Reminded of who God is and what God has done and is doing
A friend noted recently that I seem to have a need to be right. And it’s true. I can be insensitively stubborn and argumentative when defending a point of view. Carol can tell you stories. No doubt it’s compounded by the fact that I enjoy intellectual debate—arguing about ideas—not for the sake of arguing (at least not usually), but for the sake of learning and understanding. Some friends and I used to call it ‘brain candy’ when I was studying philosophy in the university. But it can be insensitive and frustrating to folks on the receiving end. Just ask Carol.
The irony, of course, is that however educated or well-informed any of us may be, whatever we may truly know or think we know, the slice of our understanding is infinitesimally small compared to the scope of God’s universe. (An opportunity for an eternity of learning…)
Recognizing this should prompt us towards humility—appreciating that our experiences and our perspectives at best are only a tiny window looking over an infinitely vast and mysterious universe. Moreover, it is tiny in terms of both space and time—like being on a speeding train while looking through a peephole at the passing countryside in the dark… We need to be humble.
And this truth also reminds us of the essential importance of the Bible—God’s authoritative revelation of what we need to know—most especially what we need to know in order to be whom we were created to be, to have eternal life which, in the NT, we come to understand is rooted and centred in Jesus as Saviour and King.
But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)
Which brings us to Psalm 107. It is a ‘testimony psalm’—a psalm for teaching, written in the third person as opposed e.g., to a first-person prayer. (The Lord is my shepherd…)
Its main purpose is to remind its readers of the larger picture of God’s loving faithfulness, reviewing how God has cared for his people, rescuing and saving them through every imaginable circumstance.
Behind the psalm is the history of God’s people to whom, in spite of their repeated rebellion and unfaithfulness, God has remained faithful, because, as the Psalm repeats, the LORD is good and his steadfast love endures forever. (I.e., it is God’s essential character to be good and steadfast in his love. Nothing can change that fundamental reality.)
Read the Psalm (NRSV):
1 O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
those he redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the sea.4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to an inhabited town;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress;
7 he led them by a straight way,
until they reached an inhabited town.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
9 For he satisfies the thirsty,
and the hungry he fills with good things.10 Some sat in darkness and in gloom,
prisoners in misery and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 Their hearts were bowed down with hard labour;
they fell down, with no one to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress;
14 he brought them out of darkness and gloom,
and broke their bonds asunder.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze,
and cuts in two the bars of iron.17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
and because of their iniquities endured affliction;
18 they loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates of death.
19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress;
20 he sent out his word and healed them,
and delivered them from destruction.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
22 And let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
and tell of his deeds with songs of joy.23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the mighty waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out from their distress;
29 he made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.33 He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground,
34 a fruitful land into a salty waste,
because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry live,
and they establish a town to live in;
37 they sow fields, and plant vineyards,
and get a fruitful yield.
38 By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and he does not let their cattle decrease.39 When they are diminished and brought low
through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
40 he pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
41 but he raises up the needy out of distress,
and makes their families like flocks.
42 The upright see it and are glad;
and all wickedness stops its mouth.Psalm 107
43 Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
The flow of the psalm:
- The opening admonition (vv 1 – 3)
- The history of what God has done (vv 4 – 32)
- For wanderers lost in desert wastes
- For prisoners in darkness and gloom
- For fools afflicted in their sin
- For those perishing at sea
- The pattern of God’s work (vv 33 – 42)
- Judgement and blessing
- Bringing down and raising up
- The closing admonition (v 43)
The opening admonition:
1 O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
Psalm 107: 1-3
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
those he redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the sea.
We don’t know the circumstances of the first readers of this psalm unlike, e.g., Psalm 51 which is David’s prayer for forgiveness after sexually violating Bathsheba and murdering her husband.
But that is the point of the psalm. The reader’s circumstances are beside the point. Whatever situation I as a reader find myself, God remains the same. And God is good.
It is hard to say it without sounding rather trite and simplistic, but it is in fact the most fundamental fact of reality, the foundation of everything: God IS, and God is GOOD. There is nothing evil, nothing corrupt, nothing nasty, nothing even neutral in God.
And this is not the philosopher’s impersonal creator God—this is Yhwh, I AM WHO I AM who spoke to Moses in the Burning Bush, whom we come to know in the NT as the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is personal, intentional, goodness. And it is expressed (as goodness must always be) as steadfast, enduring love.
In love God always seeks the well-being, the good, of his people. Nothing less.
Steadfast and enduring in that God’s love cannot falter or fade.
The psalmist declares that this is simply the way it is. And, in light of this fundamental reality, we are to give thanks. We are to declare out loud that God is like this.
“…let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” (Heb. 13:15)
Making this declaration, giving thanks and proclaiming who God is and what God has done, is the special duty and obligation of those who have been redeemed by God, who have been rescued from brokenness, who have been gathered from the across the earth to belong to him. Let the redeemed say so!
The psalm then goes on to remind God’s people of their history.
4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
Psalm 107: 4-9
finding no way to an inhabited town;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress;
7 he led them by a straight way,
until they reached an inhabited town.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
9 For he satisfies the thirsty,
and the hungry he fills with good things.
For the original readers, this would have evoked Israel’s escape from Egypt and God’s care for them in the desert. But for Jewish readers all the way to Jesus’s time, they would have many stories of desert wastes, being hungry and thirsty, crying out to God and, time and again, being delivered from their distress. To be able to sing the psalm was in itself a reminder that here we are—God has been faithful to bring us here and we can trust the future to him.
10 Some sat in darkness and in gloom,
Psalm 107: 10-16
prisoners in misery and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 Their hearts were bowed down with hard labour;
they fell down, with no one to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress;
14 he brought them out of darkness and gloom,
and broke their bonds asunder.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze,
and cuts in two the bars of iron.
