God Remembered (Through the Psalms) Psalm 105

Welcome to Through the Psalms, a weekend ministry of the Truth Pulpit, teaching God's people God's Word. Over time, we'll study all 150 Psalms with Pastor Don Green from Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

We're so glad you're with us. Let's open to the Psalms right now as we join our teacher in the Truth Pulpit. Our text this evening is Psalm 105, which, of course, I read just a moment ago.

And it comes at the end of Book 5 of the Psalter, and these final four Psalms are a pair of pairs of Psalms, you could say. Psalm 103 prays God for His work as Redeemer. Psalm 104 prays God for His work in creation. And Psalm 105 and 106 function as a separate pair, dealing with His work in Israel. Psalm 105 praises Him for His work in Israel, in the nation of Israel, and is indicating that God remembered His promises to Abraham. And that's what we'll be unpacking here today. Psalm 106, by contrast, is showing how Israel forgot everything that God had promised, and we'll hopefully be able to look at that next week.

That's the plan anyway. As we come to Psalm 105, Psalm 105 is presupposing that you have a familiarity with Old Testament history. Psalm 105 recites a lot of that history, but it's not just a history lesson.

It is reciting history with a purpose. It is showing the hand of God behind history, and reminding the reader of the covenants which God put into place that guided the outworking of history after He spoke His Word. And so what the psalmist is doing here is he is interpreting the history of the nation of Israel in light of God's work. But what you must see and must understand to enter into the brilliance and the genius of this psalm is that this is not just an academic interpretation of Psalm 106.

It is designed to have a spiritual impact upon you as the reader. It is designed to elicit a response of praise to God. And why he is praising God, and what Psalm 105 is showing us and calling us to remember, is that God is worthy of praise because He has remembered, and He has remembered His Word to His people. Look at Psalm 105 verse 8.

As I like to do, I'm just going to show you briefly a few verses that show the theme of the psalm, and then we have something to hang our thoughts on the rest of the way through. In Psalm 105 verse 8, it says, God has remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations specifically, the covenant which He made with Abraham and his oath to Isaac. You see, God remembered His covenant. Now in verse 19, it's a remembrance of the Word of God.

Speaking about Joseph, Joseph was afflicted in verse 18, his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons. Verse 19, until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. God's word came to pass. What he had promised to Abraham now happened in subsequent history. And then in verse 42, you see once again it says that God remembered His holy word with Abraham, his servant. God remembered his word. What does that mean?

What is he saying? What is the significance of that? God remembered his word in this sense, meaning that he kept his promise that he made to Abraham centuries earlier, centuries beforehand. Not one promise failed.

Listen to this. God did in history what he had said beforehand that he would do. And that is the celebration of this psalm. God spoke in advance and then he kept his promise and he did what he said that he would do in subsequent outworking of history among his people. And because of that historical reality, his people have ground to praise him and they have reason and obligation to praise him because God spoke and then he did it.

He spoke and then he kept his word. Now, what you have to understand as you read this psalm, you know, it took me, what, five to ten minutes to read it just a few moments ago. What you need to realize is that what we read today in five to ten minutes is summarizing history that worked out over the course of seven or eight hundred years. Seven or eight hundred years passing from the time of Abraham to the time of Moses and Aaron that is included in the scope of this psalm.

Now, beloved, right from the start you see something that needs to really impress itself upon your mind. We are so prone in our earthly carnal living by sight instead of faith approach to life, we are so prone to measure the work of God in terms of what we can see happening over the course of today or over the next thirty days or so. Well, this psalm introduces us to a completely different way of thinking about the work and the nature of God and the outworking of his purposes. We see that it occurs over the course of centuries. Indeed, it occurs over the course of millennia. It was over two thousand years from the time of Abraham until his ultimate seed appeared on earth in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, here we are two thousand years after that in the flow of the outworking of those promises that God made to Abraham that in his seed all of the nations of the earth would be blessed.

