The Call Series

Psalm 66:1–4 ESV

Shout for joy to God, all the earth;

sing the glory of his name;

give to him glorious praise!

Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!

So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you.

All the earth worships you

and sings praises to you;

they sing praises to your name.” Selah

Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to take some time to reflect and meditate on Psalm 66. We’ll look at it in smaller pieces or stanzas in order to grasp some of what’s happening here and how that relates to our lives today.

As we look at these four verses, the main point that I want to present is that:

Because God is great in character and conduct, we should verbalize the praise/thanks that He deserves.

In doing this, we’ll consider this main idea in three ways:

the context for praise

the command to praise

the content of praise

Now, you might think about that main point and the outline we’re going to consider and think “there is a lot of reference to praise, but where does thanks fit in? After all, isn’t this new series called gratitude?”

I’m glad you asked.

First of all, The most common Hebrew noun used for “thanks” (????????, todah) derives from the verb “to praise, confess” (??????, yadah). So there is a sense in which giving thanks is giving praise. Practically speaking, when you and I express our gratitude to someone - we are not only telling them how much we appreciate that person or the gesture, but we in essence praise them for their work.

I may have shared this before, but in our house, we have a monthly menu that we cycle through. In many ways it’s a team effort. Periodically we’ll change things, but over the last several months there have been roughly 25 or so meals that we’ve rotated through. Melody and Danielle worked together to figure out what recipes we would have. Melody consolidated that into a binder that has recipes and shopping lists. Typically, I’ll do the shopping and then each week some mixture of us will make the dinner. These recipes are delicious, so we can praise Danielle and Melody for their selection in our thanks. The shopping list makes my job each week easier, so I can praise Melody by thanking her for pulling the list together - and then give thanks to the people at Walmart who bring it out to my car or Costco as they check my receipts. Then, each night as we sit down to eat, we can thank God for his provision for this food and give praise and thanks to the one who made the delicious meal happen! In essence, every expression of gratitude is a corporate act of praise - at least within our family. We have lot to be thankful for, and that’s just in one meal!

So as we dive into this Psalm - recognize that praise and thanks go hand in hand.

So, let’s begin with...

The Context for Praise

Every Psalm was written in some historical context. There was some reason that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers to pen these words. Sometimes, we’ll get a bit of context at the top of the Psalm in the subtitle. Unfortunately, this Psalm doesn’t help us in that way.

“To the choirmaster. A song. A Psalm.”

Not a lot of help there.

To the choirmaster suggests that this would be sung by the choir or by the worship team or even worship leaders.

So, since the subtitle doesn’t help us a lot, we have to look within - the contextual clues.

As we read this Psalm in it’s entirety a few minutes ago, you may have heard things that point to attributes of God or acts of God.

For instance, in verse 6, he turned the sea in to dry land and they passed through the river on foot” - what does that remind you of? The crossing the Red Sea (Ex. 14:21) and crossing the Jordan (Joshua 3:14-17). So there is a bit more context - God did miraculous things to save his people. Those two events are certainly reasons for praise and thanksgiving. They are also common refrains among Israelite Psalms.

If we look down a little further, we get some more clue. In verses 8-12 we see references to testing and trials and God’s provision. Some of the details there are a bit vague, but it clearly points to a time of difficulty in Israelite history.

Many commentators suggest that this Psalm came as a result of God’s provision and victory over the Assyrians in Isaiah 36-37. If you have an opportunity this afternoon, let me encourage you read those chapters.

In essence: