Dennis Tuuri

# Psalm 138: God’s Faithful Word Above His Name

Most delightful, I think, very excellent rendition of Psalm 138. Many of the versifications of the Psalms do not maintain some of the most important wording of the Psalms, and yet this one does a wonderful job.

Psalm 138 is a psalm that for 20 years at least has been a psalm that I meditate on at the closing of each year and the beginning of the next year. I began doing that when I heard a tape by R.G. Rushdoony who said that each of his years, or maybe most of his life, he would close and begin the new year with Psalm 138 for obvious reasons.

It’s a delightful, beautiful psalm of comfort and of hope and assurance. It has some of the most incredible verses in it in the entire Bible. One specific one that we’ll look at is so incredible that many translations have changed it. It’s that hard to believe what’s said in it.

I would encourage you to take home the orders of worship today to try to learn this version of Psalm 138. I hope that over the next year we maybe sing it four or five times at the church to bring this message of great comfort and hope from Psalm 138 back to us at particular times during the year.

The other reason for taking the order of worship home is the second praise song we sang this morning, “This Little Babe So Few Days Old”—a beautiful Christmas hymn written by Martin Luther showing very much Luther’s theology, in which the center of it was this incarnation of Jesus and a meditation on the manner in which God chose to save the world. It is a beautiful hymn and it will be our hymn of the month for the month of January. We’ll be singing it, and just again, words and content that should be so comforting, thrilling, and instructive to us as we enter into this new year.

The end of the year, the beginning of the new year following eight days after the celebration of Christmas. January 1st is also traditionally linked to the circumcision of Christ—eight days—and the beginning, so to speak, of the shedding of his blood for the sins of mankind and the day of naming him as Savior.

Today I’ve chosen to open the year with Psalm 138, which I haven’t done for a number of years, I think. But really, behind this, of course, the work of God’s hands is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his incarnate Savior that Luther wrote so beautifully about in the song that we’re learning this month.

Today’s scripture text is Psalm 138, which we just read responsively and sang. But I would like us now to stand and listen as I read the word of God to us. Please stand for reading of Psalm 138, a part of the inspired title: “A Psalm of David.”

I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cried, thou answerest me and strengthenest me with strength in my soul.

All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord. For great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud, he knoweth afar off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the works of thine own hands.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this wonderful text from your most holy word. And we thank you for the Spirit who brings the word of Jesus to us. And we pray that we would hear Jesus speaking words of comfort, hope, joy, and prayer, as well as praise to you, Lord God, as we think through and meditate upon the delights of this particular psalm.

We thank you, Lord God, for the year gone past and for the year that opens up in front of us. Now strengthen us in the faith and the walk of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, through your word. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I know it’s a little technical how we begin this on the outline today, but I think it is very important. You know, when we consider the world in which we live, we know that providence is the doctrine so named that God works out his decree through every act of the created order. But we normally think of providence as good providences—things that are great.

My son Benjamin this morning, I give God public thanks and praise for sparing my son. Icy roads, 1-90. I told my wife this morning, at the end of every winter, come March, I thank God if all my children have survived because it’s a treacherous piece of road. The river produces fog and stuff that freezes on the ice, and then the cliffs there are shady. The stuff doesn’t melt off.

My daughter Joanna had an accident on that road on the ice several years ago. And this morning, Benjamin, on his way to unlock the church this morning, had an accident as well. He had an option of running into a couple of other different cars or taking the ditch, and he took the ditch. Praise God. And while his car rolled twice and over, he came out largely unscathed as I understand it.

So I praise God for that. You know, good things. We say that’s the providence of God. But we know, of course, that a similar situation happened to a very [close member] of our church where a mother of a member of our church was involved in an accident where the vehicle lost control, rolled, and that woman did not walk away from that unharmed. She left this world. She died. This also is the providence of God.

And this second instance is more the sort of situation that Psalm 138 is written in the context of. You know, we think of the providence of God and keeping people safe. I heard a story from Dan P. on Friday afternoon at the lunch for the men that one of the women in the flood that happened—you know, the tsunami—grabbed a hold of what she thought was a tree, got to safety. And it turned out it was a python.

And you know, we can think of the wonderful providence of God using a serpent to bring a woman to safety. You know, it’s kind of interesting. But of course, we know that 150,000 people probably lost their lives in a horrible event. That’s still the providence of God. But these are hard providences.

You know, the people who wrote this Psalter are very used to hard providences. Many of the psalms are written not in times of great joy and praise for deliverance in external ways, but in the midst of trouble.

I know it’s a bit technical, but I want you to understand that this psalm has a context, right? Every verse of scripture that doesn’t take into account the context becomes a pretext for something that’s not in the text. So we want to look at the context.

It’s part of the fifth book of the Psalms. And I don’t want to get into detail here, but there are five specific books of the Psalter. And this one is in the fifth book. And the fifth book has a very explicit structure. It’s not just a series of psalms or songs thrown into a hymnal. It’s put into a hymnal in a dramatic way to move you through a story, so to speak.

