Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – PSALM 65

Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 65 is also our sermon text. We’ll read it through once more. Having read it responsibly and also sung it, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Psalm 65. To the chief musician, a psalm of David, a song. Praise is awaiting you, oh God, in Zion. And to you the vow shall be performed. Oh you who hear prayer, to you all flesh will come. Iniquities prevail against me. As for our transgressions, you will provide atonement for them.

Blessed is the man you choose and cause to approach you that he may dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, of your holy temple. By awesome deeds in righteousness, you will answer us, oh God of our salvation. You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of the far off seas, who established the mountains by his strength, being clothed with power. You who still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples.

They also who dwell on the farthest parts are afraid of your signs. You make the outgoings of the morning and evening rejoice. 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 ridges abundantly. You settle its furrows. You make it soft with showers. You bless its growth. You crown the year with your goodness.

And your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks. The valleys also are covered with grain. They shout for joy. They also sing.

Let’s pray. Father, we do pray that you would open our ears and our hearts to understand this psalm, to rejoice in it, to rest, Lord God, in your calling, in your providence, in your sovereign grace that causes us to rejoice as we sit here between 1998 and the year 1999. Help us, Lord God, to count and measure our days, knowing indeed that you do crown the year with goodness. Help us to understand these things better now by your Holy Spirit’s gift. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. And the younger ones may as well.

Now, Moses goes back to Egypt—which Israel has become—to lead his people out of bondage because the people that sought his life are dead. So Moses returns to Egypt to deliver his people. He tells Pharaoh that Israel is his firstborn. Jesus is the Son of God, the firstborn of God. He’s also the greater Moses who goes back to Egypt, now into Israel that’s become Egypt, with Herod coming like Pharaoh, filling the children of the covenant. And Jesus goes there to lead his people out in a greater exodus.

We said that greater exodus was accomplished. Our Savior said at his death in Jerusalem—remember the Mount of Transfiguration—that he spoke of his departing, his exodus that was to come.

So we’ve been led out of sin and bondage. And so that is the great advent of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring us into freedom in terms of salvation from sin and bondage. But it is sin, and it is also bondage—and we’ll see that portrayed in this psalm as well today. I pray that God might cause your season as you meditate on the good gifts of God in this past year and his grace to come in the future year—may use this psalm to bring you peace and rest and joy in our Savior.

This psalm was probably originally written for one of the harvest festivals, with the pictures of the created order being filled with fruit, et cetera. Some people think First Fruits specifically. Turn if you will in your scriptures to Deuteronomy 26. We’ll read verses 1-11.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11. This is about the first fruits offering, the provision for it that’s made in God’s word. And you’ll see that this psalm really fits in nicely with what goes on in Deuteronomy 26:1-11.

And it shall be when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and you possess it and dwell in it that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground which you shall bring from your land that the Lord your God has given you and put it in a basket and go to the place where your Lord your God chooses to make his name abide—to go up to Jerusalem to Zion, which we referenced in the psalm with the first fruit offering—and you shall go to the one who is priest in those days and say to him: I declare to the Lord your God that I have come to the country which the Lord swore to our fathers to give to us.

Then the priest shall take the basket out of your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall answer and say before the Lord your God: My father was a Syrian, or a wandering Aramean, about to perish. And he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number. And there he became a nation great, mighty, and populous. But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us.

Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers. And the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm with great terror and with signs and wonders. He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land which you, oh Lord, have given me. His presence causes the abundance of the earth.

Then you shall set them up before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. So you shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given to you in your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.

A harvest festival. They acknowledge their salvation from God. They came forward in procession to the mighty city, to Zion, to the temple of God, to the citadel, the fortress where God dwells, bringing a picture, an emblem of the produce of the land, saying: We deserve nothing, but you delivered us from Egypt. You’re the one who graciously brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey. We bring the produce of that land to you now, Lord God, in recognition that it’s your grace, and your grace alone, that empowers us and enriches us and enriches the land.

And they’re to present that offering by way of worship before God. Once a year, the first fruits was offered. And then they were there to thank God not just for the first fruits, but for everything thing that the Lord God had given to them.

