PSALM 66 - The Soul of Praise

Introduction

One of the most unique small-business slogans I ever saw was on the side of a window company’s panel truck when we lived in England. At the time, I thought it was a perfect illustration of the differences between the English and American mindset. Where an American company would have a slogan like “It doesn’t get better than this” or “You’ve tried the rest, now try the best” or some other loud affirmation of the superiority of their product or service, this English company’s slogan was “Unlikely to be bettered elsewhere...”

“We’re reasonably certain that we have the best service, but you never know...” I suppose in the U.K., where American attitudes are universally considered brash and conceited, such an understated slogan probably would go further with the British public than “THE LAST WINDOW COMPANY YOU WILL EVER NEED!” But to my American ears, saying that their company is “unlikely to be bettered elsewhere...” just comes across as lacking confidence in their product or service. Kind of like reading an online review for a product that says, “Item arrived on time, does what it says it will do...” You kind of want more out of an endorsement, don’t you?

Now, how often do we see the same kind of weak, halfhearted praise when we come before God to worship? If we’re not careful, we can let our praises to God become cliche’d and empty of meaning (“We just want to praise you God for ‘Who you are...’”) As the Apostle Paul warned the Corinthian church about their worship:

1 Corinthians 14:7–8 (ESV)

7 If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? 8 And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?

If God is to be praised rightly, then there must be specific reasons why. As John Piper once put it, “God has edges”—His glory is defined by His deeds. We sang this earlier in our worship: “To God be the glory great things He has done!” This is exactly what we see in our Psalm this morning, isn’t it?

Psalm 66:1–3 (ESV)

1 Shout for joy to God, all the earth; 2 sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! 3 Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!”

There is an old saying about what makes comedy effective—what makes a joke particularly funny. It says “Specificity is the soul of wit”—I would say that, when it comes to the way we are called to praise God is that “Specificity is the soul of praise! Every psalm that calls people to praise God always gives reasons why He must be praised. And as we come here to God’s Word this morning we see this psalm giving specifics of why God deserves glorious praise; the psalmist says “Shout for joy to God, all the earth...” and then demonstrates why He deserves such praise. And so the way I want to say it for us this morning is that we are called here in these verses to

Offer to God PARTICULAR praises for His WONDERFUL works

Look at the way the psalmist invites particular praises of God in Psalm 66. In the first seven verses, the focus is on

I. His gracious POWER over all PEOPLES (Psalm 66:1-7)

The psalmist starts off calling for all the earth to shout for joy; for all the earth to sing praises to God’s Name (v. 4). The first reason we have to praise God’s awesome deeds is for

His COMMON grace toward ALL peoples (vv. 1-4; cp. Matt. 5:45)

Consider that the first four verses of Psalm 66 flow very naturally from the end of Psalm 65--

Psalm 65:12–13 (ESV)

12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, 13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.

Here in Psalm 66 the psalmist builds on that praise of God’s gracious providence, calling on all the earth to praise God for all His goodness—goodness that He freely gives to all!

As Jesus would remind us in the Sermon on the Mount,

Matthew 5:45 (ESV)

45 ...For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Consider for a moment the mighty works of God in His providential grace even to the evil and the unjust! The vilest pornographer, who spends day after day dehumanizing men and women made in the image of God, can sit on his front deck in the morning with a cup of coffee and enjoy a beautiful sunrise. The Federal legislator who uses all her power to aid and abet the commission of abortion, who vehemently attacks even the most minor infringement on the ability of a woman to have her child murdered, gets to take an afternoon off to go to her little grandson’s birthday party.

And while on one hand we see those things and feel the injustice of them, at the same time we see that those wicked and rebellious people are being given an enormous gift of God’s grace! Not grace that will deliver them from His wrath if they do not repent, but grace nonetheless!

Think for this just a moment—if you had an enemy that you knew conclusively would always hate you and would never reconcile to you at all, how inclined would you be to show them any kindness whatsoever? And yet this is one of the mighty works of your God—that He continually and gladly pours out measure after measure of kindness and mercy and good gifts upon them!

The Psalmist says that everyone—just and unjust alike, wicked and righteous alike—owes God praise and glory for His marvelous common grace!