This too would have evoked their time in Egypt. And many more stories of oppression and hardships the followed the rule of David and Solomon, the conquering of Israel and Judah and captivity in Babylon. And again they would see in little and big ways how they—as the people of God—were rescued and released, preserved as God’s people, looking forward to the Messiah who was coming.
17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
Psalm 107: 17-22
and because of their iniquities endured affliction;
18 they loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates of death.
19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress;
20 he sent out his word and healed them,
and delivered them from destruction.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
22 And let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
and tell of his deeds with songs of joy.
It’s never difficult to recall times of being foolish and sinful. Again, the original readers and Jewish readers all through history would find many examples foolishly falling into iniquity and suffering affliction and trouble as the outcome. But again, as the community would read this psalm they would also be declaring, ‘Here we are. God has rescued and saved us. By his faithful love we have not been destroyed.’
And they offer sacrifices of thanksgiving—it costs something, but they are grateful. And they sing of what God has done. Their songs point to God’s faithful love.
23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
Psalm 107: 23-32
doing business on the mighty waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out from their distress;
29 he made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
This stanza is rather unusual, in that the Hebrews were rarely seafarers. But they had a deep respect, even fear, of the sea. And this certainly painted a frightening picture—reminiscent of Jonah’s story. I can feel the ship heaving as I read the lines and feel the desperation and helplessness of the sailors. And again, they cry to the Lord and he stills the storm—an amazing manifestation of power in that context, and the Lord brings them quiet and a haven, a place of rest and safety.
Their response again is to thank the Lord—this time adding the context of the assembly and the congregation. The calling is to give thanks and praise to God in community, as a community.
These last two stanzas speak more generally, effectively summing up the pattern of God’s engagement with humanity in general and his redeemed people in particular.
33 He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground,
34 a fruitful land into a salty waste,
because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry live,
and they establish a town to live in;
37 they sow fields, and plant vineyards,
and get a fruitful yield.
38 By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and he does not let their cattle decrease.39 When they are diminished and brought low
Psalm 107: 33-42
through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
40 he pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
41 but he raises up the needy out of distress,
and makes their families like flocks.
42 The upright see it and are glad;
and all wickedness stops its mouth.
The over-arching point is that God is at work in the world, carrying out his purposes and ultimately guaranteeing the moral order of the universe and God’s redemptive intentions:
Rivers turn to deserts; deserts turn to pools. The hungry are fed and blessed. The needy are raised out of distress and prosper; Oppression is judged and princes are brought low.
The upright—those whose hearts reflect the heart of God—see the patterns of God’s work, the large arcs of history as God accomplishes his redemptive purposes and they are glad, they rejoice. But the mouth of the wicked is stopped. I love that picture.
And so the psalm concludes with the admonition to remember what God has done, the story of God’s redeeming work through history.
43 Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
Psalm 107: 43
and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
Be wise! Pay attention to the larger story! Remember what God has done and promises yet to do. Ponder the unchanging, untiring, unbending love of God that is building his people and working out his redemption of all creation.
But what about those who are not, as we meet here, experiencing anything that feels like the steadfast love of God? I think of godly Christian Palestinians who live in Gaza, followers of Jesus in Sudan and Chad, Myanmar and China, Ukraine and India. Not to mention those in this congregation whose day-to-day experience feels much more like the desert waste than springs of water and being filled with good things.
It’s a really important question. And I am sure that it must have been a question for many Jews reading it over the centuries before Jesus and Christians reading it for centuries after Jesus.
Two important points come to mind:
- God is redeeming a people and the work is not yet done. In our deeply individualistic culture we naturally think in terms of our immediate experience and life. So we are tempted to view the history recounted by the psalm in terms of our individual years on this planet. The invitation of the psalm (and of the Bible in general) is to look at the big picture—the work that God began in Genesis that reaches its culmination in Revelation.
At the very best, as individuals waiting for the return of Jesus, we only experience brief hints and momentary glimpses of all that is promised and described in this psalm and in the Bible as a whole.
That’s one holy reason to give thanks for the food we eat—every good meal is a gift from God and a sign that points to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
We are here this morning because God has been building his Church since the resurrection of Jesus and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. (Matt 16:18)
Motley crew that we are, we are God’s redeemed people and there is a story of God’s steadfast love of which we are a living part. It has brought us to this day and it will be completed when Jesus returns.
Today is All Saints Sunday (Sunday after All Saints Day on Nov 1)
Picture in Rev 7:15-17
15 For this reason they are before the throne of God
Revelation 7: 15-17
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat,
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
- The second point is my own admonition. As students and followers of Jesus, we need to immerse ourselves in the story of salvation, the story of King Jesus.
Too many Christians neglect the big picture. We don’t read the OT. Many of us hardly read the NT in a serious way. And so we are not familiar with the larger story of what God is doing. We are spiritually weak and immature, vulnerable to unbiblical teaching and values.
It is critically important that we heed what Paul had to say to Timothy (speaking about the OT!):
…from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and isuseful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:15-17)
Image of the Bible’s interconnectedness—the story arc of the whole.
The graph is a visual representation of the over 63,000 cross-references in the Bible. They produced the multi-colored arc diagram in the header of this graph. The image, a digital rendering of all the cross-references in the Bible, has a bar graph along the bottom representing books, chapters, and verses. The various colors represent the distance between the verses in a particular cross-reference.
As we turn now to the Lord’s Supper, I the concluding admonition of Psalm 107 seems deeply relevant, remembering what God has done, recalling the story of God’s redeeming work through history and, most especially, what Jesus did on the cross.
43 Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
Psalm 107: 43
and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.