Again, verse 11: You shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given to you in your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.

We don’t have an agricultural cycle. Most of us have a calendar cycle. And then when you throw in Christmas into the mix in our particular culture, we have sort of this last week a picture of first fruits, a picture of the plentitude which God has given to us when we exchange gifts with one another. I can’t think of a more bustling, joyous sort of celebration than we had here last Sunday. The exchange of gifts and cards and the produce of that God has so graciously given to us.

So at the end of the year and the beginning of a year, we tend to look at how we did. The IRS wants us to look at how we did. Our children want us to look at how we did and see if we can give them presents for Christmas, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a time of evaluation. It’s a time to come before God, though, and acknowledge that all the good things he’s given to us are to be thankful for, and we’re to be sort of taking stock in the great things God has given to us.

This psalm fits that measure, and that’s why I wanted to put this sermon in before we return to Matthew for two more sermons before we go back to the stuff on marriage. I wanted to look at this psalm that we sing nearly every year in this church in some version about how God crowns the year with his goodness. So I want us to consider that today.

Now, this psalm—properly understood, or at least I think the way to understand it—there are three separate sections, and I break it up a little differently than other commentators do. The first section is this liturgical procession to God. They’re going up, as it were, to offer the first fruits, or whatever it is, to pay the vow to God, to worship.

And then in the middle, God’s sovereignty in terms of creation and in his providence, or provision after creation—his sustenance—is declared, which yields joy from the people.

And then the third section is about the procession of God now to his people, or to the land. So in the first section, we’re kind of going up to God, but we acknowledge that he’s the one who calls us to come to him. So it’s not our initiative; it’s his initiative. But we’re proceeding up to worship him. And we have a worship formula given there.

Then in the middle, the assertion of God’s sovereignty, bringing forth joy from his created order. And then at the end, this wonderful picture of God walking in the context of the earth and the earth blossoming forward with beautiful abundance in relationship to the advent or procession of God to the earth.

So that’s the way we’ll look at this, and we’ll start then with this procession of us to God, beginning with the call to worship in the first couple of verses.

Praise is awaiting you, oh God, in Zion. To you the vow shall be performed. Oh you who hear prayer, to you all flesh shall come.

Couple of explanatory notes here. When it says that praise is waiting for you, the word for waiting really is better translated silence. Prayer befits you. There is the indication here that there is silence in the context of the approach to God. This same word that is translated waits—praise waits for you—in Psalm 39:2 it’s the word that’s translated silence in this way: “I was dumb with silence.” So the word really is silence.

Praise is silence for thee. Silence before God is praise. And the point of this opening line is that sometimes our worship of God should simply be to be still and know that he is God. To come before him and for a period of time to silence ourselves before him, to not be tumultuous in our spirits and our concerns and our cares, to quiet ourselves humbly under God.

Sometimes the height of praise for God is to fall silent before him in humble submission to his grandeur and majesty. Silence is befitting God. Silence, prayer, is indeed God’s place.

Now it says that this is true in Zion. Zion is an interesting reference. Nobody knows exactly what it means, but it is used in reference to the particular geography—the ridge where Jerusalem would be located. Remember, David took over that area from the Canaanites and it was a well-fortified ridge, and then the temple was placed close to there as well.

So Zion can mean the whole area of Jerusalem, the city of God. It can mean that particular southernmost part of where two ridges meet—so a well-protected fortress—or it can refer to the temple itself. And the temple, of course, is that kind of fortress or citadel of God. And so Zion is this place of secure rest in the great King whose castle we enter, that cannot be taken unless he gives it up—of course which he does do at times; he departs—but as long as he is there, Zion is the secure place of God.

And so when they use Zion instead of Jerusalem, the emphasis seems to be upon the dwelling place of God and the secureness of that citadel or dwelling place of God. So praise before him, silence praise is before him in Zion, the great place to him, the vow shall be performed.

You who hear prayer—the Hebrew there indicates he is the one who continually hears prayer. He is the one who wants to and is continually involved in the activity of hearing our prayers. It doesn’t mean that we got to get his attention. It means that his character is to hear the prayers of his people. To him all flesh shall come.

