Psalm 111
Let’s give our attention now
to the word of the living God. This is Psalm 111. Praise the Lord. I will give
thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the
upright, in the congregation. Great are the works of the Lord,
studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty
is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused
His wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
He provides food for those who fear Him. He remembers His covenant
forever. He has shown His people the power
of His works and giving them the inheritance of the nations.
The works of His hands are faithful and just. All His precepts are
trustworthy. They are established forever
and ever. and are to be performed with
faithfulness and uprightness. He sent redemption to his people.
He has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is
his name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom and those, all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever. Let’s pray together. Our Lord,
your precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever
and ever and are to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
So now, Lord, give us strength to hear, to believe, to understand,
and most of all, to put into practice in our lives, for your
glory and others’ good, these things which we now hear. And
in the name of Christ, we pray, amen. You may be seated. But we want to take a break today
from our regular study in the book of Acts and consider a Thanksgiving
psalm. I believe this is the first Thanksgiving
Sunday that I’ve been here in the six or so years. I’ve always
been away and somebody else has always filled in. So I had a
good time this week looking at various places in scripture that
we could go and think about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is It’s a day off
for most of us. And since Friday comes after
Thursday, it’s a long weekend bonus, right? That’s what Thanksgiving
is in America. It’s also a 30,000 calorie day,
right? You have to eat the pecan pie,
the chocolate pie, the chest pie, the carrot cake. You have
to eat all the good things. It’s a sports day. It’s a shopping
day now. And isn’t it a far cry? from
Thanksgiving several hundred years ago. Isn’t it a far cry
from when the settlers sailed and suffered much in the early
days of our nation? The year after they came, the
ones who survived, the ones who made it through a harsh winter,
they set aside a day for giving thanks to God and to bless his
name for all his many and wonderful providences. Their Thanksgiving was not rooted
in American prosperity. Their Thanksgiving did not include
a Black Friday sale. Their Thanksgiving did not involve
college football, NFL football, the Maui Invitational, and all
the other endless sporting events that, yes, I do watch some of
them. It was not a thoughtless meal. They had sailed across the ocean,
they had survived, they had many hard providences of God and many
wonderful providences of God. It makes our Thanksgiving look
piddly, doesn’t it? They had food on their table.
It was hard-fought. It was not from the Harris Teeter
or the long-expected Publix. It was not from the shelves of
Walmart or the cooks at Whole Foods or wherever it is, you
get your groceries. Our Thanksgivings are piddly
in comparison to those who’ve gone before us. And our list,
if we make time to take a list, it’s piddly stuff. Thank the
Lord for food. Thank the Lord for football season.
Thank the Lord for shopping in Black Friday deals and that new
97 inch TV that I was able to get without getting into a fight.
We thank the Lord for stuff. We thank the Lord for things
we can see, things we can touch, things we can enjoy because we’re
consumers. right? And we consume. And so
what are we thankful for? We’re thankful for things we
see and things we can digest. And that’s about it in American
Thanksgiving, isn’t it? And that’s if we give it the
30 seconds, I think a big marker of our culture comes about 25
years ago. Uh, the great theologian, Bart
Simpson, We were not allowed to watch the Simpsons growing
up. I now know why, but Bart Simpson sits down to Thanksgiving
dinner with his family. He’s asked to say the blessing
and he says, dear God, I don’t know why we’re thanking you.
We bought all this stuff with our own money. That’s about the
stuff of our theological, our thankfulness, our convictions
these days. And I want us to take Psalm 111,
and I hope to encourage in your minds and in your hearts, but
in your Thanksgiving week, to have a thicker Thanksgiving,
a thoughtful Thanksgiving, a theological Thanksgiving. And I think as
we make our way through this passage, through this Psalm,
you’ll see reasons for thanking God, yes, for the stuff we should,
but for the deeper things in life. I want us to see first
in this passage, you see it in verses one and verses 10, praise
is due. You can equate maybe praise and
thanksgiving in our passage is a similar word, is a word of
equivalence, but the first thing, praise is due. Look at how the
Psalm begins and then how it ends. Verse one, praise the Lord. And then you jump down to verse
10, the very last phrase, his praise endures forever. You might say this is a no duh
kind of point. Praise is due, praise is due
God. But I think we forget worship.
