, we’re not too scared of going out on a boat.
In fact, we live in a nation where lots of people about this
time of year are paying to go on cruises. They’re paying to
go out in the open sea. They’re paying to be on the sea. But think about in the ancient
Near East, people were deathly afraid of the sea. Remember the
story of Jonah and how he was supposed to go to Nineveh and
he got on a boat not to Nineveh and what happened? The sea rose. Waves were tumultuous. People
were scared out of their wits. And their feeling, the way they
felt in that particular story of the Bible, is how most people
felt about the sea. The sea was unpredictable. It
was a monster that could eat you. It could swallow you up
and you could never ever return. Now, we have mastered the sea
a little bit this year. On a couple of occasions, our
family has gone on to these battleships that are on display. We went
to some in Charleston last summer and Recently, we went to the
USS North Carolina down in Wilmington. Those are big boats, right? They’re
steel. They’re strong. They’re mighty.
They’re a little radar spin. You know, they have the compass
that even 75 years or so ago during the World War, they could
not be lost at sea. You know, they weren’t like Christopher
Columbus and Magellan and all those folks who had their little
apparatus and they measured rise over run and they tried to figure
out and plot where they were. We can go out on the sea and
we can do pretty well. We can call, we can get into stress,
but not so in the ancient Near East. And so it is significant
for the people of Israel in the ancient Near East to understand
that God is the God of the seas. It says in verse seven, he can
still the roaring of the seas. He can still the roaring of their
ways. Think about Christ and his disciples
scared out of their wits. The little bitty Galilean sea
was raging and their little boat was pitching and tossing and
probably taking on water. The rain was coming down in sheets.
And what did Jesus say? Peace, be still. and his word,
his power is still for us this day. And so we have faith in
the one who can cause the mountains to rise. We have faith in the
one who can cause the sea to be still, and he can enter the
tumult of our lives and do the same. But what about the nations?
It seems to tell us in verse seven at the end, he can still
the tumult of the peoples. You know, got the Olympics now,
We’re watching North and South Korea be nice. We’re watching
neighboring China, neighboring Russia. Those are places where
there’s been a tumult of the peoples. I mean, we just think
back not too many decades in history of Tiananmen Square.
We think of uprisings here and there, and the people of the
earth can tumult. They can quake and shake and
cause uproars. But our confidence has to rest
in God, whose might can take care of them. So think about
this for just a moment. There’s a lot of shaking and a lot of
quaking in the world. It’s natural, the earth shakes,
the mountains shiver, the seas roar, the winds blow, the rains
come, there’s droughts, there’s all kinds of natural phenomenon
around us that scare us to death. There’s political unrest, there’s
political shaking and quaking, nations rising, nations falling. What do we call it? Arab Springs. have Democratic and Republican
uprisings. We have all this shaking and
quaking going on around us. And for sure, it’s in each of
our lives as we deal with our own struggles, our own families,
our own hardships. And we have to remember that
the God of might is the one who can come into these messes and
to speak into them. And what a great and powerful
word and reminder that is. The third little stanza is verses
nine through 13, and this is where the harvest message comes
in. He says in verse nine, you visit
the earth, you 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,
you settle 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, and 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. I can remember back in high school,
one of my family members got into keeping horses. And so every
spring he would get into getting up hay. And so very often on
an afternoon when it was hot and sunny and the hay had been
raked, it had been lying on the ground, we would be conscripted
into the army of those who would get the hay up. And there was
always fear of storm. There was always fear of darkness.
There was always fear of all the little things that can spoil
getting the harvest of hay up. And I remember the intensity
and the sweat and the itchiness and the pain and the backache
all for getting up hay. And that’s just a little taste
of agrarian life. I mean, how many of us wake up every spring
and say, I need to take every dollar I have and I need to plow
my field, plant my field, and I need to pray for rain. I need
to pray for a favorable season. And you know now we live in a
time where you can hire a big firm like Syngenta out of Greensboro
and they come and they look at your fields and they prepare
your soil and it’s all computer generated and you know you’re
You’ve seen these things, they GPS drop seeds into the oil. You manage your crops by computer
and by satellite and by GPS and by chemicals. It’s amazing how
they do it. We have farm subsidies. If your
crops fail, you just call on Uncle Sam and he helps you out.
loans for your farms and your equipment that are subsidized
by the government. And so we’ve taken a little bit of the nerve-wracking
nature out of farming, but I imagine it’s still pretty tough. That’s
the mindset you have to have when you look at Psalm 65. We
go to the Harris Teeter and we get our cereal. And if it’s on
sale, we get three boxes and we get our Breyers ice cream.
What is it you get, Gene? Doesn’t matter. But we get it. It’s always there. It’s always
there. That’s right. It doesn’t matter. The milk is
there. We don’t milk the cow. We don’t
keep the cow from getting sick. We don’t wake up at 4 in the
morning and put the grain out. We don’t feed the chickens. I
mean, maybe we’re little armchair farmers sometimes and we raise
a chicken or three. But we don’t live the agrarian lifestyle where
you wake up before dawn, and you work all day, and you work
until sundown, and you go to bed, and you lie on your pillow,
and you really say your prayers, saying, dear God, please help
this crop to grow, because my life, my well-being, my comfort,
and others who depend on me are praying with me. And so here’s
the God of plenty. He’s visited the earth. He has
watered it. He’s greatly enriched it. The
river of God is full of water. Notice some of the imagery there.
You provide grain for so you have prepared it. You water its
furrows abundantly. You’re talking about an agrarian
people in the old covenant who rarely saw rain. How many of
you are a little worn out with the rain? It’s going to come
back tomorrow. You know we’re tapping our foot and we’ve mopped
the entry room enough and we got wet shoes and wet towels
and You know, for me, I don’t like the rain as much, because
I got to walk the dog, and I don’t like bringing a messy dog, and
so I got to clean his paws. And after a while, I just get
tired of rain. But you know what we’ll say about
summertime, when our grass isn’t so green? Boy, sure wish it would
rain. And so I’m thankful for it now. It’s wonderful. But notice
the images. You water its furrows abundantly.
You settle its ridges. You soften it with showers. You
bless its growth. You crown the year with bounty.
Your wagon tracks overflow. with abundance. You can just
see the pictures, the puddles and the furrows, the puddles
and the wagon tracks, the pastures of the wilderness overflow, the
hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves
with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, and they,
these are the crops, they shout and they sing together. This
is the God of plenty. Now we know in the Old Testament,
we know about times of famine, We know there were times when
there was not plenty, when the locust came and ate the crops.
We know about the times when things were not like they are
here in the Psalm 65. but aren’t we grateful that God
provides for us so richly? So here’s a Psalm. It takes us
out of David in hot water. It takes us out of David being
chased, David being pursued. It takes us out of the realm
of enemies. And it reminds us of the goodness of God. The goodness
of God and that we can approach him through the atoning work
of Christ. The goodness of God and his might to raise up mountains
and to control the seas and even the peoples. But the goodness
of God to provide us with every daily blessing. that we need,
and so we ought to leave here this night with confidence in
this, our God of grace and might and plenty. So let’s pray together. Our great God and heavenly Father,
we bless you this night for being Jehovah Jireh, our provider.
We thank you for your grace that is sufficient. We thank you for
your power that is able, and we thank you for your provision
that helps us live every day Lord, give us thankful hearts
for all that we have. Give us contentment when we are
without. And we pray that you would help
us as we work to provide for our own needs, to give to the
church, but also to help the poor. Lord, you’ve given us so
much. Help us to be thankful, but help
us also to share and be gracious to those without. We ask it in
Christ’s name. Amen.