So verses one and two can be seen as kind of a call to worship on the part of God. His people come before him in procession to pay the vow. But when we get there, just as we get here, there’s this confession of sin that occurs.

Iniquities prevail against me. And again, more literally, it’d be words of iniquity prevail against me. Accusatory words prevail against me because I’m sinful. As for our transgressions, what’s going to be done with them? There’s this confession of sin as we come before the presence of God.

And then the answer to it: You will provide atonement for these sins. God provides the covering for the sins of his people. There’s then the assurance of forgiveness.

Blessed is the man you choose and cause to approach you that he may dwell in your courts.

This is a procession of us toward God as we engage ourselves in every Lord’s day. But it’s a procession that is not initiated by us. Parades and processions in our culture have changed. In ancient times, processions would be picturing God’s proceeding to his people with life-giving gifts and a show of authority over them. But today, parades—which are processions—come from the people to the people with no reference to God. So they stress man’s initiative, man’s abilities, man’s power and might.

Of course, one of the most awful demonstrations of an ungodly procession was the Soviet Union when on May Day, they’d always have all those missiles. The only thing man has to show is his ability to jump up and down and throw big weapons. But processions and parades were typically seen as related to God.

We went to a little parade, a Fourth of July parade in Canyonville, I think. There was another parade, I don’t remember what it was for later on in the summer. And they’d always—they have a lot of tractors in the parade, all these tractors dialed up. Well, that’s kind of more like this parade because it’s parading the fact that God has blessed his people in the abundance of the earth.

So our procession to God is his initiative. He calls us. We are the ones who are chosen by him. The one who is assured of forgiveness is the one that God chose to approach him. You see, it’s very important to put God’s sovereignty in calling us to this place of worship. You didn’t choose ultimately. God chose you to salvation. God chose you today to approach him in worship. Now, you can rebel against that and not come, but God chooses you and causes you to approach him.

And this is a tremendous blessing that we are chosen and drawn by God into his very presence, that we may dwell in his courts. But more than that—so we have the call, we’ve got the assurance of prayer for forgiveness, we’ve got the assurance of forgiveness, and then we have satisfaction, satiation from God.

Verse 4B: We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, of your holy temple.

Now, understand this. We’re not just blessed by having court privileges to come before God and give him praise. This says that we are to be satisfied, satiated, filled to abundance with the goodness of God’s house, of his holy temple. We become house servants, house guests of God in special convocative worship as a picture of what we are in all of our lives. We’re house servants. We’re called to the house and we get to have good things.

Now, he feeds us with his word—the progression: call, repentance, assurance of forgiveness, and then the word of God fills us up. And here at RCC, we have the great blessing of having a meal where we’re satiated with good things. You know, one thing I know about Jeff Con is he likes Diet Cokes. And so when he comes in cans—so when we have him over to the house, I try to get some Diet Coke in the refrigerator so when Jeff comes over, I can give him a Diet Coke. Okay? What’s that got to do with anything?

Well, God’s like that. See, he knows who we are. He is serving us in a sense by giving us the blessings of his house. You know what you like to eat. You know what you like to drink. Most of you have favorites. And you know when you go home by yourself, you know what you like to do, right? And when guests come over, that’s what Christian hospitality is: making them feel like they’re part of your house, breaking out the Diet Coke if that’s what they like.

See, you try to meet their needs. You try to make them not just—you don’t try to just feed them or give them foods that they’re not thirsty for. You try to cause them to joy in the produce of your house that God has given to you. Well, that’s what God does. Here, the word satisfied means totally satisfied before God. We’re given house privileges. This is a tremendous blessing that God gives us.

We had Jim Jordan—I mean James B. Jordan—out a couple years ago to family camp, and I think the Lord, in his goodness, took him out for dinner before he went up to Seattle and he ate till he was absolutely stuffed and drank till he was stuffed with good things, good food. And there’s a picture there of what we are properly understood when we come before God and we meditate on his word.

No matter how bad a job I’ve done, the word has been read to you. And he feeds you with that word. He feeds you with the communion elements. He feeds you with the good food that’s been prepared by his people bringing forth his produce. We are satisfied in the house of God. That’s the picture here.