Four thousand years. You see, what we need to see and be stunned by, what we need to be in awe of, what we need to be humbled by and worship God for is his power to work out his purposes in a way that utterly transcend our lifetimes. You see, my friends, and I'm kind of just introducing things here, you and I must learn that we are to trust God for his faithfulness because of what is revealed in his word and by the nature of his immutable character in which he cannot lie, that what God has said he will perform, and that is not measured by what our perceptions are over the course of the seventy brief years of our lives.

We must understand this. We must believe his word. We must trust him to be working out his purposes even if we don't understand and even if we don't see it before we die and go to glory. God is not restrained by the time limits of our lives and he certainly is not restrained by our perceptions of what reality is.

And the sooner that you and I embrace that, the more settled our ground for joy is and the less we are going to be upset by the vicissitudes, the changing nature of life and the comings and goings of world events or circumstances in our lives or what happens even within our own individual families. We are meant to trust God for his word and not live by sight in what we see, and Psalm 105 helps us to see that, and that's what we have the privilege of seeing here tonight. Now the opening fifteen verses of this psalm are paralleled in 1 Chronicles 16 along with other portions of Scripture.

We won't bother to look at that for the sake of time, but I just point this out that this passage of Scripture appears in other places as well and is an important part of God's word. What happens in Psalm 105 is that it opens with this section that we could call a praise for the Lord's greatness. If you're taking notes tonight, and I certainly encourage you to do that, it opens with a praise for the Lord's greatness in the opening seven verses of the psalm. And what happens is, let's just look at these first five verses again, you'll see that it opens with a series of imperatives, a series of commands to the nation and to the reader of the psalm. There are eleven different imperatives in what we're about to see here so that there is an urgency of obedience that is placed upon us to recognize the greatness of God and to respond accordingly.

We are not simply reading this for the sake of having something to read here. This psalm is calling upon a volitional moral response in terms of what it is saying, and every one of us is responsible to respond in this way. Look at these opening five verses with me. It says, O give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, sing to him, sing praises to him, speak of all his wonders, glory in his holy name, let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually, remember his wonders which he has done, his marvels and the judgments uttered by his mouth. Now, we're not going to itemize all eleven of those commands, but what I want you to see is that there's both an outward vocal aspect to these commands and also an inward contemplation that we are called to. An outward speaking, an outward proclamation, O give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name.

Vertically, we call upon God and we thank him for who he is. And then there is this corporate nature of singing to him and singing praises to him and speaking of all his wonders. When we gather together corporately and we sing these hymns of praise that the musicians lead us in, we are engaging in that which is commanded by Scripture. And it is a glad obedience that we render. David came up and spoke and he says, I'm excited to sing this song and speak forth the glory of his name. Rise up, O church of God.

That is precisely it. That is to be the attitude of everyone that gathers together in corporate worship. We gather gladly to vocally respond to God and to sing and to acknowledge his presence and his glory among us. One of the many things that I love about our church, and I hope that you're seeing over the course of these several weeks as I've taught on unity and humility of the church on Sunday mornings and all of that, how very encouraged and pleased I am at the work of the Spirit of God in the midst of our body. And there is just so much for us as church leadership to give thanks about what God is doing in your lives. When we gather together and I stand up front and sometimes I just stop and listen, I hear the voices behind me.

It's not silence that I hear. No, there is a full-throated singing that is going on indicating that your hearts are engaged in worship. Isn't that right, Larry?

Isn't that right, David? This is the way it is supposed to be, and it is an indication, it is an indication that we are responding rightly to God's Word when our hearts are full of song and when it comes out in a joyful way. This is what is commanded in God's Word. It's one of the ways I believe that a person can evaluate the true state of their heart. The redeemed of the Lord should have a song in their heart. Do you have a song in your heart that naturally comes out when the praises of God are being sung?