Praise, thanksgiving, these are verbs in the scriptures and often
they are found in the imperative form. Now you know my little
saying, what’s an imperative? It’s when mom opens the back
door and hollers the word supper, right? And what does that word
supper mean? It means get home, get washed,
and get to the table. You know what an imperative is.
It’s a verb that has an exclamation point. It’s a do it verb. Praise
is a verb. Thanksgiving is a verb. Worship
is a verb. And we have another little saying
around here, saved people sing. Thankful people give thanks,
we could say. Happy people, content people,
trusting people give praise. So praise is due, and praise
is due God. And I want you to think about
this. Praise is due God in the moment by moment events of life. But I want you to think about
praise and thanksgiving eternally. You read the book of Revelation.
You see glimpses into the throne room of heaven, say in Ezekiel
and other places in the Bible. We catch a glimpse of what is
going on in the heavenly places, and it’s eternal praise. Worthy
is the lamb who was slain. Worthy is the lamb who paid for
our sins. There’s constant ongoing praise
in heaven. And when we gather in worship
on Sunday, We connect with those whose spirits have been made
perfect. We worship together with the saints who’ve gone before
us. But when we die, we enter that congregation of praise.
And in the new heavens and the new earth, there will be eternal
praise of Almighty God. And so praises do God. moment by moment in your lives,
Sunday by Sunday in your lives, but it is due God forever and
ever and ever night and day. The scriptures tell us the creatures
and the saints in heaven bow before the almighty God, giving
him, giving him thanks. So Thursday, Thanksgiving, it’s
nice to have a special day. It’s nice to have a time set
aside for worship, but I hope you give thanks before every
meal. I hope you give thanks day by day as God’s mercies are
evident in your life, the spiritual mercies, the physical provisions,
but praise is due Almighty God. There’s a second thing this passage
teaches us. Not only is praise due, praise
is public. Notice what the psalmist says
in verse one, after he gives the capstone verse, praise the
Lord, he says, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart
in the company of the upright and in the congregation. This
is pretty common with many other psalms in the scripture. It’s
pretty common in particular the psalms where David says, okay,
Lord, I’m in trouble. I’m in distress. I’m in hot water.
People are attacking me. The devil is after me. Life’s
not going well. Being king, being warrior, being
the Messiah, the little M Messiah is hard work. There’s Saul and
there’s the Philistines. There’s enemies who hate me.
There’s my own son, in some cases, who have come against him. David, when he says, oh God,
I’m in hot water, deliver me. He generally says at the end,
and I will go to church. And I will tell everybody who
will listen how good you have been to me. And so praise is
due God, but praise is public. And I want you to think about
it practically in this way. When you come to church week
by week, when you come into the house of God, into the congregation
of God week by week, our praise together is public before God,
but it’s, it’s public before each other. Most of us know each
other reasonably well. We know some more intimately
or maybe more details of life. I know most of all of you pretty
well. And so when I’m up here singing,
there’s times where I think that word is going to hit this person.
That phrase is going to hit that person. Maybe this person who’s
been going through this this week is thinking that phrase
is particularly important to them. And there’s something about
when our praise is public, it’s a witness to one another. that
we love God and he’s been good to us, but it’s also, it’s an
encouragement. It’s synergistic, right? It’s
energizing. It’s electrifying to be in church
together with other people to whom God has been good and gracious
and kind. And so the converse of that,
the opposite of that is, well, what happens when we don’t come?
Well, there’s less singing. There’s less praise. There’s
less encouragement. There’s an interesting phenomenon
this day and time. I’ve read about it in recent
months, but I’ve experienced it only briefly in my life. If you go to a lot of churches
today, and I served a church that had this for a brief time
until we corrected it. The pastor is not worshiping
with the congregation. They’ve got the little praise
people up there doing all the things they do. And the pastor
is off in a green room, drinking coffee, eating donuts, and getting
ready to come out like a cuckoo clock, cuckoo, and preach, and
then pop back in and go back to the green room to the next
service. And then he cuckoos again and comes back in. And he’s not worshiping with
the people. I remember R.C. Sproul telling the story of being
at the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology with James
Montgomery Boyce and some of those older men who’ve gone on
to be with the Lord. They were giants in theology
in another generation and they would worship together and they
would sing the hymns together from their hearts without even
cracking a hymnal. How many times do you go to church
today and the guy who’s going to preach to you, he’s not even
in there worshiping with you. That’s a strange thing. Praise
is public. It’s together. It’s a wonder
to be in the congregation, singing God’s praises, telling God who
he is and what he’s done and how meaningful it is to us as
individuals and congregations. Praise is public. I can remember
as a kid, We had a little section in our service, and I will never
add one of these because of my experience. But we had this little
section in our church service where you could get up and publicly
say something. Now, the rule was it had to be
brief, and it never was. It had to be beneficial, and
it probably was to the speaker. And it had to be biblical. And
no, it was always self-centered, not brief. self-absorbent, which
is why I would never do it. But there’s a sense where you
could biblically argue there ought to be a time in public
worship where people can speak out and say, this is how good
God has been. This is how wonderful God has
been. We do it through song. We do it through prayers. We
have our way of doing it. But there’s a sense where that
would be a good thing. That would be a helpful thing.
