The Wondrous Works of Our God

If you would open your Bibles to Psalm chapter 105, we're going to look at the first eight verses, Psalm 105, 1 through 8. Let us pray. Father, as we open your Word tonight, we pray that the Holy Spirit comes and teaches us. Lord, keep my lips from error and let it be your truth that is spoken. And Lord, build us in Christ. Conform us more to Him that we may bring glory and honor to your name. And it's in Christ we pray. Amen. Amen.

You may be seated. Back in January, I used the text out of the Psalm, Psalm 60 I believe it was, and it dealt with the awesome deeds of God. And as I was looking for where to go after the book of Titus, I went to the book of Psalms again and I saw repeatedly, Psalm after Psalm, that opens or in places tell us to look back at what God has done and why they're used the way they're used. And when I fell upon Psalm 105 and read over the whole of the Psalm, but then back over those first eight verses, it is just a call by the psalmist for us to worship, to rest in what God has done.

And so as I was thinking about what do I want to preach about, that is what we want to preach about. The wondrous works of God and this side of the cross now. Not just what the psalmist is putting forth that we're going to touch on, but what glories that we have this side of the cross that we already touched on tonight before we got to the message. The text as we have it has no author listed like many of the Psalms will say a Psalm of David, a Psalm of Asaph. Personally, I've thought this is Davidic Psalm all along, but as you read different commentators, apparently, and I am not a biblical scholar, I apologize, but there is debate in the biblical community, the scholarly community, is this a Psalm of David or is this actually a Psalm that was brought in to the post-exilic community? And so I went to my trusted source, James Montgomery Boyce, because I knew he did the Psalms and I knew he'd have something to say. And Boyce says this, what we must remember is that Psalm 105 and 106 are Psalms that are put together for purpose.

They're complementary. Psalm 105 is a command to praise God because of his faithfulness, but 106 begins with the same very praise God, but it is then the account of the people's failure and sin in every way that they departed and so it is more a Psalm of repentance. And Boyce goes to say this, that Psalm 105 is a Psalm of praise to God for his works and his faithfulness to his people from the time of his covenant with Abraham through their entering into the promised land. Psalm 106 is a Psalm that deals with the people's unfaithfulness and disobedience during this same period. And whether they are pre-exilic during the time of the exile, post-exilic, Boyce goes on in his commentary to say that for the church today, the Psalm is of great importance in directing God's people to understand God and how we can rest and worship in him.

That's a paraphrase, but basically what he summed up as far as authorship and use of the text. The opening six verses, if you were paying attention and I put a little more emphasis there, we find in those first six verses a calling, imperatives, commands that we're to worship, that we're to call upon, that we're to remember God. These same verses and why I find it as a Davidic Psalm, if you turn to 1 Corinthians and you don't have to, but in 1 Chronicles 16, starting at verse 8 through 13, you're going to read the same exact words. The opening of this Psalm, whether it's a different Psalmist, they took the words of David's Thanksgiving Psalm when the ark was brought into Jerusalem and handed down to Asaph. So that account in 1 Chronicles is what leads me to believe that David is, this is the Psalm David has penned and passed down through, but again, whether or not it is or not, it is still a value to, and especially to us today, some 2500 years later or 3000 years later. This Psalm 105, it calls us to remember, to boast and to rejoice and to seek, where to seek His presence, where to seek His strength.

And that would have been a crucial thing for the people during the exile, would have been a crucial thing, post-exilic coming back, trying to re-establish the nation and the temple. But as Boyce said, it is important at any time in their history, and it is even more crucial for us today as believers in Jesus Christ. So with that little bit of contextual background to the Psalm, I would like us to look at these first 8 verses and we are going to spread towards the New Testament a little bit while keeping true to what he is calling his original audience to. The Psalm, like I said, in those first 6 verses give us 9 commands, 3 in the very first verse. Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds. And it even tells us where we are to make known those deeds, it says among the peoples. We are to preach, we are to declare what God has done out into the world, but also into the people of God, into the church.

We are to tell of His wondrous works. We are to glory or boast in His holy name. As we come and worship the Psalm that we raised up, we are boasting of God and what He has accomplished.