Do you feel the urge and the need and the desire to join in? That's the mark of a true Christian. If you consistently and continually lack that, beloved, you need to reexamine whether you're in Christ or not. Because one of the things that the Spirit of God does is he puts a song in our heart, and Scripture calls forth that which the Spirit works in our hearts when he regenerates us and gives new life to us. And so there is this outward vocal aspect to what we are called to.

But as you continue on in these imperatives, you see that there's also an element of contemplation, of inner contemplation, of reflection, of meditation that takes place as well that is equally important. Verse 3, there it says, glory in his holy name. Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad.

Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face continually. Remember his wonders which he has done, his marvels and the judgments uttered by his mouth. This seeking, this remembering, this gladness of heart is an inner disposition that is vertically seeking after God. A preview of Matthew 6 33 that says, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness as that which is the first priority of life.

Your first desire, your first motivation, your first impulse, your first affection being, God, I want to know you. There's a more contemporary song, oh Lord, I want to know you, I want to know you more, that is a bubbling fountain in the heart of the redeemed. And I don't, I don't know, there's just so many things to teach out of Scripture. But one of the things that I've tried to emphasize from time to time as we've gathered together, is that what Scripture is presenting to us is what real authentic Christianity is, is that it is so much more than a mere outward code of moral behavior. We're not studying Scripture in order to conform our behavior to an outward standard that comes with the territory, but preeminently we're wanting to know this God who has revealed himself in his word and has acted in history to prove the certainty of his promises to his people. And we vertically want to know him and worship him and respond to him. And that love of heart and that affection of heart, soul, strength, and mind is of the essence of the commandment that God places upon people to know him.

So it's not a matter of keeping rules preeminently, it's a matter of knowing this God that has made himself known. And so there again, look at it again in verse 4, seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually, seek his countenance, seek the place where you can look into his face and know who he is. And that's what this psalm calls us to do, and the idea of it is that this is done in a spirit of thanksgiving, of a recognition of who God is, of the blessings that he has given, and giving him a response of gratitude and thanks as a result.

And so who's it addressed to in verse 6? In response, his people, God's people should magnify his name. Look at verse 6, O seed of Abraham his servant, O sons of Jacob his chosen ones, he is the Lord our God, his judgments are in all the earth.

And so the psalm is directed in a particular way at the time it was written to the people of Abraham, the descendants of Abraham, the people of the nation of Israel, and he's going to go on and say, remember what God spoke to Abraham, and remember what he did and what followed, and recognize that God is a God who is faithful to his people, he acts on behalf of his people, and therefore we are to give thanks and to honor him with our worship. And so we magnify his name, we magnify his name vertically to him, with vocatives, with words of address, O God, O Yahweh, O Lord of the nations, I look to you and I speak to you and I honor your name. And then we think of it in a horizontal way, and we speak to ourselves as it were, in the proclamation of his word and in our fellowship, isn't God great?

Oh yes he is brother, yes he is sister, you got that right, our God is great, our God is wonderful, and we exalt him to each other. And we do it before unbelievers as well, and we proclaim his name throughout all the earth. Verse 7, look at it there, his judgments are in all the earth, God is sovereign over everything that happens in the world, his actions are reflecting his work and his judgments in a way, he's done wonderful deeds, and as a result of that we should praise him vertically, horizontally, and within our own hearts. So this produces this great call to praise the Lord for his greatness. Well, having set the stage for that, what follows in the next 35 verses or so, is the grounds upon which that praise should be offered. And the psalmist here has done something that we can all appreciate.

He doesn't simply lay forth a command and then move on to something else, it's not, this isn't a brief psalm, what he's done is something that is a little bit foreign and sometimes in our modern society and with our, you know, 15-second attention spans, we sometimes don't have the patience for it, but the psalmist had the patience for it, and he walks through and tells many different aspects of the unfolding of the history designed to make a collective impact upon us that would enrich and inform our praise and lift it to higher heights than he would if he had only given a brief statement or a brief command in the psalm. And so in the second part we're going to see his praise for the Lord's faithfulness. His praise for the Lord's faithfulness, and this is the extensive central section of the psalm that we are about to see. In this psalm, in Psalm 105, the theme of praise is God's covenant with Abraham. Look at Psalm 105 verse 8.