So praise is due. Praise is public. There’s a third
thing about praise. Praise is studied. Now look with me, if you will,
in verses two and verse four. Verse two says, great are the
works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. And
then verse four, he has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. Praise is studied. We like to go to ball games,
sporting events. They’re something fun our family
enjoys. And the best thing to do when
you get to a ball game is get your seat, get comfortable. But
you get the program. You get the team program. And you open it up and you look
at the pictures and read the vignettes of past victories,
you know, Cotton Bowls and Sugar Bowls and ACC Championships and
all the rest. And then you get to the roster.
And what does it have? Zero through 99. And it has their
name, their weight, their height, where they went to high school,
what city they’re from, what position they play. And if they’re
really good, they get a whole page on their statistics because
they’ve rushed for so many yards or passed for so many yards.
But it’s helpful to think of it this way. It’s hard to holler
at the ball field if you don’t know who you’re hollering for,
right? It’s hard to sing in church when you don’t come studied.
When you don’t come intelligently, when you don’t come remembering
who God is and what God has done. And so praise is to be studied
praise. You’ll worship better. And you
can even say this about your prayer life. The more you know
God, his character and his actions and his promises, the better
you can worship, but also the better you can pray. And so praise
is due. It is due God alone. Praise is
public. It’s in the assembly. Praise
is studied. We love God with our minds. Praise
is specific. And this point I want to land
on and labor on for just a minute. Praise is specific. Psalm 111,
I’m going to explain a little bit about 111. and give a little
summary of it and then show you how it works. Psalm 111 and Psalm
112 go together. They’re what we call acrostic
Psalms. The Hebrew alphabet is, well,
it’s not A to Z, but just pretend for the moment it is, A to Z.
So every line represents a letter of the alphabet. And so the Psalm,
both of them, 111 and 112, are structured A, B, C, D, all the
way to Z, except in the Hebrew alphabet, that is. And Psalm
111 says, this is who God is. This is his character, and these
are his works. And then Psalm 112 says, therefore
you, Christian, you God-fear, you live out of that truth. So we’re only gonna look at Psalm
111 today, But in Psalm 111, we’re gonna think about it just
isolated, praise is specific. Psalm 111, A to Z, lists the
character of God and the works of God. So an easy way to say
something, somebody says, when you go to church, what do you
do? Well, we sing, we pray, we give offerings, we listen to
the sermon, we don’t get out at 12. Describe all you’re describing. But one of the easiest things
for you to do is you say, we adore God. We worship God for
his character, his actions, and his promises. Well, in this passage,
if you got those three character and actions and promises, you
could say, we worship God for his character, his works, and
his covenant. His covenant would be his promises,
his oath. His works would be his actions. His character would
be who he is. Now, if you read through Psalm
111, which we have, and we’ll pick through a few of these verses
in a minute, you’re gonna see the character and the actions
of God mix. It’s gonna say, bless God for
this, worship God for that, praise God for this. And at one point,
it might list a thing he does. And at another point, it’ll list
what he is. But you’re gonna see that who
God is and what God does actually begin to mix. What God does is
based on who he is. And so you’re gonna see some
of his actions be described as righteous. And you might think,
well, righteous is his character. But then we think only a righteous
person would do these things. So yesterday I decided I was
gonna make myself a little cheat sheet. I’m funny this way. I
wrote the Lord and I wrote his character and I wrote his purposes.
or his works. This is the list of the character
of God in this Psalm. The Lord, our God, Yahweh, he
is a God of splendor. He is a God of majesty. He is
a God of righteousness. He is a God who is gracious and
merciful. He is powerful, faithful, just. He is trustworthy. He is established. He is eternal. He is holy and
he is awesome. And if you dig into this passage
a little more, you’re going to see the center of his character
is gracious, merciful, holy, awesome. It’s a pretty amazing
view when you think on this scripture and you meditate on it. Our God
is full of splendor, majesty, righteousness, grace, mercy,
power, faithfulness, justice. He is trustworthy. He is established. He is eternal. And he is holy
and awesome. And then if you go through the
psalm and list his works, the works of his hands are great.