Not us, but who He is, what He is, what He has done. We are called to rejoice, we are called to seek the Lord, and we are called again then to remember those wondrous works. In those 6 verses, we have 6 different imperatives, but 3 times in those 6 verses we are told to make known His deeds, tell of His works or deeds, and remember those works that He has done. I would contend in those 6 verses as David sang them, as the ark was coming in and to the people of God as they needed to hear, they also needed centered back to what God has done, what He is doing, and what He will continue to do for them.

And by knowing those things, by staying anchored into those things, they will be kept as the world around them is a confusing, chaotic, whether they're moving in their sin away from God, rebelling and then being restored, whether they're being judged and put into the exile or whether they're returning. And us today, as we face day to day the issues and the trials that seem and sound so overwhelming from all the things we hear in the news media to the things that might be going on in our families, we need centered continually back into what God has done for us, and that is what the psalmist is doing here. It would be my contention that the 3 times listed in these 6 verses give it an importance, and I believe that the rest of the text verses 9 through 45 uphold that contention. Verses 9 through 45 is a survey of the true and living God in His works and His faithfulness to the covenant that He has made to the keeping of His people. These verses show how God relates to His people first of all.

Verses 7 and 8 tell us in Psalm 105, He is the Lord our God, His judgments are in all the earth, He remembers His covenant forever, the word that He commanded for a thousand generations. As we look at that and realize that the very basic way God reveals and keeps with us is this covenant. And we're going to look at that specifically because that applies to you and I. I think many times as we talk about scripture, as we talk about covenants, we think how it dealt with the Jewish people or the nation of Israel or, you know, is it really what we should find our foundation in. We are a church that believes that God relates to His people by covenant.

We believe scripture resounds that truth. We see 6 covenants. We see the Adamic covenant at creation. We see the Noahic covenant as He delivers His people through the flood. We see the Abrahamic covenant where God pulls out a man and He says, I will bless you and through you I will bless all the nations. Then He goes and takes that very people that went into Egypt and came under oppression and He saves them, He brings them out and He enters in the covenant with them through Moses.

And then through all that the people rebel and continue turning away and He makes another covenant as they rebel by calling for a king other than Him and He says that through this line of David I will establish His throne forever and He is going to do a wondrous work through that. So we have those covenants and then we have another covenant that we got to celebrate this morning. And so we're going to touch on all those but I want us to understand that God is a covenant working God and that we should find rest, we should find peace and it should drive us to worship because that is who He is.

We might ask and several have, why do you worry about such old things? You're talking about people groups 3,000 years ago and how God interacted with them. But there is a very important meaning to us tonight because we are the children of Abraham. I would like us to look at three truths revealed in this text and that very first one I want us to look at tonight is that we rest and worship God because that He covenants with His people. And that means He has covenanted with you and I even from those very first covenants. It is not like we just participate in the new covenant. Jesus Christ actually has fulfilled all the covenants on our behalf and has made us right with God in them as well as ordaining and ushering in the new covenant.

The psalmist makes clear that our God makes covenants and that He keeps them. We are called to worship God in verses 1 through 6 because of these wondrous works of covenant. I want you to turn if you have your Bibles to Galatians chapter 3 because for those people who say, but how does it apply to us, I want us to see clearly how it applies to us.

Paul answers this to the people in Galatia in chapter 3 verses 22 through 29. Paul says this to them, But the scripture imposed everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So Paul is talking about the work of salvation, the justification that comes through what Christ does, and in verse 29 he says this, and this is a fantastic thing for us to stand in, And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Paul goes on further to the Galatian church in chapter 4 verse 28, he says, Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. What is the promise? Well we hear in Acts 2 that the promise is for you and your children.

What are we talking about? What is the promise that is being spoken of? It is the covenant of God with his people. When we sit and wonder, are we good? Can we get there?

How is this all going to work out? It is not dependent upon us. It is dependent upon a God who makes, keeps, and keeps us in that covenant through grace, mercy, and love. If we read the rest of 106, we would see what we do in the face of God's covenant.