The procession of us to God is to a God who graciously gives us house privileges, who breaks out the Diet Cokes if that’s what we like, as it were, in our redeemed humanity in Christ. There is this procession, the same thing modeling our worship service. And then there is the idea of confident prayer before him in verse 5.

By awesome deeds and righteousness, you will answer us. Oh God of our salvation.

Deeds in righteousness—deeds, awesome deeds are deeds that evoke or provoke fear in a proper sense, the term reverence, awesome appreciation of God’s strength and power to us. But these deeds are done in righteousness or justice, in conformity to the ethical standard of who he is. And these deeds provoke fear and awe in us. He answers us. He hears our prayers and answers. He’s always here in our prayer. That’s the picture earlier in the psalm.

You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth, what’s your confidence today? What’s your hope? What do you confide in? What do you put your trust in? Well, God says that the ones who cause that—he causes to come and approach him—put their confidence in him. Indeed, all the ends of the earth ultimately should put their confidence and hope in the Lord God, and of the far off seas.

His dominion is over his entire domain. The earth represents in the Psalter and in the Old Testament the people of God in the land. The seas represent the gentile nations. So the earth and the seas as well—all of them have their hope or confidence in God. And history is about the procession of all nations, as we saw emblematically by the Magi, up to the place to worship God where he gives us satisfying words and fills us with his word and good gifts and we pray to him. And he causes the hope of all the earth to settle upon him—the nations in the land and as well as the nations in the seas.

Okay, so that first section is this procession of us to God. The second section I see is kind of the hinge section that brings the two together. God’s gracious sovereignty is displayed in verses 6 through 8 and first over creation and providence.

Who is this God that we have come up and worshiped and brought our first fruits to? He is the one who established the mountains by his strength, being clothed with power. God is clothed with power, and he is the one who has set the firmest of things that we can see in our land. You go up to Mount Hood, you look at these big mountains, you go up to the Canadian Rockies—there is nothing more firm than that in our field of vision, you know, creaturely speaking. And the mountains are established at their base by God. In other words, when God created the earth, he’s girded with power, and he sets these building blocks of the mountains in place. Okay? His sovereignty, his power and his might is portrayed for us in the mountains.

And when we see the mountains, that’s what we’re supposed to think about: that God in his sovereignty and in his power brought to pass those mountains and placed them there in terms of creation. But creation moves on to his providence, his sustaining grace, in verse 7.

You who still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.

God doesn’t just establish the great things, but the great things of the sea—he stills in the context of time. So his providence is at work as well as his creation. So up to now, what we’ve seen in this psalm is the redeemer God in the context of worship, the creator God in this portion, and the sustaining or providence God. His redemption, creation, and providence are what are manifested here as being the object of his people’s worship.

God’s sovereignty in creation and providence is portrayed. But this sovereignty is to a particular end. The end is that it might yield reverence and joy.

Verse 8: They also who dwell on the farthest parts are afraid of your signs, afraid in a proper sense of fear and reverence. And you make the outgoings of the morning and evening rejoice.

Now, the outgoings of the morning and evening refers to the east and the west—where the sun comes up, where the sun goes down. It’s outgoings. That’s what the idiom means in the Hebrew text. And so it means from east to west, all nations, all the created order rejoice. So God’s sovereignty is seen not just in an exhibition of his might for its own purpose, but to the end that we as part of his created order might properly reverence and fear him and might rejoice before him.

You know, we’ve said before that Herman Hoeksema said that reprobation—the doctrine of reprobation—serves the doctrine of election. God’s end of everything is not an equal division between heaven and hell. The end of everything is the vast majority of creation and of the nations are part of heaven, are part of those who properly fear and reverence him and rejoice before him. That’s why he’s active in the creation. He’s active in the creation, and his activity in providence is to the end that all the earth might rejoice before him, being properly reverential of his power.

Now, he said this is kind of a hinged section because we’ve worshiped God for who he is in his creation and providence, and he tells us now that sovereignty of his—and his sovereign strength and might—is to the purpose that the created order might be properly reverential and moved to joy. And now we’re going to see just that happening now. The sovereign in this last section of this psalm is going to move in the context of the created order, and the created order is going to rush forth in life and abundance and sing praises to him.

So in verses 9 through 13, now we see a life-giving procession from God. Okay, a life-giving procession from God. And before we get to the specifics, overall what’s going on here is that God’s very passing by these things in the created order are seen as bringing them to life.

I know I’ve seen cartoons like this. I can’t remember what they were, but you can imagine you’ve got kind of a landscape that’s black and white, kind of the flowers aren’t looking that good. Everything’s kind of wilted down. And God comes walking amongst them. And by his advent, by his coming near, by his procession to his created order, everything springs to life. The dry ground is watered. Flowers open up. Color returns. The paths drip with fatness. Everything comes to life, and everything is wonderful and blessed and in abundance because God comes to his people and visits them and causes them to rise up in praise and worship to him.

It’s a beautiful picture painted in verses 9 through 13 of this psalm. Derek Kidner, writing on this, said: “It’d be hard to surpass this evocative telling of the fertile earth observed with love, loving exactness one moment and poetic freedom at the next, culminating in the fantasy of hills and fields putting on their finest clothes and making merry together.”

Beautiful picture of the procession of God, the life-giving procession of God to his created order. Let’s look at it in some detail.

First, his advent, his procession to his people brings life, verses 9 through 12A. And I have listed here some elements—specific elements that are given to us in this psalm:

You visit the earth, verse 9. There’s the key. What we’re going to be seeing now is God visiting the earth. We visited him. Now he comes and visits the earth. You visit the earth and water it. You enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide their grain. You have prepared it. You water its ridges abundantly. You settle its furrows. You make it soft with showers.

Water. Water. Water. Water. The well, the river of God that brings the water of God, life-giving water from above. God brings nourishment to his people. But it isn’t just water because he says you water it, and then in verse 9, you greatly enrich it, or fertilize it. So God brings life-giving nourishment to the dried ground—water and food.

Secondly, God brings growth and productivity, yielding grain. Again, you visit the earth, you water it, you greatly enrich it, you fertilize it, you bring nourishment. The river of God is full of water. You provide their grain, for so you have prepared it. The idea here is that as God waters and feeds his plants, the grain then sprouts forward at the coming of God. And the grain, the provision of blessing and growth itself, is seen as God’s direct hand. You provide their grain. It doesn’t happen naturally apart from the life-giving presence of God somehow in the created order. It happens because God provides the grain. He causes the growth in the very stuff that he has fed and watered.

Third, he has actually prepared this created order for nurture and growth. You provide their grain, for so you have prepared it. God nourishes his people with water and food. God brings forth the actual growth because he has prepared it to receive that water. He has prepared it to receive the food, and he has caused it and prepared it to bring forth life as he moves in the context of what it is.

So God prepares the created order for nurture and growth. And notice that God gives individualized care to the created order as he comes to visit it.

Verse 10: You water its ridges abundantly. The ridges, the top elements of these hills and cliffs. You settle its furrows, the kind of uprising sort of places. You settle those things. You make it soft with showers. You bless its growth. You crown the year with goodness. Verse 12, they drop on the pastures of the wilderness.

Okay, two different sorts. The wilderness doesn’t mean here the barren wilderness. It means the uninhabited area. And the pastures are the places in particular around the meadows where the sheep and other herds would live. That’s the pasture lands, or where the herds live. And then you’ve got the little hills rejoicing on every side.

The pastures are clothed with flocks. The valleys also are covered with grain. So you have this individualized attention. And if you look at the topography of a farmland, there are these meadows where particular vegetation grows and cattle will eat there. Then you’ve got the hills, and a different topography exists in the context of these hills and ridges. In the context of that, a different sort of vegetation would be yielded.

In the context of the specific land itself in Jerusalem, there were places where they would have grain crops—the wadis, the little places that would flood occasionally, kind of canal sort of places. Those things would have grain crops. Other places would have olive trees growing on the sides of the hills. At the lower part of the hill, you’d have grain again kind of bending over as it grew up to maturity. And then at the top parts of the hills, where things can’t grow, you would have different kinds of goats and perhaps sheep in the context of dwelling there.