The story of the fifth book of the Psalter begins, as I have on your outlines here, with psalms of deliverance, references to Exodus, coming out of Egypt, conquest, trouble, but Yahweh then enthroned in Psalm 110, and then what’s referred to as the Egyptian Hallel. Hallel is praise. “Praise the Lord”—called the Egyptian Hallel because the context for those psalms of praise in the beginning section of book five are set in the context of deliverance from Egypt.

The conclusion of the fifth book matches that with the great Hallel, Psalms 146 through 150—psalms that begin with praising God again—and great anthems of praise conclude the fifth book as well as the whole Psalter.

Well, moving in from those first twelve psalms that sort of match with the twelve at the end, we have the Psalm of the Law. Psalm 119 is as God’s people come are delivered from Egypt; they receive the law as a means of sanctification, as a means of saying how they’re to live. And then at the very center of the fifth book of the Psalms are these Psalms of Ascent, where now they’ve come together in the providence of God being delivered, heard the law, now they’re moving up to Jerusalem—the Psalms of Ascent going up to worship and praise Yahweh.

And it’s a delightful section, and it ends with this tremendous Psalm 136 with the repeating refrain, “Thy mercy endureth forever.”

So there’s this great crescendo of praise, and they go up. Psalm 136 climaxes at verse 26, the last verse: “Give thanks unto the God of heaven, for his mercy endures forever.”

So there’s this dramatic movement, but then this dramatic movement is absolutely brought to a standstill. You get stunned by how much the change happens. Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon.” So we’ve talked about Exodus. We’ve talked about conquest in the wilderness. We’ve talked about the enthronement of Yahweh in Psalm 110. We’ve praised his name. We’ve gone up to worship him in this fifth book. And all of a sudden, after this great crescendo that all of this is the result of his mercy enduring forever: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.”

Weeping is the context for the very next psalm, Psalm 138. It’s great trial. It’s the exile specifically being referred to here in the structure of this composition of this fifth book of the Psalms. It’s a time of great trouble, distress, difficulties, devastating sort of things happening to people—this is the context for the answer of Psalm 138.

The sort of things that people are struggling through in the portion of the world hit so hard by the devastation of a week ago. That kind of devastation—even worse—being taken into captivity by people that hate you and will do nasty, mean things to you. And more than anything else, the psalmist laments is being removed from the presence of Yahweh. “How do we sing our songs when we’re not at Zion? We’re not on Mount Zion in the tabernacle of David anymore. We’re not at the temple. We’re not worshiping God with his presence.”

Solomon said that the name of God resides at this temple where the music of Zion has been brought. There’s the name of God. “How do we worship God in such devastating circumstances where his presence seems completely removed from us?”

You know, “How do Sarah and Sam worship God in the devastation that’s happened to them? How does Elder Wilson today, preaching down in Salem—how does he sing his songs of praise to God when God’s presence has been removed so much by the loss of his mother, and by the devastating effects he sees in his family of a slip away from Christ?”

It’s devastation that’s the context for Psalm 138. And if you miss the devastation, then you don’t recognize the tremendous comfort and hope that Psalm 138 is intended to bring.

“We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. There they that carried us away captive required of us a song. They that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, ‘Oh, sing one of the songs of Zion!’ You stupid Jews, Zion is gone. You’re with us now. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

And in a broader context, we can say, “How do we sing the Lord’s song in the land that’s become strange to us?” Revolution of the sixties, homosexuality is a political movement—this was scorned and laughed at forty years ago. Of course, that can’t happen. But here we are. You see, people being deluded, good young men and women being seduced off to a lifestyle of rejection and rebellion against God.

There’s a display going up down in Sacramento that our people are somewhat involved with where they’re putting up crosses to represent every fifty thousand children that have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. And they’re putting up flags to represent fifty thousand American dead killed in war, or fifty thousand of the total killed in war over the last two hundred twenty-three years. And there are forty-four more crosses than there are flags. Forty-four times more children have been killed in the womb since 1973 than all the American dead lost in military battle and wars.

“How do we sing our song in what’s becoming a strange land? A land that looks often more like Babylon than Jerusalem?”

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” Music is what’s talking about there. “If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy—” the danger is that we love Babylon more after a period of time. Even this is devastation to us.

Please, Lord God, help us to learn how to sing our song in the midst of devastation—personal devastation, the sort of thing going on in the Sri Lanka area, or the devastation of our culture slipping away from Christ.

“Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem.”

So Psalm 137 is one of devastation. “How shall we sing our song in a strange land?” And Psalm 138 is the beginning. There are several psalms to do this, but it is the beginning, and it is the definitive answer to that very question. That is its purpose for placement at this particular place in the Psalter. It is written as an answer to that. The overall structure shows us that.

But very interestingly, we have—I mentioned that we have at the end of Psalm 136, “Thy mercy endureth forever,” the great refrain that we were at the top of the hill worshiping God. And then we go to Babylon. And how does Psalm 137 or Psalm 138 work? It processes and gives us very important information for comfort in the midst of devastation.