The works of his hands are wondrous. He provides, he gives, he feeds,
he does not forget. He gives an inheritance and he
is a God of redemption. But don’t you see how a God of
splendor does wondrous works? You start to see the character
of God and the actions of God or the works of God mixed. How
a God full of splendor and majesty does wondrous works, a God who
works Great works with his hands is full of splendor and majesty.
A God who provides food, a God who gives every need, a God who
does not forget for sure is gracious. He is merciful. He is powerful. He is faithful and just. He gives
an inheritance. He redeems. He is holy and awesome. So you look at these two lists
and you see all the separate things and it’s a wonderful list.
And then you go back through and read the psalm. And you see
them blended together. We’re going to, we’re going to
do that. We’re going to read verses two through nine. And I want you
to think as we read through them, the highlights, it’s like skipping
across big stones, across a body of water and getting to the other
side. It’s going to speak of God’s character for sure. His
covenant. but it’s going to give references
to Sinai and you’ll see them as we read. He feeds, he fed
his people in the wilderness. He redeems, he rescued them out
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It’s because of his
covenant. He, he gives them an inheritance.
Where are they going when they’re rescued? They’re going to the
promised land. God is a God who gives and provides
and redeems. So look at verse, Two, it says,
Great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in
them. Full of splendor and majesty
is his work and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused
his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious. and merciful. He provides food for those who
fear him. He remembers his covenant forever.
He has shown his people the power of his works and giving them
the inheritance of the nations. The works of his hands are faithful
and just. All his precepts are trustworthy.
They are established forever and ever. They are to be performed
with faithfulness and uprightness. He sent redemption to his people.
He has commanded His covenant forever. Holy and awesome is
His name. So all of this to say praise
is specific. We praise you, O Lord, for your
character. We bless you, our God, for your
actions, your works. We adore you, Lord, for your
promises, your covenant. Our praise is specific. That’s why we love to sing the
hymns of the faith. Nobody writes like they did in
days of old. Although we sang that middle
hymn we just sang was from 2014. It’s a rare occasion that today
people think that thoughtfully about who God is and we can sing
those words. But praise is specific and we
ought to be specific in our praise to Almighty God. There’s one
last thing to think about this psalm. Praise is heartfelt. You see it in verse one. I will
give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. And then verse two, greater the
works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them. This week I was in a restaurant
and greeted by the server and it was pretty much what you want.
And I looked at the person who was eating with me and said,
boy, this is going to be a rootin tootin meal here. Uh, which to be honest was a little
better than, you know, they plop down at the table. Hey, how you
doing? This is my name. I’m going to be your server.
I want to know your kids, grandkids and all that other information.
It was a little better than that, but it was, it was, it was not
perky. It was not joyful. It was, well,
I don’t know when quitting time was, but I’m sure they had it
on their mind. We come to church like that. We come to church
and praises do God, but we haven’t studied. Praises do God, but
we’ve not even thanked Him for the day. Praises do God, and
our hearts are so full of anxiety about Monday and Tuesday and
Wednesday and Thursday and whatever else. We come to church so harried
and worried, and well, our praise is not heartfelt. In fact, we
get a little agitated when we get to verse five. Well, couldn’t
we just sing three verses? Because I got a roast in the
oven. Or, you know, Lord, I’ve got so much to do, and we haven’t
given him the day, but praise ought to be heartfelt. I will
give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. In the company of the upright,
great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in
them. Have we so delighted in the Lord before we arrive that
we can’t wait to get here? and blow the roof off this place
with our singing, to encourage one another with our heartfelt
praise. And I think we often come cold
and unaffectionate. Here I am, Lord, I gotta be here.