So the different elements of the topography demonstrate the beauty of the different clothing that God gives to the created order when he brings water and nourishment, when he brings and prepares the growth of the land. It’s for specific different purposes, for different portions of the topographical setting. He deals with the ridges differently than he does the furrows and the pastures differently than he does the meadows. Differentiation, individualization of care from God.

And then five, he actually reforms the topography. You water its ridges abundantly. You settle its furrows. The idea here is the rain is so hard that it changes the topography of the land. The rough places of mounds of earth would be battered down by the rain and made somewhat more smooth. So he actually reforms the topography of the land in this life-giving procession to the land of the created order. You make it soft with showers. You bless its growth.

He brings the softening, then, of the earth itself. The earth now is dried up and hard. And this softening of the earth is different from the settling of the furrows. That’s reformation of topography. But this simply takes the dry land and makes it soft and able then to receive seed and to grow. So he softens the hardened earth in his coming.

You make it soft with showers. He blesses it with growth. You water its ridges abundantly. You settle its furrows. You make it soft with showers. You bless its growth. Again there, God brings forth the growth of the created order.

And then finally, in verse 11 and 12: You crown the year with your goodness. Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness.

The idea here is your paths—could more appropriately be translated your cart tracks. The idea is you’ve got this cart. God is pictured as riding in a cart on the land. And the cart tracks are filled with abundance because the cart is so laden with the produce of the earth that fatness comes off of it. Abundance comes off, and the tracks themselves are strewn with the good grain or the flowers or the olives, whatever it is. His paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness.

He crowns the year with his goodness. And another way to interpret that is: You crown the year of your goodness. The idea isn’t that the year has not been good. The idea is that the year is the year of God’s goodness. It always is for us, no matter what it looks like. And the year is crowned with these particular manifestations of God’s presence to his people.

God is omnipresent. He’s always caring for us. He’s created us. He sustains us. But he comes in particular ways at particular times to crown the year with his goodness to us.

So we have this picture, then, of the blessings of God, the life-giving advent of God to his people. And then this is to the purpose that indeed he would draw his robed people to convocation of joy, in verses 12B and 13.

What’s the result of all this wonderful work of God in coming to the created order? Well, the result is the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed or robed with flocks. You get the picture. The dwelling place of the sheep. The sheep are the clothing to that place. The valleys also are covered or clothed with grain. You see, they’re clothed and robed up before God. They shout for joy. They also sing.

The whole created order—wilderness and valleys—put on their clothes as God’s life-giving water goes by, and they sing forth his praises and rejoice in his presence.

So God’s wonderful blessings to his people. Now this is good. This is good for a farmer. It’s good for us when we feel God coming to us in a particular way to bring us great blessings. But what does it have to do with us today?

Well, I don’t think God cares about the oxen, and I don’t think he cares about the hills. Now that’s maybe overstatement for effect to get your attention. But isn’t that what Paul told us? When God made the law: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he’s threshing out the grain.” Paul says that he wrote this all for your sakes—for our sakes, the Levitical order’s sake. That’s what he says. He wrote it all for our sake.

Now, God cares for the cattle and created order, but the point is by way of comparison, they’re not the apple of God’s eye. Beloved of the Lord, you are—because you’re covenantally in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When God comes and visits his people—he his created order—he’s coming and visiting us.

Remember I said that this hinge point in the center of God’s sovereign causing of the created order to rejoice? Look at verse 7: You who still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people. Those are three parallel expressions. They’re not contrasts. You see, the noise of the seas, the noise of the waves, is the tumults of the people round about Israel. Okay? And when God sets the mountains in place, it’s a picture of his greater work of setting the church, the Zion of God, in place with foundations that cannot be shaken. Everything else can be.

And so when God comes to visit the created order and when the hills respond to his wonderful life-giving presence by being clothed in his grace and rejoicing before him—that’s us. It’s a picture of worship.