Having set forth those 11 imperatives for praise, verse 8 he now says, and this is why we should praise him. Verse 8, he has remembered his covenant forever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. In other words, this covenant extends into the indefinite future. This is a covenant of eternal import.

This goes on for future generations without number. What covenant in particular does he have in mind? Verse 9, the covenant which he made with Abraham and his oath to Isaac. And then he confirmed it to Jacob for a statute to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying to you I will give the land of Canaan and the portion of your inheritance when they were only a few men in number, very few and strangers in it. Now, back in October of 2014, I preached a message on Abraham and alluded to Psalm 105, and here we're going to go back and look at some of those same texts that we looked at several years ago. Genesis chapter 12, if you would turn there with me, Genesis chapter 12, we see God making this unconditional promise to Abraham, who then at the time was known as Abram. God had called him out of the pagan land in which he lived. And in chapter 12 verse 1, the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you.

It's interesting, isn't it? He calls him out of his own family and out of his own homeland. Sometimes that's what the call of God on a life does. It calls us away from family relationships. It calls us out of that which has been familiar to a different place where God would have us serve him. And that is not to be feared, that is to be embraced when the opportunity comes.

That's a whole other message for another time. Verse 2, God continuing to speak to Abram says, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you.

And the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. This is an amazing piece of Scripture to recognize that God calls a single man out and makes all of these promises to him. He calls Abram when he is not a man with great wealth, he is not a man with many descendants, he's a solitary individual, and God makes these promises to him of great eternal consequence.

This is remarkable! Who could project that this would actually come to pass? Turn to Genesis 15. God took him outside in verse 5, said, Look toward the heavens and count the stars if you're able to count them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. And in a great statement of justification by faith, verse 6, Abram believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. He believed him by faith. And then in verse 13, God said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years.

But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. God speaking these things centuries in advance of Israel's time in Egypt and their exodus therefrom. Centuries in advance, God is telling Abram exactly what's going to happen.

Now, later on to Abram's immediate descendants, he repeated these promises. In Genesis chapter 26, look there with me for just a moment. To his son, Isaac, in chapter 26, verse 24, The Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of your father Abraham.

Do not fear, I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham. And then in chapter 35, to Isaac's son Jacob, who there are several passages that we could look at with regard to Jacob, we're only going to look at one. In Genesis chapter 35, beginning in verse 9, God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Pad and Aram and he blessed him. God said to him, Your name is Jacob. You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. Thus he called him Israel. And God also said to him, I am God Almighty.

Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come forth from you. The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give it to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you. Now, here's what we need to see and remember in light of these things, is that the origins of the nation of Israel were very modest. The people were very few in number.

Success seemed very improbable by human measures and by human eyes. Now, as you go back, as you go back to Psalm 105 verse 8, you see laid out for you in the Psalm what the psalmist is calling attention to. He says God has remembered his covenant. Writing this centuries after the fact, God remembered the covenant which he made with Abraham, his oath to Isaac, and what he confirmed to Jacob. Verse 11, saying to you, I will give the land of Canaan as a portion of your inheritance. Here it is, verse 12, when they were only a few men in number, very few and strangers in it. Now, on the subsequent end of the, or on the other side of the events, the psalmist looks back on this and calls upon the people of God to remember their modest and small origins. Now they are a nation, now God has acted in history, and they can see the outworking, and we can see the outworking of the promises of God. Though they were very few in number, it says in verse 12, this is what happened in consequence. And their modest numbers, beloved, here's the point, their modest numbers merely highlight the power and faithfulness of God to them. This could not have been something that these men engendered on their own.