The psalmist offers praise to God for His marvelous common grace to all people—and in verses 5-7 he calls us to praise God for

His SAVING grace towards HIS people (vv. 5-7)

Psalm 66:5–7 (ESV)

5 Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. 6 He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, 7 who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations— let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah

Verse 6 is a remarkable verse that covers 40 years of Israel’s history in one sentence! God “turned the sea into dry land” when Israel crossed the Red Sea in the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 14), and then they “passed through the [Jordan] River on foot” when they came into the Promised Land 40 years later (Joshua 3)

Joshua 3:17 (ESV)

17 Now the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan.

Consider here the mighty deeds of God—the particular praises that He deserves! God miraculously delivered His children from their bondage when He dried up the Red Sea, and He miraculously brought them into the Promised Land for their blessing! God will break the rules of nature if necessary to save His people! This is the great promise for all those who belong to Him by faith; that He not only gives you all the natural blessings of life through His common grace, but He also works supernaturally to show His saving grace to you! Christian, He is to be praised because of all the miracles He worked to save you!

Offer to God particular praises for His wonderful works—for His gracious power over all peoples, and in verses 8-12,

II. His great PURPOSE to PURIFY us (Psalm 66: 8-12)

There’s a shift of focus starting in verse 8—up to this point the psalmist has been calling on all peoples to praise God for His mighty works; here in verse 8 he turns his exhortation specifically to God’s people:

Psalm 66:8–11 (ESV)

8 Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard, 9 who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip. 10 For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. 11 You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs;

If God is the God who providentially sends us the gracious gifts of His grace in sending rain, providing food and sustaining every breath in our lungs and pulse of blood through our veins moment by moment, then He is also the God who providentially sends us testing and trials as well:

Psalm 66:10 (ESV)

10 For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.

But in the midst of those trials and tests, God’s mighty deeds are your refuge! They are your refuge, Christian

In the crushing BURDEN of HARDSHIP (v. 11; cp. 1 Peter 1:7)

In the heartbreaks and hardships of this life; when you are brought to your knees by the weight of grief or loss or pain, there are three truths that you must never forget. First, never forget that is is God Himself that laid that crushing burden on your back (v. 11). Even if it is an attack from an enemy; even if it is the result of a great evil that has befallen you, it has come ultimately from His hand.

And second: If it has come from His hand, that means that He has a purpose in all of it:

Psalm 66:10 (ESV)

10 For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.

Here is another reason for you to lift up your voice in particular praise of God’s wonderful works, Christian: Because of God’s providential government of the entire cosmos, there is no such thing as meaningless suffering in your life. Please hear this again: Because God’s purposeful sovereignty governs every possible aspect of your life, there is no such thing as “meaningless” or “random” or “purposeless” suffering. All hardship that comes into your life, Christian, will accomplish God’s good purposes for you in some way or another.

And the third great truth to remember when you stagger under the crushing burden of hardship is this: That God will not let you fall under it:

Psalm 66:9 (ESV)

9 who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.

Christian, take heart from God’s Word this morning: When you are staggering under that load of heartbreak or grief or loss or pain, He will not let you be crushed under that burden. He will not let you stumble or fall, He will keep you because He governs that hardship and He has a good purpose for it in your life to make you shine like refined silver in holiness and godliness:

1 Peter 1:7 (ESV)

7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Praise God in His great purpose to purify you in the crushing burden of hardship—and in verse 12 see here that He is to be praised for purifying you

Through sore TRIALS from ADVERSARIES (v. 12; cp. Isaiah 43:1-2)

Psalm 66:12 (ESV)

12 you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

The psalmist describes being trampled over by his adversaries, through the fire of persecution and the floods of scorn and ridicule; the heat of his enemies’ hatred and the rushing torrent of their malice—but even when it seems as though their enemies had triumphed and had stamped out the faithfulness of God’s people, God’s promise to them still remained. As Isaiah would write decades later:

Isaiah 43:1–2 (ESV)

1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

Beloved, praise God for His particular deeds in your life, that even when you have to walk through the fire and the water of hatred and scorn, even when the crushing burdens of pain and adversity threatens to overwhelm you, He will never let you go! His purpose is not to crush you—He will not let your foot slip. His purpose is not to defeat you—He brings you to a place of abundance!

You are called, Christian, to offer particular praises to God for His wonderful works—for His gracious power over all peoples, for His great purpose to purify you through even through the burden of hardships and defeat. And in the remainder of the psalm we see a third great reason to offer particular praise to God:

III. Your grateful PRAISE in His PRESENCE (Psalm 66:13-20)

See the narrowing focus here in this psalm: The psalmist begins with a declaration of God’s greatness before all peoples in verses 1-7, then in verses 8-12 he declares God’s greatness to His particular people. And here he declares God’s greatness to be praised in his personal relationship with Him. The great and wonderful works of God that the psalmist has in view here is the unbelievable blessing he has of intimacy with God Himself!

Look at the way he talks about freely coming into God’s dwelling place, the Temple:

Psalm 66:13 (ESV)

13 I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will perform my vows to you,

The wonder of this intimacy the psalmist has with God means that you are free to come to Him, and you are free to

Demonstrate your DELIGHTED DEVOTION (vv. 13-15)

Psalm 66:13–15 (ESV)

13 I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will perform my vows to you, 14 that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. 15 I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah

The psalmist’s delight in worship is reflected in his happy willingness to give greatly to God in worship—the description of fattened animals means that he was happy to give of his best to God—he was willing to commit to worshipping God in a costly way. Only real delight in God will override any concerns about how costly our worship is. Didn’t sleep well Saturday night? “Who cares? I still can’t wait to come worship God!” Price of gas going through the roof and it’s a long drive to church? “Doesn’t matter—I get to be in God’s presence with His people!”

Delighted devotion takes no thought of worship that costs us. And when we are delighted in God, we don’t forget the promises we make to Him in our difficulties—the psalmist says he will remember his vows

Psalm 66:14 (ESV)

14 that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.

A heart that cries out in trouble, “O God, get me out of this mess and I promise I’ll be in church every Sunday” and then sleeps in the next week is a heart that really doesn’t delight in God, is it? It’s a heart that wants God for what God can do for it, not a heart that wants God for God Himself!

Praise God in the way you demonstrate your delighted devotion, and praise Him in the way you

Fortify your FELLOW WORSHIPPERS (vv. 16-20)

Psalm 66:16–17 (ESV)

16 Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. 17 I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue.

The psalmist now turns his particular praises of what God has done for him towards his fellow worshippers (“all you who fear God”) so that they can be encouraged and strengthened by hearing of God’s wonderful works for him. As we have seen earlier in our series on worship, one of the most potent forms of encouragement a believer can receive is when one of their brothers or sisters in Christ praises God for what he has done in their life!

The psalmist says that God listened to his cry, because he cried out with a heart that was right before God:

Psalm 66:18–19 (ESV)

18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. 19 But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

God is due particular praise for his wonderful works in your life, Christian! Fortify your fellow worshippers with specific ways that God has listened to you and answered your prayers, share particular things He has done for your soul! And what greater, more glorious work can you possibly praise Him for than the last verse of this psalm:

Psalm 66:20 (ESV)

20 Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!

The greatest, most glorious work of God in all of creation, Christian, is that the steadfast love of God—the unbreakable promise of God Almighty to love you with unalterable lovingkindness—has been applied to you because of the work of His Son Jesus Christ! It is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ that affixes this steadfast love to you when you place your faith in Him for salvation.

Jesus told the disciples on the road to Emmaus that

Luke 24:44 (ESV)

44 ... everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

Psalm 66 is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ—He is worthy of all of your praise for His wonderful works! He is the One Who has promised that no matter what fire of hatred or flood of scorn or crushing burden of grief or loss or pain you are struggling under, He will never leave you or forsake you! He has suffered the crushing load of sin and corruption in your place, and He will certainly bring you out of it into a place of abundance! There is no death in the Christian’s life that is not followed by a resurrection—no sorrow that will not be raised to joy, no pain that will not be raised to peace, no heartbreak or loss that will not be raised to fulfilment in Him. Whether it is in this life or the next,

Romans 6:5 (ESV)

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Philippians 3:10–11 (ESV)

10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Jesus Christ is worthy of all your particular praise for His wonderful works—make it a habit to remember His goodness to you, the way He brought you out of death to life, the way He answered your prayers, the times He showed Himself faithful to you when you cried out to Him, the darkness you passed through that was brightened by His steadfast presence.

