Testing, Trust, And Thanks Series

In the year 715 BC, Shalmanezer, the King of Assyria besieged the Northern Kingdom of Israel. For three years, his army starved the nation of Israel until finally they surrendered. In 712 BC, the northern Kingdom crumbled, Israelite citizens were marched off to a foreign land, and Assyria began to rule over part of the land that God had promised to his people.

All of this had been warned by the prophets - and yet the kings and most of the people refused to worship they one true God in the ways that he had prescribed (2 Kings 17:7-23). They had syncretized the Jewish rituals with other pagan rituals, worshiped idols, sacrificed to false gods, and even sacrificed some of their children in the manner of the surrounding nations. God had ordained that Assyria would be his instrument of judgment on the northern kingdom. (2 Kings 18:11-12)

Meanwhile, in the south, 31 year-old King Hezekiah of Judah observed the fall of the Northern Kingdom. He continued to lead the people of Judah (the southern kingdom) to follow God in the ways that God prescribed.

Eight years later, there was a new King in the vast Assyrian empire - Sennacherib. He knew that this little strip of land between his nation and Egypt would be a profitable piece of property for trade and so he began to flex his military muscles. He began to extort money and resources from King Hezekiah. It wasn’t long before Sennacherib wanted more than just the resources. He began to take some cities and was threatening the capitol city of Jerusalem.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, that this incident prompted Hezekiah to pray fervently to Yahweh, who responded by distracting and then destroying 185,000 of the Assyrian Army. Within a short period of time, even King Sennacherib lost his life as two of his sons killed him.

Many commentators believe that this event is what prompted the writing of Psalm 66 and even speculate that Hezekiah himself may have composed this corporate psalm of thanksgiving.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been considering gratitude and praise as we have reflected on this psalm together. We’ve considered the call to worship or give thanks and the need to bear witness about what God has done so that others can respond.

Today, we’ll be looking at the central portion of the Psalm.

Before we do that though, I want to point out a bit of the greater structure. It is common throughout the Bible and especially the Psalms to find a chiastic structure. This structure creates a sort of balance in the text in order to highlight some portion of the material - drawing that to our attention.

This Psalm has that same sort of structure. Let me encourage you to have your Bible or the Pew Bible out in order to see this most clearly. In the Bible that I use to prepare with, I made some of these markings and labels so that I could see it more clearly.

A: Worship (1-4) - with the imperatives to sing, shout, give and say praise to God.

B: Witness (5-7) - an invitation for outsiders to see God’s work (which requires testimony) and then respond.

C: Corporate Worship (8-12) - this central stanza of the Psalm is almost a double stanza - beginning with a corporate call to worship - as we will see, this seems to reference the pain experienced by the nation

C’: Personal Worship (13-15) - this central stanza concludes with a personal worship.

B’: Witness (16-19) - instead of an invitation to come and see, this one is an invitation to come and hear as the Psalmist talks about answered prayer.

A’: Worship (20) - finally the Psalm concludes with praise to God.

(Adapted from the “Exalting Jesus is Psalms 51-100” Commentary)

Worship or praise is a key part of this Psalm - and given the fact that the central stanza or segment of this Psalm applies worship both corporately and individually helps us to see that this is something for the congregation and the Christian.

Let’s look at those central verses once again. As we read these words aloud together, notice the shift between first person plural pronouns (our, us, we) and first person singular (I, my):

Psalm 66:8–15 ESV

Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard,

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

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

You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs;

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.