It was not an accomplishment that they did by their own power because they had no power, they had no numbers to make it happen. Rather, you look at the promise and you see the outworking of it, and you see that God acted on his word. So that, when it says in verse 8, God has remembered his covenant forever, what you're intended to see in this psalm is this. It's not simply that God called to his memory something that he had said in the past, like some of you older people might do what I do, and you look at the pictures of your children when they were younger, and you remember times gone by, and you enjoy the memory of that. What is being said here in Psalm 105, when it says God remembered his covenant, this is not a matter of nostalgia that it is talking about.

God didn't simply call his word to mental cognition. When it says God remembered his covenant, it's saying he acted upon it. He did this, he acted in history in a way that vindicated his word and kept his promise to those patriarchs from centuries earlier, from centuries earlier. When I get to this point, I often remind whoever I'm speaking to that from our perspective, the arrival of Columbus in the New World was back in 1492, about 530 years ago, and that is ancient history to us.

That is so far removed that it's hard to even get our minds around how long ago that is. Understand that the period of time being described in Psalm 105 is even longer than that. It's centuries more than that that are being discussed here, so that what we're doing, it's as though we are stepping outside of the realm of time and looking at it as a whole unit, and we look back several centuries to the point of the writing, and we recognize that God, that there is this great unit of accomplishment that is being held out before us that we are to remember and to recognize and to give God praise for. And so what the psalmist does, having highlighted the Abrahamic covenant, he now embarks on a selective review of history, of the subsequent history, to prove his point that God remembered his word to Abraham, that he kept it, and because God remembered, his people today should praise him for it. Look at verse 13. Now as we look on, in this first section here within the greater second point, in this first section, he's recording how God protected the patriarchs.

In verse 13, they wandered about from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people. And God, verse 14, permitted no man to oppress them, and he reproved kings for their sake, saying, Do not touch my anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm. In Genesis chapter 12, God struck Pharaoh when he took Sarah into his house. Later on in Genesis 20, he rebuked Abimelech when he also tried to take Sarah for his own. Abraham had been a little bit deceptive with them and misled them, and nevertheless, God intervened and rebuked kings, kings, the highest thrones of power in the earth at that time for the sake of his one man, Abraham. And so God is rebuking kings in defense of his vulnerable chosen one.

He goes on and he accelerates, and this is a sweeping review that takes place. In this next section, he shows how God protected his people in the life of Joseph. Look at verse 16. He called for a famine upon the land. You remember there was famine throughout the world, and Joseph was there in Egypt to provide food and to administrate the seven years of fruitful crops in order to survive the seven years of famine that God had revealed in advance. In verse 16, God called for a famine upon the land.

He broke the whole staff of bread. Verse 17, God had made provision for his people before that happened. He sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave, and they afflicted his feet with fetters. He himself was laid in irons until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. You remember what he's referring to here is that Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, and Joseph was carried off into Egypt. He was thrown into prison after Potiphar's wife falsely accused him of an assault. And so he languishes in prison for two years, and in a detail that is revealed here, not included in the passages in Genesis, Joseph was in chains.

He was in fetters during at least a portion of that imprisonment. He was at the very bottom of it all. He had no power for his own deliverance. The person in authority was angry with him, thought that he had attacked his wife, and so Joseph was literally bound up to nothing but the promise of God. And what happened in that utterly bleak time in the life of Joseph?

What happened? What did God do? Verse 20, the king sent and released him. The ruler of peoples and set him free. This king, and the implication here is that God was moving in the heart of the king in order to accomplish this for Joseph. And verse 21, he, meaning the king, made him, Joseph, the king made Joseph lord of his house and ruler over all his possessions to imprison his princes at will that he might teach his elders wisdom.

And so what's happening here? God, remembering his covenant with Abraham, God being faithful to Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, God exercised his power, delivered Joseph, and elevated him to a completely unpredictable position of prominence in the kingdom of Egypt so that he could be the agent of the deliverance of the people of God in a time of famine. Now, at this point in the psalm, you're meant to step back.