And it concludes by saying, “Your mercy endures forever.” It returns to the refrain of Psalm 136. You see, it gets us back in that mindset—not by changing the circumstances of the devastation. Nobody’s bringing Gloria back. Nobody’s bringing those one hundred fifty thousand people back, right? And it doesn’t change the external circumstances, but it does something to the psalmist, to the person singing the song, so that they’re now enabled, in the midst of devastation, to say, “Oh, yeah, there is a reason. There is a way to sing our song in the midst of devastation.” That’s the setting for Psalm 138.

Now, you know, I’ve done this a few times over the last two years, and it’s kind of dangerous, and I don’t want to—this is not a habit I want to get into—but I do think that when we come to church, sometimes it’s important for us to not just whistle past the graveyard, but to enter into lament, sorrow over the devastations in our lives. Whether it’s the loss of loved ones, whether it’s external enemies who are spreading slander and lies about us, whether it’s our own sin attacking us—in other words, there are devastations going on maybe in your life right now.

When you come to church, you try to put them on the back burner, and you come and you just want to praise God. And that’s good. But this is one of those psalms that I think it’s appropriate when you read it to summon forth the demons out of the corners of your life, to bring up what’s really troubling you. Whether it’s anxiety about your children, your spouse, your work, your money situation, whatever it is—death of, you know, a close relative, whatever it is—this is one of those psalms that when you begin to read it, you see it’s perfectly legitimate and may even be very quite beneficial to bring those things out of the dark corners and say, “Yeah, I’ve got some devastating things, too. I’ve got some anxieties, some concerns, some things that are maybe affecting my ability to sing songs of praise to God. How shall I sing my song in the midst of this situation?”

And that’s okay to bring those things up. Now, we’re going to answer them. That’s what Psalm 138 does. But we can’t answer them if we haven’t considered them, you see?

Okay. So Psalm 138 does this. And I’ve given you an outline here where I think that one way to look at Psalm 138—there’s different ways to do it—but one way to do it is that it moves beautifully from beginning with praise to God. One of the ways we move ahead is through worship and praise of God on the Lord’s day. Corporate, convocative worship is addressed here as sort of the starting place for everything else.

Again, it concludes with prayer, and in the midst of those things has great comfort and hope about the future of the nations and also comfort and hope about our individual future.

You know, in Hebrews, when we looked at that wonderful text a couple weeks ago, Jesus is Son of God. He’s the shining. He’s the bright refulgence, you know, the glory of God. He’s that great. He’s the Son of God, but he’s Son of Man, right? He cares about us. He purged our sins. Hebrews 1 says, you know, transcendence and imminence.

And here that same thing is very important to see. What we’ll see in Psalm 138 is spoken confidence about the cosmic purpose of God. We have a cosmic confidence in what God is doing in the entire globe. But then we have a very intense personal confidence that the Lord God will perfect that—not just what concerns the nations or the kings, but the Lord will perfect that which concerns me and my devastation and my difficulties and my struggles, you see?

And all that is set in the context of prayer. At the end prayer, we face the beginning, comfort cosmically and personally, and at the very middle we can look at the verse that talks about how God acts and what’s the single condition that is the basis for our confidence and God’s blessing upon us. We’ll look at that. Okay?

So we begin with praise in verse one. The psalmist praises Yahweh for what he has done for him.

“I will praise thee with my whole heart before the gods.”

Gods or rulers can mean angels, and there’s a sense in which we praise God in front of the angels in worship service. We come together with the angels in corporate worship. But here I think specifically, because of the later reference to kings, this is before the rulers. “Before the rulers will I sing praise unto thee.”

Well, you know, in the providence of God, we’ve been looking at the book of Daniel talking about the Babylonian captivity. And we know that this is just what Daniel did, right? He praised God in the midst of the rulers in front of Nebuchadnezzar and all the satraps and all those men. He praises God and he makes that very evident.

“So I will praise thee of my whole heart before the rulers, even the Babylonian rulers—set in context. I will sing praise to you. I will worship toward thy holy temple.”

I’m not there. I can’t be there at the temple, but I’ll worship in context of that. “Praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth.”

Thy loving kindness and thy truth. Two terms again linked together frequently in Scripture. God is the God of truth, steadfastness. He maintains his holiness and his law. He is the God of truth, but he’s the God of loving kindness. Those two things linked together, you know, as a reminder to us to not swing off into antinomianism, away from truth, and that God is all faithfulness. And on the other hand, so rigidly hold to the law that we don’t understand God’s mercy and faithfulness, providing our sin bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and forgiving us.

His mercy endures forever. He praises him for his attributes. This is who God is, okay? He is loving kindness incarnate. He is truth incarnate. He praises God for who he is.

And then who he is produces an action here in this next statement. He’s loving kindness and truth. “For I praise you. Why? For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”

This is Phil P. said this, and in his commentary quoted in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David: this is the most remarkable verse in the entire Bible. You know, you just kind of read through the Psalms, you know, in a daily reading schedule. You kind of blow by this verse. But think about this.

The name of God is essentially all that he is. All of his attributes, his loving kindness, his truth—everything that God is, his person is who his name refers to, right? “I am Dennis.” No, he is Yahweh. His name, his person.

And what it tells us is that God has magnified something above his very person, okay? He has magnified, he’s made it more important in his list of priorities than his very person. Another way to put it: his very person, all of his attributes are brought under this primary thing that he has magnified above his name.

And what he has magnified above his name is his word. His covenant word to you and I. His covenant word to those people in great devastation that he would perfect that which concerneth them. And was in the very process of doing that even as they’re marched off to Babylon. Even as they’re drowning in the tsunamis, even as they’re being killed or delivered from a car crash, the Lord God is perfecting that which concerns them.

And the emphasis here is that we know this—and this is a result of the character of God that is so giving and loving that he magnifies above his very person and name his covenant word to you Christian.

Praise God. This verse is so astonishing that probably most of you don’t have it. It’s that astonishing.

Interestingly, years ago I was looking at the whole translation controversy—King James or numeric, whatever it is—which version do you use? And I, when I heard this verse being preached on by Rushdoony, I took all the versions I had at the time and I lined them up sequentially, right, all the versions of this verse. And it was really interesting because it began with the King James: “Ye’ve magnified your word above your name.” Then it became “You’ve magnified your word and your name,” and then by the more modern ones it became “You magnified your name above your word.” They completely reverse the verse.

And I thought, “Well, maybe textual evidence has changed.” Uh-uh. I won’t take the time here to read it, but I have a commentary here. It says, “Well, we don’t believe in bibliolatry. We don’t believe in worshiping the Bible, God’s word, as opposed to him. This verse can’t be saying what it says. So, better to look for a variant manuscript someplace.” The way the Revised Standard began, in the modern-day translations, to say, “Well, the word isn’t quite right here.” Very few manuscripts don’t support this verse, but the verse is so incredible that they end up mistranslating it for the most part.

Now, I do think that a couple of factors have to be thrown into what I’ve just said. There is, you know, God does speak an exaggeration for effect. He does use hyperbole. And I mean, we don’t want to pit God against himself—his word above his person all the way. But I mean, this is what God intends to convey to us: how much he loves us, and how much we can count on his faithfulness, okay?

The other thing that helps to answer this thing that’s plagued translators: “How can this be what this verse says? The most incredible verse of the Bible?” Another thing is to remember again the context.

Psalm 137: we’re being taken into exile, away from the temple. Well, and Solomon said, “Well, we know that God himself doesn’t dwell in the temple, but his name resides there.” Very specifically, Solomon said the name of God resides in the temple. And this is the great answer—the beginning great answer—to those who are exiled later, actually David speaking prophetically.

The answer is that while we’re removed from the name of God at the temple, we have his word with us—on our hearts, manuscripts, whatever it is. We have his word with us. And that is: God has magnified that above the place, the temple where his name is residing, you see?

So understanding the context helps us to see that in the initial application of this, there is this truth that the Lord God is spreading now evangelistically his word out to the world. And we’ve seen it again in Daniel. He’s done this very thing. He took God’s word to Babylon and he converted Nebuchadnezzar, you see. God’s purposes are global. And he puts us through distress, trial, and tribulation sometimes for the idea of focusing upon his scriptures and taking those scriptures to the world, and God then causing more people to come to faith and blessing in him.

So we can see that, but this side of the cross we have got to see in this verse clearly that at the center of our worship, the center of our praise of God, is a consideration of the death and resurrection of Christ. Jesus is the person of God, right? And Jesus is a demonstration in his death on the cross that God magnifies his covenant word to us to bring us to blessing, to deal with our enemies external and internal including our sin, by exalting that faithful word above his own person—the person of Jesus.

So that Jesus goes to the cross, puts his person, his name on the line, and dies to fulfill his covenant word to us.

I mean, this is a truth so wondrous and glorious and incredible that all of my life—the last twenty, twenty-five years since I’ve thought about this verse as it was brought to my attention—the rest of my life will in some way be a meditation on this very verse: that the Lord Jesus Christ is this great demonstration. God has magnified his word above all his name.

Even so, when we get devastation, we remember the devastation that God went through as he gave his only begotten son on the cross for us, and we recognize that we can count on God and the faithfulness of his character because he is gracious and truthful. He has magnified his word above his very name.

“In the day when I cried, thou answerest me, and strengthen me with strength in my soul.”

“In the day when I cried, thou answerest me.”

Now, what did David—what’s the Psalm crying out for? Deliverance from exile. What does God do?

“In the day when I cried, you brought me back to Jerusalem”? No. “In the day when I cried, I found out my mom hadn’t really died”? No. “In the day when I cried, I found out that the loved one I was concerned about in Indonesia was saved”? No.

God doesn’t, in his answer—and this sometimes he does—but here what’s being focused on is that God doesn’t change the circumstances of the psalmist or the worshipper using the psalm. God changes the worshipper. See the difference?

We look for prayers in the external environment, thinking that’s our problem. But our problem is usually within ourselves, and the Lord God answers the prayer of the psalmist. And he answers it specifically by “strengthening the psalmist with strength in my soul.”