The end of the psalm completes what happens at the beginning of the psalm. God calls us to come before him in procession. And we come before him and we go through the liturgical actions of worship. But what is God doing? God is coming down, right? He’s descending from heaven to meet with his people. He’s coming to visit you.

See, he’s coming, and by his very presence in the context of the convocated host, and by his special presence in the context of the Eucharist and in his presence in the preached word of God and the liturgical actions of his people, he is watering you today. He’s watering me. He’s causing us to have fruitfulness. He’s causing us to grow before him with the fruit of the Spirit, with manifestations of his grace.

He’s causing us to recognize that we’re robed with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which we never could have brought to pass. It’s the grace of God that caused that robing—the justification of our Savior to be imputed to our accounts—and then that caused us to go forth in good deeds, picturing the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. We come before him robed up because of his great blessing and grace, and we come before him to sing songs of joy before him on the Lord’s day.

Now, as I said, this is him crowning the year of goodness by his special presence to his people. But this is what he’s always about doing to his beloved. If you think through these specifics of God coming to his people and the manifestation of that by way of the illustration of the created order, we know that God brings us nourishment.

He brings us water—the cleansing waters of baptism, the life-giving water of his word as it goes forth into the congregation and then into the world. He brings us water. He brings us food. He brings us protection, but he also causes us to grow. He is at work in your life bringing you water and food that he might enrich you. He is at work in your life bringing growth and productivity. He provides your grain.

When you see yourself manifesting the grace of God, it is his work in you, providing the fruitfulness of your life. For so God has prepared it to be. He is making preparation for your nurture and growth in the times of difficulty that you don’t even know about. He makes you dry for a while that you might then be thankful when the waters come and you soak it up. He’s at work reforming the topography of our lives.

There are things in your life that you don’t want to see heavy rains come upon and beat down. But in the providence of God, he is sovereignly bringing these things to pass in your life that can be difficult. We don’t like rain. Typically, we don’t like pouring rain, and we certainly don’t like the kind of rain that moves things around. But in the providence of God, he is sovereignly moving in whatever difficulty, trial, or tribulation you have, beloved of the Lord, to reform your topography that you might be more fruitful and you might rejoice before him in recognizing his sovereign hand at work in your life.

He is sovereignly dealing with you as an individual. We have people here that are ridges. We have people here that are pastures, people that are meadows, people that are mountaintops—different callings, different people of God. And God doesn’t deal with all of us the same way. He deals with all of us covenantally, but unity and diversity says he also deals with all of us in our particulars.

God’s sovereign action this year, this last year, of preparing you for rains, of bringing you rains, of moving around your land, of softening up certain portions of your life isn’t done impersonally. It’s with a view to you personally, individualized—that his care comes to you. His care comes to you that you might indeed become more fruitful in your particular place and calling in the kingdom of God. He’s dealing with you individually.

He’s dealing with you by terms of enrichment and watering. He’s dealing with you by the reformation of topography. He’s softening the earth of your land through his word and by his providence. And he is then blessing your growth. And he gives you abundance and fatness and prosperity. Now, sometimes we see that, and sometimes we don’t see that.

This church went through several somewhat lean years for a while. And the last couple of years have been years of happiness and abundance externally manifested. But you see, even when you don’t see it externally manifested—maybe you had a tough year financially this year—yet he crowns your year with goodness. He brings fatness and abundance to you, if of a different sort than what you see manifested around about you as you evaluate your year and how God dealt with you.

He’s dealing with you, of course. After all, the financial blessings of people are only a picture of the glory of God. This is a time of year when we should meditate upon the fact that the sovereign God is sovereignly moving not just to affect his decree in some cold impersonal way, but that sovereign God is coming as he does every Lord’s day and as he does actually all of our lives. He’s coming to make you fruitful, to bring you to abundance and fatness, to clothe you mightily with the graces of his Holy Spirit that you might praise him and rejoice in him at this particular conclusion of this year and the beginning of the coming year.