There's not a salah there, a pause for meditation, but it's certainly appropriate to step back and to recognize and to think about the utter human improbability of this. And to recognize that what happened with Joseph wasn't a coincidence or a nice turn of fate. This was God doing what he says he has the power to do in Proverbs chapter 21 verse 1.

The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, he turns it wherever he wishes. God turns the heart of a king to release this representative of his people and elevates them. And it is God keeping his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in order to keep his promise to the patriarch.

The psalm goes on as it reviews this history in verse 23. Israel also came into Egypt, Israel being a reference to Jacob as you see by the parallelism there. Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham, and God caused his people to be very fruitful and made them stronger than their adversaries.

Now here in this brief verse you have a summary of 400 years of history. The people of Israel came about 70 in number to Egypt, and God multiplied them over the course of centuries until they became stronger than the people that were enslaving them. And so God was working, Joseph had died, but God lived on and he raised up even others for his people. Look at verse 25 there.

He turned their heart to hate his people, referring to Egypt. Remember God hardened Pharaoh's heart to deal craftily with his servants. But God raised up others. The death of Abraham did not limit the promise of God or his ability to keep it. The death of Isaac did not break the promise of God or limit his promise to keep his ability to keep it. The death of Jacob, the death of Joseph, the death of subsequent generations throughout 400 years did nothing to limit the power of God in order to keep his promise to his people.

It did nothing to diminish the certainty of the outworking of what he had promised centuries before. And so he just raised up others for his people. Verse 26, he sent Moses, his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen. And they performed his wondrous acts among them and miracles in the land of Ham. So that you look back and remember you kind of step outside the realm of time and you look at this as a unit and you start to see sections and you start to see the unfolding of the hand of God in retrospect. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, centuries, Moses, Aaron.

And all of a sudden you're starting to get overwhelmed with the majesty of what's in place here. What should start to be coming to your mind and elevating in your consciousness is, you know what, what this history tells me is that God is absolutely sovereign and he is not limited to individual human instruments to accomplish his purposes. He is not limited by political antagonism toward his people.

God is sovereign over it all and he is certainly working out his purposes in the course of history to keep his promise to his people. And so a longer section comes beginning in verse 28 where the psalmist recounts the Egyptian plagues that God sent at the hand of Moses. He doesn't recall them all.

There's eight out of the ten. He doesn't take them in strict chronological order as they occur. He's simply using a selective approach to history to make his point. God sent these plagues on Egypt in part to judge them for their false deities and to deliver his people. And those of you familiar with the story in Exodus will recognize what he is alluding to. Look at beginning in verse 28. It says he sent darkness and made it dark and they did not rebel against his words. He turned their waters into blood and caused their fish to die. Their land swarmed with frogs even in the chambers of their kings. He spoke and there came a swarm of flies and gnats in all their territory. He gave them hail for rain and flaming fire in their land. He struck down their vines also and their fig trees and shattered the trees of their territory. He spoke and locusts came and young locusts even without number and ate up all vegetation in their land and ate up the fruit of their ground. He also struck down all the firstborn in their land, the firstfruits of all their vigor. What you see now, having seen the outwork, a recitation of centuries of God's power on display, now there is this concentrated remembrance of what he did in a comparatively short period of time in the Egyptian plagues.

Each one, here's the thing beloved, each one of those eight plagues that he mentions was a miraculous work by God and God just did them in sequence again and again and again, acting at this decisive time in the history of Israel to act and to deliver his people. He had been keeping his word over centuries and then when the fullness of time came, he acted in a powerful, miraculous way in a concentrated period of time in order to deliver them and to fulfill and to keep his promise to Abraham. And why did he do that? It's because he remembered. He remembered his word. God remembered what he had said. He remembered but the truth of the matter is he never forgot. This was his intention all along.