You see the ultimate answer to prayer here is not a change in external conditions. It’s a change in the internal encouragement that the psalmist receives as he meditates upon, and as God reveals to him by his spirit, that God has always been covenantally faithful. Even in hard providences, there are providences nonetheless. And God is in the midst of perfecting that which concerns him.

So we have this tremendous verse set in this wonderful context of praise to God. God’s attributes, his faithfulness and compassion lead to God’s actions, which yield praise to him from the psalmist.

And so Psalm 138 is this great picture of that. The attributes of God are the answer. His attributes assure us of answers that yield praise to him. So there’s this praise.

Secondly, the second B on your outline, there is this cosmic confidence. Again, a most incredible verse.

“Kings of the earth will praise the glory of Yahweh.”

Verse four: “All the kings of the earth. How many? All the kings of the earth. Some? Not some. Not a couple here and there. All the kings of the earth shall future tense praise thee, O Lord.”

Now, I know that some translations have it differently, but I believe this is correct. “All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.”

Tremendous cosmic confidence given to the one who’s sitting in exile trying to figure out how to praise God there, because God is in the purpose of bringing those kings into to his formal worship. That’s what the first part of the verse is. Kings of the earth shall praise thee. They’ll gather together in convocation to sing forth praise with instruments. That’s the confidence we have.

And if God has brought us into exile to this or that political entity, it’s for the purpose of inserting his word as he did with Daniel till King Nebuchadnezzar issues forth the decree, and Cyrus after him, to all the kings of the earth to praise Yahweh.

You see a great cosmic confidence underlies this psalm. In the midst of great difficulties, we can be sure that God is fulfilling his faithful covenant word to the end that the entire earth is being evangelized through the work of the church. That’s what happens. And not just brought into the worship of the church.

“They shall sing in the ways of the Lord, in the ruts of righteousness.”

The way means derek—a way, a well-worn path. The kings are not just worshiping formally before God, but they’re actually praising God and singing of his ways. The kings are being affected in their duties and obligations here because of the work that God is doing through the very devastation that happens.

We can’t think of the one-to-one links between the devastation in our lives and what God is doing. But we can turn to this psalm and read it in times of devastation and be assured that the purposes of God both for us personally and for the world corporately are somehow being moved along by the devastating work that God is doing in our lives at that particular time.

“All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy truth.”

Not the kings will do okay when we lobby them from a rationalistic perspective. The kings of the earth won’t walk in God’s ways when they hear the word of pragmatism, nor when they hear the word, the voice of the people. Most of us don’t want homosexual marriage. That’s not going to induce the worship of Yahweh by the kings. The kings of the earth won’t praise God when they hear the words the importance of the free market economic perspective. No.

The kings of the earth, the rulers of the earth, the gods before whom we’re to sing praises to Yahweh—these kings of the earth will come to the worship and dedication of their labors to Christ when they hear the words of God’s mouth.

Where will they hear it? We have said many a time: “The sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. They hear the audible speech of the representative, spirit-empowered representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ. They hear you and me speaking—not pragmatically, economically, from a political perspective, lobbying, all that stuff has its place, okay? I’m not saying any of that’s bad. But I’m saying that ultimately what produces the conversion of the kings of the earth is the word of God being preached, proclaimed, and spoken to them.

This is what changes the world. This is what ushers in, you know, the growing golden age when all the world shall be discipled—which they shall be. Tremendous promise but tremendous obligation, right?

The kings aren’t worshiping Christ. “Well, are they hearing the words of my mouth? Have you spoken to the rulers of your land? Have you spoken to your city counselors, mayors, your rulers, the king, the president, the governor? Do you speak to them? Oh, you don’t? Well, I think that’s what I told you in my Bible here. This is how it works. When they hear the words of God’s mouth, then it’s how God has chosen in his providence to bring them to worship and practical change.”

So, you know, in the midst of devastation, the psalmist is assured here that God is at work to produce the conversion of the Babylonian Empire, which we can see from this side of the whole thing exactly is what happened. This is going on because God is acting.

The third point of the outline: Yahweh favors the humble, spurns the proud.

So we have these truths stated: “This will happen when this happens.” And now the action of Yahweh is the reason for this cosmic confidence because God accompanies that word with actions in history.

What does it say?

“Though the Lord be high, yet hath he regard or respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.”

These are the actions of God, the providential actions that accompany the preaching of his word, to take down those who in response to the word make fun of it and establish those. The great reversal of the Magnificat that we celebrated at Christmas, right? The exaltation of those who will rule for him.

Doesn’t mean that Kulingowski will praise Yahweh. Maybe he will. I don’t know. Maybe he’s doing it now. But it means that if he won’t, and he hears the word, that God will raise up somebody else, because he knows the proud afar off. They are brought down, and he exalts those. He has respect unto the lowly.

What’s the great condition that determines God’s actions toward us? It is pride or humility. It’s the humble that God exalts. It’s the humble who can be confident that God is perfecting that which concerns him. It’s the humble who in the midst of devastation can take great hope and comfort cosmically and personally for himself.

But the proud, you see, this is the one sin—this is the one action that God is actively working against in the context of the created order—are the proud. The proud, because those he’s going to bring low.

So God acts. This confidence—cosmic and personal—on either side of the medal is premised and conditioned on the fact that God is active in the created order and his providence exalting those of low degree and bringing down those who rule not for King Jesus. Whether it’s in the home, the church, the state, the county, whatever it is.

Again, God’s attributes of holiness lead to actions that exalt. He is high, he is glorious. And it leads to his actions, which then produce praise on the part of the kings to him.

So again, we see the same pattern: the attributes of God producing actions in the world, and then the end result of this is praise to Yahweh.

So we go from that great cosmic confidence to personal confidence in verses seven and eight.

The psalmist expresses his confidence in the protection of Yahweh.

“Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever.”

So now we get to the concluding line there that brings us back—before the devastation of Psalm 137—to the end of Psalm 136 that had that continuous refrain.

Now the refrain is back because the psalmist has recognized that God is not localized, that he’s doing things that God’s purposes cannot be fully discerned. But we can know that he is bringing about the conversion of the whole world even through hard providences. And in the midst of hard providences, we can be confident of this great truth that the psalmist says here: that the Lord will perfect that which concerneth me personally.

Whatever difficulties I have, whatever despair, whatever lack of hope, that the Lord God is maturing and sanctifying me, my family, or whatever—no, bursting through is the faithful word that God has magnified above his very person to you. Okay? That is the faithful word that tells you here that the Lord God perfecting that which concerneth you personally, individually—not just cosmic confidence, but this beautiful personal confidence in these attributes of God that lead to these actions, which now lead not to praise explicitly at the end, but great comfort.

Great comfort. We look back over the year with some regrets. We look forward to the year, to the new year, with some fears. But God wants you to look back and say that the Lord God is in the process of perfecting you, bringing you to your completed end through everything that happened this last year, pleasant providences and hard ones.

And as you look forward to the future, there’s things you’re fearful of. But the Lord God says, “Trust me, you’re moving into a year marked by my faithful word to you, which I’ve exalted above my very name. And that word to you is that I will perfect that which concerns you.”

He’ll protect us against all of our enemies. And it’s very important, seeing this, think, “Well, I don’t have enemies. It’s not this isn’t going to be much comfort to me.” And the Psalter throughout it, there are two enemies. There are external enemies and there are enemies of sin.

And while the postmillennial golden age when everyone’s converted, we won’t have external enemies—we don’t have a lot of those really these days—but you know, in the Psalms, it gives a definite movement that with the coming of Christ, it’s the internal enemies now that plague us.

And so we can take great confidence in this text, not just for external provision from whoever it is, but that the Lord God is perfecting us by maturing us away from the sin that would battle against us as well.

So we have this beautiful culmination—return of the refrain—based upon these wondrous works that the Lord God will perfect that which concerns us. This is a repeated refrain in Scripture.

Of course, Psalm 57: “I will cry unto the Lord my God most high unto God that performs all things for me.” The faithful word of God is that he is performing all things for you.

Philippians 1:6: “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” He’ll continue to perfect it and to its conclusion. Same thing our psalm says here. God is perfecting that which concerneth me.

Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, the humble, to those who are the called according to his purpose.”

Ephesians 2:10: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Why is God perfecting that which concerns us? Because we’re the work of his hands.

And that’s how the psalm comes to a conclusion—is with a prayer.

You know, the great truths are spoken, the great promises are given. We can sit and rest and just wait for God to do everything right. No, no, no, no. The psalm moves from praise to prayer.

And the prayer is a simple one: “Forsake not the works of thine own hands.”

God is perfecting that which concerns us because we are the work of his hands. We are his handiwork. If we’re our own work, we have no confidence. But if we’re the work of God’s hands, you see, now there’s a rest in the providence of God. We are the work of his hands. Prayer comes forth. It is yielded by praise to God, by trust in his faithful covenant word, and then the prayer ushers forth that God would not forget the work of his hands.

Augustine said this: “Behold, in me thy work, not mine. For mine, if thou seest, thou condemnest. Thine if thou seest, thou crownest. For whatever good works there be of mine, from thee are they to me. And so they are more thine than mine. For I hear from thine apostle: ‘By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.’”

Okay, “Behold in me my works. I’m doomed,” he says, “but behold in me thy works,” says Augustine.

And as we conclude our year and we give thanks to God, we say that all of these things have come to us through his grace and his blessing. God is perfecting that which concerns us—certainly individually.

And many times we kind of sum these things up through our prayer letters. And I put in our or our end-of-year Christmas letters. You know, put in Argentina. We could just as easily have written a Christmas letter of a series of unfortunate events. There are hard providences every year in the life of a family and an individual. And usually we get these glowing reports at the end of the year, and we think, “Well, what happened to our family? They sure are blessed.”

But if we understood from this perspective, you see, the hard times and the good are the grace of God to us—the exaltation of his word above his very name, who he is—and is perfecting that which concerns us. He’s perfecting us individually. He’s perfecting us as a church.

I gave this sermon ten years ago, and I looked at the advances that God had brought into our church in the first ten years. And we can look back now and just be so thankful.

