Psalm 65: Entitled or could be: The Bounty of our Saviour.
For the director of music. A psalm of David. A song.
1 Praise awaits[b] you, our God, in Zion;
to you our vows will be fulfilled.
2 You who answer prayer,
to you all people will come.
3 When we were overwhelmed by sins,
you forgave[c] our transgressions.
4 Blessed are those you choose
and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house,
of your holy temple.
5 You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds,
God our Savior,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas,
6 who formed the mountains by your power,
having armed yourself with strength,
7 who stilled the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
and the turmoil of the nations.
8 The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
where morning dawns, where evening fades,
you call forth songs of joy.
9 You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.[d]
10 You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
11 You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
12 The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
13 The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing.
For the next few weeks, we are looking at a sermon series on creation. We are going to look at a few points that come out of what God has created and how we can respond to God’s creation, all of it not just us as created people. I have decided to tackle this through reflection on a number of Psalms about creation.
Psalm 65 takes us on a bit of a journey and interestingly the Psalmist in it celebrates God’s goodness in provision for all of his creation not just humanity. God’s abundant provision.
I’m going to wander on through the Psalm in a way that will initially address God’s hand on the planet giving that this delving into creation series, the first being this is looking at, being thankful for what he has done for us in creating the world that we live in.
So, from verse 5, “You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds God our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth and the farthest sea.” I will just point out here that in verse two the psalmist has already designated God as the one ‘who answers prayer.’
So, God answers us, and this stuff is more profound than the car park or passing that test that you didn’t study for, this is what? He answers with awesome and righteous deeds. Remember the Hebrew people's history, things like leading them by fire and by cloud, the parting of the Red Sea so that the whole nation could pass through, onto the promised land a promise that was 400 years old from the time of God’s promise of the land to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah.
From there a little more in verse six, ‘he formed the mountains by his power, here’s a bit of an aside, I have seen some pretty awesome stuff but one of the most awesome things I remember is the first time I saw Mount Sefton in the Mount Cook National Park, that hanging glacial wall... truly awesome, or that time as a child I first saw the moss and lichens in a Beech forest that looked like they were home to tiny little mystical creatures made all that more splendid by the frost that had lifted stones on their stretched frozen crystals, awesome, or in my youth to be caught up in the continuously powerful rapids of the Mighty Buller River before being spat back out to continue my journey. These things are all awesome but nothing like their creator.
Who formed the mountains?
Who formed that power-filled river, the river that powers your toaster, who stilled the roaring seas, the roaring of their waves and the turmoil of the nations...
The Psalmist has this understanding of the creator's power of his splendor God’s hand. When Rochelle and I were talking about this she pointed out that “we see the show but what’s going on backstage is what God has done” There’s a great sermon big idea.
In verse eight the Psalmist declares, “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where the evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” Bird song is one thing but really the volume we hear is nothing like it was when New Zealand was a pest free nation apparently it was deafening to the early explorers. Those of you who sing in the shower who whistle as you work join in this joy. Here’s an interesting thing, mice sing but only male mice and they sing love songs for lady mice, well is that not joy. No, we can’t hear them they are ultrasonic. The whole earth is filled with wonders, I had the pleasure last weekend of being down at the fish and chip shop last weekend and seeing and hearing a Kaka parrot cry out as he flew by towards Wellington. I guess he was off to one of the conservation reserves in the city. It is a great thing that is being done to preserve our remaining native wildlife. I often think of the pleasure that God must have in seeing his creations, the wonder of all that he spoke into being.
We see and are in awe of what God has done, who here has heard of a thing called a mathematical pattern that exists in nature? It’s called the Fibonacci sequence and it is seen in every thing from shells and flowers to the way spiral galaxies are formed. Video. I know awesome eh!.
Back to the Psalm, “You care for the land and water it, you enrich it abundantly” This is certainly a case of “our seeing the show but what’s going on backstage is what God has done” (SBI) That carrot on your plate or that tea in your cup is not some simple thing, there’s a whole world of wonder that occurs for them to be there.
Soil science is something as a gardener that I know a little about that, the rest of you who are gardeners will all know, to get really good veges, to grow a successful garden there needs to be a balance of nutrients, there needs to be enough water, all the animals that live in the soil contribute to its life sustaining properties, I have a worm farm at home and seeing the worms chew through garden waste, paper, cardboard, and kitchen scraps is dynamic thing as they turn these things into soil in their castings. But that soil also needs the microbes and mineral balance to make a crop grow. To make a forest grow there is a balance of order that is part of the design. Throw the temperature out by a few degrees at the wrong time of the year and some things that usually occur won’t, trees wont regenerate as rains don’t come, whole colonies of baby penguins don’t make adulthood in the Antarctic. Alter light levels at night and our native bats struggle to get decent feed. When God crested it all, he created it in balance. The natural order is balanced, we have a part to play in maintaining that balance.
The rest of the verse continues to address the provision of God for humanity, the streams filled with water, to irrigate grain for our provision. There is much behind the scenes we don’t see. God has blessed humanity with showers that ‘’drench the land, and level ridges, softening the soil to bless crops.” Part of the thinking behind this season of creation and messages around it is to look at peace and justice. For there to be true peace in the world people and the natural world need to be in a state of balance, for famine occurs when they are not, people are in conflict when there is not enough resource to go around, when plates are empty. Often conflict and war ensures that these situations escalate. God is good he provides for all, you don’t have to be a believer to sit down to a good meal. Jesus is reported in Matthew 5:44-45 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” That is God’s justice at work, as a result peace is a very likely outcome. It’s interesting that God wants us to live in peace even with our enemies.
From a totally human living in the land of the Psalmist point of view the Psalmist saw to hand of God, as we as believers see the hand of God at work in all things,” You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance, The Grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows covered with flocks, the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy.” This was a time of plenty, this is the time right now in the northern hemisphere when the farmers are harvesting, when the stock on the hills are fat with the grasses that have nourished them, the Psalmist tells us they shout for joy and sing, think of crickets, bees, sheep and goats, cows all enjoying plenty. It’s a wonderful thing to live in ties of plenty, on a commercial level, commodity prices are down, people are well feed. Back in the day there was no department of this or that keeping an eye on things, phosphate and other levels were not monitored by some gadget. It was understood that God had it in hand that he was working behind the scenes of his creation. So much so that even the flocks and the valleys shouted for joy. Everything was in balance when this Psalm was written, the stage was visible and the play was proceeding as it should as God had set it up.
Back to the first four verses of the Psalm. Because all of this great stuff occuring, because of God’s backstage handywork people knew He had provided, they praised Him, they saw their prayers answered and praised God, prayers of thanksgiving were prayed, not just at this time but they remembered his past great works, his forgiveness of their former transgressions.
The Psalmist writes about how those who are close to God’s house are blessed and the Psalmist in this instance is David, King David. They are blessed because God has poured out his unmerited favor on them.
So we have this picture from the Psalmist, that we live in God’s unmerited favor, that all of nature’s abundant blessings are of his making, that he provides nature with balance. That there is more going on than we see in front of us. As we look to God our creator and grow in our understanding of his hand in the natural world, we see further that he is the hope of all the ends of the world, I have said it before that is where we are positioned in relation to Jerusalem, for what we see going happening on stage is only because of what he has done behind the scenes.
“The grasslands of the wilderness overflow, the hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.”
Lets join them in their singing, lets join them in their celebration, of what the Lord has done for them and done for us.