We are a rebellious, sin-filled people. We turn to ourselves time and time again, and God continually chastens, God continually calls back his children, his people, which we are part of. If we are in Christ Jesus, and he preserves us in the covenant, because that is what he did for them back then. He said, I have saved myself, and I'm going to say it right, Wendy, a remnant. Seven thousand who hasn't bowed the knee. There is a remnant in Jerusalem.

There is a remnant today that are mine, and I will keep them. There is God's works. When we sit and think about covenant, I think sometimes what we can do is get in our minds that covenant is, God says this, and he tells us this, and we have to keep it perfectly, which we should, but we can't because of sin. And what we have is a type of covenant, if you've been here any time and heard Doug preach on it, we have what's called a suzerain covenant. And that is a covenant that is made by a superior king to a lower, and that superior king is going to make and keep it.

The inferior is called, and there is blessing and curse to it. There is chastening. There is chastisement. There is at times God bringing us discipline that we don't want because of our failure in keeping covenant, but because of his grace, his mercy, and his love, he never breaks relation with us and upholds the very covenant that he made.

How do we know that? Paul says this in Hebrews chapter 9, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by the means of blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if by the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a defiled person's with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. The writer of Hebrews speaks clearly of this blessing of the nations that the covenant made with Abraham long before, but he references now a new covenant and in this writing he writes about these terms of redemption, that there is a work that is done that fulfills the covenants that God is making.

God explains to us in Jeremiah 31, 31 he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. This would be to the group of people who are entering into that exile. And he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the Mosaic covenant, on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Very similar language with what he tells Abraham. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. But get this, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

How is that possible? A holy, right, and just God cannot tolerate sin. Well, the writer of the Hebrews told us, It is by Christ Jesus and the redemption found in his blood. God made the covenant. God keeps the covenant. He keeps the covenant, and he even fulfills the very thing that we can't do. And what's very troubling, as we look at ourselves in a mirror, we want to see ourselves as the Davids and the Moseses, and we want to see ourselves as the apostles who never fall away, but we're actually the Peters that get in the way. We are actually the children of Israel who fight and rebel against that very God, but God, being gracious and merciful, when we were yet sinners, died for us.

And he applies and makes that work effective. Jesus wraps up this talk on covenant in Luke 22. Doug shared from the pulpit for the Lord's Supper. Luke 22 verses 19 and 20. And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. It is completed. It's a covenant that's initiated by God, and it is completed by God in the work of Jesus Christ. When the psalmist calls the Old Testament church, the people of Israel, to worship, and this worship is the only justifiable response that they have, he's pointing out to them how he made covenant with Abraham, and then how he kept the nation and brought them out of slavery in Egypt, and how he established them in the promised land, but oh, on this side of the cross, when we take that psalmist's words and we think of those wondrous works, those words of Jesus, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. And that new covenant tells us what? I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. I will be their God, and they will be my people. How many times do we need to hear that?

Over and over and over. We need to be founded in Jesus Christ, because that is our only true hope. That is our only true joy, and that is what we should boast in. That is what we should proclaim.

That is what we should rejoice in. If we're looking back at the psalmist, and we see that we are to look at these, remember, tell of, and proclaim these wondrous works, we rest in and worship God in these works, because he has completed the most wondrous of work through Christ Jesus. As we read in Luke 22 19 and 20, Jesus makes it clear that through his life, death, and resurrection, that he has accomplished what we cannot. The writer in Hebrews in chapter 13, at the start of his benediction in verse 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, and listen what happens, equip you with every good that you may do as will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. God through Christ has not only satisfied our sin and death, but he has promised in Jeremiah and to Abraham that he will be our God, that he will keep us. Through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, we don't just get to stand right before him, we get to stand in relation with him. He is our God, our Father. We're adopted into the family and given all the rights as an heir with Christ Jesus. God communes with us.

We saw it this morning. In this earth, God has set a way to commune with us physically. He communes with us in his scripture. He communes with us in prayer.

We have a relationship with God Almighty. He brings us to worship and he empowers us to do it. This rebellious and sin-marred creature is made righteous through Jesus Christ. The psalmist speaks to a group that also has no merit and he calls them to worship for the very same reason.

They're looking forward what is to come. We're standing on this side and see that it has come and he has accomplished the work, but it is no different. Both are called to worship the same God and the same salvation. It is not their goodness. It's his grace. It's not their righteousness.

It's his mercy. He redeems and he keeps them in us. The psalmist's commands give thanks, call upon, preach, sing praises, boast, rejoice, seek, and remember his works.

On this side of the cross, there is so much more as we look at the finished work of Christ Jesus that that should just resound to us why we should rest and worship God, not that we have any value, but that he loves us to the level and has shown it through that work. This leads us to the last thing that I would like us to see that the psalmist is calling the original audience towards, but also to us. If this is a text that's for the post-exilic nation, they are coming out of 70 years of bondage and they are going back to a broken-down Jerusalem. They have no temple.

They have to rebuild. And if the psalm is being used to show the future is good because God is faithful and good, folks, I want to share something even greater. The third point is we rest in worship because he has promised a consummating, wondrous work.

We, like the exiles back then, are exiles right now. We are in a world that we are in but not of. It is a world that sin seems to be just continually worsening at paces that we never imagined and we feel that there's chaos all around us and the psalmist centers on God and his workings. I want us to center on God and his workings in Christ Jesus. We are according to the psalmist to tell of this wondrous works and I want to move you to John 14 for the end of this message because there is a wondrous work that I think many times we don't bring to mind often enough.

Eugene touched on it this evening. But in John 14, starting in verse 1, Jesus is talking to his disciples in the upper room and he begins to comfort them because of what they're going to face over the coming few hours but the coming several years. And he says this, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.

Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.

Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him. John 14, those words of comfort to the disciples is this imminent trial, crucifixion, chaotic time for them is coming. He is centering them that there is something greater through him that is occurring. He is accomplishing one thing in this first coming, but he is telling them this is not the fulfillment of it all. I am going and I am going to prepare a place and if I go, I am gonna come back and take you unto myself so that where I am you are also. That is the promise to us tonight.

That is the wondrous work we should long for. Jesus Christ is not dead and we don't worship works that hopefully get us right with God. Jesus Christ is alive this very moment and he rules and reigns from heaven and he intercedes on our behalf before a holy, right and just God. When you sin this week, Jesus said, apply it to me.

He is ours. See his forgiveness in my blood father. That is the work that he is doing and there is going to be a moment when the father looks at the son and he says go and get your bride and folks that is us. There is a wondrous work that we should be resting in.

The outcome of elections, the outcome of political turmoil, the outcome of the economy is not our main concern. Our main concern is that we are sin filled, marred creatures that a holy, right and just God can accept outside of Christ Jesus but Christ came and did what we couldn't. And if the Holy Spirit has moved your heart, this promise is your promise that there is better still to come, a wondrous work that is going to knock our socks off. We are going to see the very face of God. We are going to see Jesus Christ. We are going to stand before him and we are going to reign with him forever and ever. Paul said it this way to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 15. I tell you this brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. That understanding that Jesus has paid our sin debt, that he's defeated it on our part but not only that, that he has made us an adopted child of his father and that he is coming back to take us, to be where he's at and Paul finishes this to the Corinthian church therefore, because of everything that I just told you, therefore my beloved brothers be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. We need reminded continually, O give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples. Remember the wondrous works that he has done.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is the wondrous works that we rest in, it is the wondrous work we still long for. If you're here tonight and you do not know Christ as your savior, I would ask that you forsake everything else if the Holy Spirit's pulling on your heart. Go to an elder, go to a pastor, go to your knees and pray because it is the only thing of value in this world is a right relationship with Jesus Christ. If you are here tonight and you are in Christ, then hear the truths that we rest in. This is none of our doing, it's only his, and it is these reasons that we are called to worship our God, our Redeemer, our Savior, our King Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that 3,000 years ago that you caused a psalmist to write down and tell us to remember you, to look upon your works, to boast in you, to sing praise to you, to drive us continually back to the truth that you are the only true importance in this world. And we see that completed through the work of Jesus Christ. Father, tonight we praise you and we thank you for your wondrous works that have been accomplished but for those wondrous works that we still rest in knowing that you are going to bring. And it's in Christ Jesus we pray. Amen.