Last Sunday we were over at Elder Wilson’s house with the roaches, and we were talking about missions. And there’s an area, for instance, where you know, little things happen year by year, day by day, week by week. You don’t think about them a whole lot. But sometimes somebody says, “What’s the mission? What mission philosophy is going on? What are you doing in missions?”

And then you think back. That, for a while, the first ten years of our church probably, we sort of fasted from missions. We fasted from a lot of things because we saw them so badly applied in the context of some of the churches we came out of. And the Lord God has given us back now. Brought Chris W. to our church. Praise God. He brought this mission’s emphasis.

And you know, we sit here now ten years later, and what Chris sought for in India—reformed work to work in connection with and to try to help and encourage—he’s had it now for two or three years. A Korean Presbyterian ministry in India. Praise God. A ministry that didn’t need us to ask them to print some book about Calvin. They used our money to help him translate this—John Calvin into the Bengali language, the very language, the people group that Chris has had on his heart for twenty years or something. Praise God.

And beyond that, think of what happened at Presbyter. We’ve got men in Poland building churches, really essentially modeling after us, who are part of the CRA and moving into union Syria. I mean, there are churches being established in Poland that it is unbelievable. You know, we look at what God has done hoping we’d find mission fields that we could maybe affect a little bit, and he’s given us a couple where we are completely in concert with the theology and practice of these churches. Praise God’s holy name.

And these churches are growing and flourishing slowly but surely. And now we’ve got a mission field in Russia that two years we’ve been connected with, where you know, the guys who influence us so much are over there teaching Old Testament and theology, establishing Russian churches now that are very much like all these CRA churches that we delight in our fellowship with. You know, and now we’ve got Ralph Smith in Japan, as we’ve been able to go to Japan for a while and partake of a CR church there under Ralph Smith’s tutelage.

So we have a mission, so to speak, that we can pray for and maybe give money to help in Japan. Praise God. And we have members of this church whose parents are in Albania doing wonderful work there.

I mean, you know, it’s just one area of our vast mission statement. You know, we’ve got a mission to the foreign areas. But, you know, look, the Lord God is perfecting that which concerns us.

Six years ago, five years ago, we moved into this facility, and we began to think in terms of benevolences and specific actions. And it’s been kind of herky-jerky. You know, we know what we’re doing. We do some things. I gave away too much money once to a complete—maybe last year—to a complete scam artist. You know, it stops, starts, and stops.

But what’s happening now? We’ve got men in our church, two or three of them, very much involved with Love, Inc. We’re going to have a presentation here in two weeks from Love Inc. during the Sunday school service. Be warned. Your teachers of the older children may want the kids to be here in the sanctuary two weeks from today for a Love Inc. presentation.

And I’m going to preach on the implications of Daniel chapter ten to benevolence works, and we’re going to ask you to fill out surveys of what you might be able to do to help. We’re going to band together with other churches in Oregon City to serve in the name of Christ, working through a mechanism that’s going to protect us from scam artists. That’s going to take cognizance that no one church can fulfill the benevolence needs of a community.

And it’s going to be part of the way that God links together the community of churches in Oregon City, which we’ve also prayed for six years being planted here by God.

The Lord is perfecting that which concerneth us in terms of benevolences.

The Lord is perfecting that which concerns us. If he has exalted his word above his name, then maybe it’s important that we know the word. You know, maybe that means that instead of meditating, just sitting around meditating all the time on the person of God, that we want to study his word as a reflection of that purpose, a person.

And what has God done? We’ve written curriculum now to help children and young adults work through or know books of the Bible, know the word. You know, I think I told you that I’m just astonished that men that come out of good seminaries don’t know the seven days of creation. They don’t know their Bibles. They know theology. They know the Westminster definition. But the Bible, the word of God, you see, the Lord is perfecting that which concerns us as a church.

We now have written curriculum for about half of the Bible. Praise God. And now we’re thinking of ways to minister to the adults. Doug’s Sunday school class, while aimed at the eighteen to twenty-year-olds, includes adults now that George is co-teaching it with him here in the sanctuary. You know, that is perfecting that which concerns us.

This building, I know it’s produced difficulties, and you know, it’s we’re kind of getting used to it. Takes some time to get used to a new environment. But don’t forget the blessings that are accruing to us because of being planted in Oregon City and having the capability to run a Sunday school program where the word of God, this important source of comfort, strength, and empowerment for the future, they can teach this and raise up a generation that know the scriptures hundreds of times literally better than their parents do.

You see, these are wondrous things.

Ten years ago, when I spoke about the progress that God has built into the life of Reformation Covenant, I mentioned Judge B. And many of you never met him, heard about him—a little bit maybe—very important as our church got going. He was a retired district court judge. He was R.J. Rushdoony. He said the Pacific Northwest was a wasteland basically in terms of reconstruction until he met Judge B., and the judge began to affect a lot of people, including us.

And we used to get together the first year or two of RCC, and we were studying through the Westminster standards, and we would sit around—sometimes in my living room, sometime Howard’s, I think—and we’d read the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the judge couldn’t get through it frequently. He would cry. He would weep.