God wants us to thank him for all of our yesterdays, all of our todays, all of our tomorrows, because this is who he is. This is who he is in relationship to his chosen people—that he chooses to approach him in worship. He wants us to know that as we approach him, he comes to be with us. The advent of the Lord Jesus Christ every Lord’s day is the advent that shows what he’s doing in normal ways throughout the rest of our lives. And that advent pictures him coming, and by his very presence with us, he presses into us the characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise God. Praise God that this is the sort of God who has called us to serve him, to rejoice in him.

In John 15:26, we read: When the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify of me.

R.J. Rushdoony, writing on the doctrine of procession, says: The essence of procession is thus the manifestation and communication of gifts by the supreme power to those whom he favors. God proceeds to us. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And as the Holy Spirit proceeds to us, he comes to demonstrate and manifest God’s sovereignty, but he comes also to communicate his gifts by the supreme power who is at favor with us through the covenantal work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Turn to Psalm 138 if you would please, as we move to conclude. We talked about this psalm today in the Sunday school class and last week as well. Let me just give you a little overview of its placement in this altar. It’s found in the fifth book of the Psalms, which begin at Psalm 107 and go to Psalm 150. And the first 12 psalms of that book are psalms of exodus—of God’s people being delivered. And then there’s Psalm 119, the receiving of the law from God. And then there’s songs of ascent or degrees, as people go up to Jerusalem to worship God. And those culminate in Psalm 136 with a tremendous outburst of praise to God that everything is established in the kingdom. We’ve been brought out of Egypt. We’ve been given the law of God. We’ve gone up to the holy city of God. We’re worshiping God, and the praise hits its crescendo in Psalm 136.

And then in Psalm 137, we read a psalm that says: How shall we sing our song in a strange land?

The psalm that precedes 138 is a song that breaks the continuity of this tremendous praise to God with statements about being exiled by God. And then Psalm 138, which we’re going to read here, is the answer to that psalm. How do we sing our psalm in the context of captivity?

Psalm 138 says this:

I will praise you with my whole heart before the gods, the strong ones of the earth. I will sing praises to you. I will worship towards your holy temple and praise your name for your loving kindness and your truth. For you have magnified your word above all your name.

While the people of God were removed in captivity from the special place where God’s name dwelt, they had with them yet the word of God, the scriptures. And God has magnified that word above his name. Another way to think of that incredible phrase here is that God has magnified his covenant loyalty to his fallen people above his very person because the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, came and died on the cross and suffered all the pains of hell that we might be brought in faithfulness to God’s word of blessing to Abraham and to our forefathers—that we might be brought into relationship of joy and peace with God. He has magnified his word above all his name.

In the day when I cried out, you answered me and made me bold with strength in my soul.

See, when you cry out to God in the current context of the exile, God says: Your word is with you, and I am with you, even if you’re not in this special place where my name resides. You can sing psalms of praise to me.

All the kings of the earth shall praise you, oh Lord. The places we inhabit—fallen America—will praise God. Whoever inhabits this land in the future—we don’t know when it’s going to happen or be manifested—but this will be a land that is clothed with people who praise God.

All the kings of the earth shall praise you, oh Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth. They shall sing of the ways of the Lord. For great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord is on high, yet he guards the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. You will stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand will save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the works of your hands.

As you think back on this past year and look forward to the coming year, I want you to keep in mind this picture of the procession of God, the advent of God to his people, that he might perfect that which concerns us.

I don’t know what sort of year you’ve had. I know what sort of year some of you have had. For some, it’s a year of fatness and goodness. To others, it’s a year of rearrangement of topography, or it’s a year of dryness, and God prepares you for his rains of mercy and grace and superabundant growth. But whatever kind of year God has dealt with you individually with, I am confident that this verse is true: the Lord God is perfecting those things that concern you because you covenantally are in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we can thank him for this past year and thank him for whatever occurs in the context of our coming year. The flip side of this in the order of Book Five—of this particular psalm, the magnification of God’s word above his name—in the structure of the psalm is Psalm 119. That law of God again that talks about the grace of his law.

Psalm 119 ends with this, verse 176: I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.

What a tremendous verse that talks about the condescension of God to his people. Even in the midst of our straying from obedience to his commandments, in the midst of our sinful state, we can cry out to God: We’ve gone astray like lost sheep.