There is a wonderful ongoing project that the kids have downstairs to remember how God hears and answers prayer. They have strips of construction paper that they write down prayer requests on. They pray every week for those requests, and when God answers those prayers, they take those strips of paper and form them into a paper “prayer chain” that stretches across the wall—a visual reminder to those precious young hearts that they serve a God who really does hear and answer prayer!

Find a way to do that for yourself—keep a journal, write notes in the flyleaf of your Bible, talk about it around the dinner table, post it on your social media—make it a habit, however you do it, of documenting and sharing specific ways that God has been faithful to you! And then, like the psalmist does here in Psalm 66, use those particular praises to fuel your worship—in your private devotions, with your family, and together with your church family on Sunday morning.

Jesus Christ is the One who perfectly fulfills everything that Psalm 66 (and every other psalm!) sings about: He is the One who is faithful to you in all your trials, He is the One who has invited you into His house and has made all of your worship and sacrifices acceptable to God, He is the One who advocates before the Throne of God on your behalf on the basis of His perfect sacrifice—and the Scriptures say that He is the One who reigns over all the nations of this earth, the One Who has been by His resurrection “highly exalted and bestowed with a Name that is above every name...”

Philippians 2:10–11 (ESV)

10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The day is coming when all the earth will sing the glory of the Name of God in Jesus Christ; all the earth will worship Him and sing praises to His Name alone. Jesus Christ is in the process of conquering and subduing every last enemy, every rebel prince, every presumptuous attitude, every scoffing voice. His power and authority—proclaimed through the Gospel by His faithful Church—will result in every knee bowing and every tongue confessing His Lordship.

So great is His power that His enemies will come cringing to Him—they are unwilling, they remain in their rebellion, but they will still bow the knee. This is what the Word of God says; that everyone in this room will bow. Every last one of you will bow the knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Either now as a glad and delighted disciple, or on that Day as a cowering and cringing enemy.

If you have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, do not mistake the common grace you have enjoyed from His hand for approval of your rebellion. Yes, He has given you breath in your lungs that you use to mock Him, He has given you strength in your limbs that you use to pursue your lusts, He has given you the sunrise of this day—the LORD’S Day—that you will spend in indifference to Him—but do not mistake His forbearance for approval.

God’s Word makes the warning plain:

Romans 2:4–5 (ESV)

4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

The Good News for you this morning is that He has given you the light in your eyes and the pulse in your veins and the wits in your head right now so that you may hear His offer of salvation and repent! In His infinite kindness towards you He has brought you here to see what He has done, the awesome deeds of salvation towards the children of men, making the way of salvation plain for you so that you may drop your rebellion and sue for peace—peace on His terms:

Romans 10:9 (ESV)

9 ...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Confess that His death, burial and resurrection is the only way to be made right before the infinite justice and righteousness of God, that it is only through His sacrifice that you can receive forgiveness for your rebellion and sin against Him. Confess before Him that you are a sinner, that you deserve nothing but His wrath, and plead with Him to accept Jesus’ death under that wrath as your own. I would love to talk to you more about what it means to trust Jesus as your Savior, to pray with you so that you will not have to bow the knee as a cringing enemy but as a delighted and devoted disciple, full of particular praise for His wonderful works for you through your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 (ESV)

20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What are some of the ways our worship can suffer from being “indistinct” or “halfhearted”? What are some specific types of things the psalmist points to in support of his declaration that all the earth should praise God?

What does it mean to refer to the “common grace” of God? What are some examples of common grace (i.e., good gifts of God in the world that everyone receives)? Read Matthew 5:45 for some examples.

How does the psalmist describe the hardships and difficulties of life in Psalm 66:8-12? How does God’s governance over the evil and brokenness of this world offer you comfort in your hardships?

The psalmist calls on all the peoples of the world to come and worship God. Read 1 Corinthians 15:22-26. How is Jesus Christ currently fulfilling Psalm 66:1-4?

Consider Paul’s declaration in Philippians 2:10-11. On the day when every knee will bow, will you bow in delighted devotion to Christ, or as a cringing and cowering enemy? Make sure that you know that you belong to Jesus Christ by faith!