And I remember at one point him looking up. “Do you know? Do you see what God is doing here?”

He understood that the seeds of God’s word and the return to these basic doctrines of the historic church was going to have a tremendous impact in the lives of the people who are starting this church and others across the land. You know, he knew what was beginning to happen. He knew that twenty years out, somebody be standing up here and saying, “Praise God, he’s perfecting that which concerns us.”

You know, we’re growing and maturing. Look at our worship. The maturation of worship that’s happened here. The delightful way we can praise God with enthusiasm, be bound together as a people almost mightily, you know, singing these psalms of triumph and conquest and of comfort.

And he sort of knew that would happen. “Do you see what God’s doing here?” He would say, would weep as we’re reading these descriptions of the person of God from the Westminster Confession.

And as we read this psalm, do you see what God’s doing here? Do you see what he’s doing in your life? Tell if you—even the simplest, most trivial aspects of what we’re doing here—if you look at the families of this church, the young people of this church and their commitment to a biblical piety, not a Baptist piety, a biblical piety, and the cause of Christ’s kingdom and the way God has clearly affected all of our families so solidly, so steadily.

You know, maybe not like we want them, surely, but compared to what is happening in the world as it moves away from Christ, the Lord is perfecting that which concerns our families. Praise God.

Got grandchildren now starting to be raised in the context of the faith. Delightful things. Do you see what God is doing? Take comfort. Take hope.

Oh, we do a lot of things wrong, and oh, we’ve messed up a lot as a church, and oh, there’s so many areas that we really should be doing much more in. You know, that is all very true. But it’s all in the context that God is perfecting.

Let me just—I know I’ve gone a little bit long—but just one, maybe two more minutes. There’s a global perspective, a national perspective as well.

I came out of the late sixties sexual revolution. The world went to heck in a hand basket, right? And things really deteriorated, and we, and most of what we know about the world around us comes to the media with its particular bias.

But a tremendous thing has happened this year with the election of George Bush, and not so much his election, but the media recognizes how far out of sync with America we are. The sexual revolution that began forty years ago is in the process of being defeated. You maybe don’t know this stuff, but the good news is that teen chastity has never been higher since before the sexual revolution. It is returning to pre-sixties levels of sexual, of teenage chastity.

You probably didn’t know that. You don’t hear that all the time in the news, but it is.

Abortion rates, while still incredible and horrific, are declining, okay? Sexual activity amongst teenagers is declining, not advancing. The culture war is being waged. This last Christmas season, the stories were not so much about the ACLU as they were about Christians reasserting the importance of keeping Jesus Christ in the context of Christmas.

That’s what created most of the battles this last month was not defense. We weren’t playing defense anymore. We were playing offense. You see, things have changed.

I saw some statistics. Now, this is the media speaking. You know, I know that we don’t like polls. You know how lousy they turn out to be. But this is a Newsweek poll. Newsweek is not going to give us the best of news. They’re going to try to slant things the other way. But listen, listen to these statistics.

Newsweek reported that eighty-two percent of Americans believe that Jesus was and is both God and the son of man. He is both God and man. A trinitarian formulation. Eighty-two percent of the people say they believe that.

Seventy-nine percent of Americans surveyed in this poll believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin without a human father. That’s that’s astonishing. I had no idea.

Sixty-seven percent believe every detail of the biblical account of Christmas. Fifty-five percent believe the truth of every word of the Bible—inerrancy of the Bible. Fifty-five percent.

Sixty percent of Americans favor the teaching of creation in addition to evolution. Fully forty percent believe in the creation story, and forty percent favor not just teaching it alongside of, but teaching creation instead of evolution.

Abortion rates dropping, as I said. Unwitted pregnancies lower. The violent crime falling dramatically. There are significant things being done.

The majority leader in the Senate for the Democrats defeated by a conservative Christian soon in South Dakota. President Bush asserting at least a verbal commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I think influenced by a good many Christians.

So the Lord is perfecting that which concerns us. You know, cosmic, globally, nationally, in terms of our church, and in terms of each of us individually.

The new year is a time of great hope and optimism. The circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ, that’s celebrated now, is a reminder that the Lord Jesus is the ultimate work of God’s hands, and we are connected to him, and so is the world. And God is in the process of bringing all kings of the earth, all powers and authorities, into his worship and also into obedience to his ways.

We can rely on the attributes of God producing these actions in history to give him praise and also to give us great comfort even in the midst of devastation.

The Lord God is indeed perfecting that which concerns us.

Let’s pray.

Father, we praise your holy name, and we pray that we would not forget the truths of this psalm as we move into this year. Help us to learn this version of it that we’ve sung this morning better. Help us to use it in our homes to encourage our children of your progress in history, to see the big story in the midst of devastating times.

We weep with those who are weeping, Lord God. We don’t dismiss any of that. But we bring them comfort and hope, recognizing your sovereign hand moving even in the midst of devastation.

We thank you, Father, that all this is because of the work of our Savior, the work of your hands.

In his name we pray. Amen.