Get it over quickly. I’ve got things to do. Well,
these worship verbs, praise, thanksgiving, honor, glory, worship,
bow down, all these are, as we said, Imperatives, things you
must do. But these imperatives in the
Psalms, they come with modifiers, they come with descriptor words,
and those are commanded to. God never says, well, come as
you are grumpy, come as you are unthankful, come as you are.
That’s why we confess our sins pretty early in the service.
We come and we bump into the holiness of God. We come and
bump into the majesty of God and we say to ourselves, I can’t
sit here much longer unless I confess, unless I get right with God,
unless I make things right with him again. And so it’s why we
have a confession. We, we, we come weak, we come
sinful, but by the time the end of the service, by the time the
service ends, that heart feeling ought to be there. But I want
to say something really important about praise is heartfelt. Praise
is heartfelt in the hearts of the redeemed. Pagan people do
not worship God. People who are at odds with God
and who hate him, they do not thank him. They do not acknowledge
him. They do not bless his name. They think they owe God nothing
and God owes them nothing except to be left alone. heartfelt praise
that’s public and studied and specific and that is due God
can only come from the heart of the redeemed. That’s why we
have the little saying saved people sing. Now, when we say
that saved people sing, we’re saying, if you’re saved, you
better sing because, um, you know, this, this just doesn’t
work. Right. But saved people saying only
saved people sing. And so I want to encourage you
this day, this hour, to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You have seen from this passage of scripture that he alone is
God. He alone is creator and sustainer
and redeemer. It’s his character and his works. It’s his strong right arm. It’s
his mighty hand that provide rain and harvest and plenty and
provision. It’s this God our forefathers
worshiped because they knew in a hour of rare clarity that they
saw life and death. They saw reality. We live in
plenty and we can get more. And if we hadn’t got it, we can
borrow it. But God, we see through the scripture. It is from his
fatherly hand. It is from his gracious heavenly
provision that we have what we have. And so let me encourage
you this day, if you do not yet have faith in Christ, see this
God who provides. And yes, it’s rain and harvest
and plenty, but most of all, it’s Jesus. He provides a way
of salvation. God could have left us dead in
our sins and trespasses. He could have left us in our
tombs and in our chains and in our slavery, but he sent his
own son. And Paul says so well in the
book of Corinthians, he says, he who was rich for our sakes
became poor. He left the splendor and the
majesty and the glory of heaven and came to earth. So when Jesus
came to this earth, he became a man. He was under the curses
of life in this world. He endured the misery of injustice. He endured the cross, the wrath
of God. His body bore the wrath for your sins and mine. And so
come to faith in Jesus, the son, the only son of the father who
provides richly. And then week after week, come
worship him. Come give public praise to the
one to whom it is due. Read your Bible, study, be specific
in your praise. Let your heart be so overwhelmed
with joy. Let your heart be so overwhelmed
with joy that you can’t help but praise God. Now, many of
us in the room have known our God a long time. We’ve worshiped
him. We’ve been in church week by week. And some Sundays we’re
just kind of lucky to be here. Put a little effort into it.
We send out the bulletins. Some of you get them by mail,
maybe by Friday, Saturday, but it’s there on Wednesday. You’re
welcome to take a hymn book home. You can mark it up, look at it.
You can begin your Sunday in advance, reading the passages,
reading the hymns. Every Sunday is like a chef prepared
meal. We don’t pick stuff at random.
We try to build a service that will meet our spiritual needs. And so come feed on God, praise
him in a studied and specific way, in a heartfelt way. And I think you’ll find the world
will fade. The anxiety will disappear. The
covetousness will subside and God will bless you mightily.
Let’s pray together. Our gracious God, we thank you
that in your word, but also in your creation, And in every one
of our lives, every life here that knows you and walks with
you, you have shown yourself to be a faithful and mighty and
gracious and kind God. You’ve done things for us, small
things and great things. And you’ve even, from your fatherly
hand, been displeased with us and given us hard providences. But all of it is for our good.
All of it is so that we will look to you. So Lord, this day,
teach us to see you, our father, our provider, our God, and help
us to count our blessings, to name them one by one, the spiritual
and the physical, and help us to have hearts of thanksgiving
this week. And may our hearts that are full
of thanks be evident to others so they too will think differently
and give thanks differently, all for your glory. And we pray
this in the name of Jesus, our great God, amen. We want to sing
of God’s goodness, and we will stand together and use number
181, now thank we all our God.