And so you look at the outworking of this history, you look at the plagues on Egypt, and what you see the psalmist teaching you is that God, watch this, God used his illimitable power to deliver his people from their enemies. And he did that. He exercised his power to save his nation. He did that because he remembered his word and kept his promises. And God did that because that's who he is. He makes promises to his people and then he keeps them without fail. God oppressed the Egyptians so that they would send Israel away and release them so that God could establish them in the land that he first promised to Abraham 700 years earlier, speaking in round terms.

Look at verse 37. He brought them out with silver and gold, and among his tribes there was not one who stumbled. Twelve tribes of Israel, they all exited safely. They all entered into the land eventually.

Egypt was glad when they departed, for the dread of them had fallen upon them. And after they exited from Egypt, you remember they had 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. They sinned against God. We'll see that in Psalm 106. But God didn't abandon them. He provided for them even in the wilderness.

He led them by the pillar of cloud during the day, the pillar of fire at night. The psalmist makes allusion to that. Verse 39. He spread a cloud for a covering and fire to illumine by night.

Verse 40. God provided for them. They asked and he brought quail and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. Remember how God provided manna day by day by day? He opened the rock and water flowed out. It ran in the dry places like a river. Look at what God had done for them, beloved.

Look what he did. He provided wealth to them with the silver and gold. He provided food to them. He provided water to them. He provided guidance to them in the wilderness, faithfully carrying out what he had promised to do.

And there is something exceedingly sweet about this to recognize and to look back on. God knew in advance that he was going to do this when he made the promise to Abraham. God knew the end from the beginning. This was God's plan all along. And we just see the remarkable power of God to do exactly what he promised in exactly his time without any hindrance from the rebellion of man.

And you see, we come back to this again and again and again, and I'm glad that we do. We see how good God is. God, we could say, God is earnest in the promises that he makes. He is sincere in them.

He intends to keep them. He does not deceive his people. He does not mislead them.

He does not break the promises that he makes. Every word that God speaks is tested and will be found to be fulfilled because that's who he is. And so as a matter of record from verse 8 to verse 41, we see that God had kept his promise to the seed of Abraham.

Over the course of centuries, through all manner of danger and difficulty, he kept his word without fail in every single detail. And all that history, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, all of that history makes an overwhelmingly powerful point. It's designed to lead his people to praise him, to acknowledge him, to recognize him, and ascribe glory and honor and majesty to his name. Point number three for this evening, praise for the Lord's deliverance. The praise for the Lord's deliverance.

I've been answering this question all along, but I'll answer it one more time, or I'll ask it one more time. Why did God do all of these things for Abraham, for Isaac, for Jacob, for Joseph, for his people, Moses, Aaron, the plagues, the deliverance in the wilderness? Why all of this faithfulness? Why all of these miraculous interventions?

Why this control of human events over the course of centuries? Why did God do this? Verse 42, he remembered. God remembered. He remembered his holy word with Abraham, his servant, and he brought forth his people with joy, his chosen ones with a joyful shout. And as a result of what God had done, his people were established in the land as a nation. Verse 44, he gave them also the lands of the nations that they might take possession of the fruit of the people's labor. Moses died, God raised up Joshua. The remarkable variety of the ways that God provided. He worked over time, and sometimes he intervened directly and spoke directly to kings to rebuke them, lest they would harm his people.

Sometimes he acted through leaders and consistently raising up leaders at the appropriate and the needed time. Raising up Joseph, raising up Moses, raising up Aaron, raising up Joshua. And beloved, there just comes a point where when you understand that all of these things are being laid out before us in Psalm 105, to teach us through history how greatly faithful God is to his people, and you realize this and it just starts to melt your heart.

In a sense, it just starts to break your heart. God, you are so good! You are so wonderful! You are so majestic!

This is wonderful! And circle back now to verse 1 with me. The psalmist speaking to the people of God, the people of Israel, in his day, he has shown to them why they should obey the commands that he opened with. Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name. You're part of a people with an incredible history under the hand of God. God has been good to your forefathers.

He's been good to you. You ought to sing to him, sing praises to him, and speak about his wonders. And if he's a God like that, then you ought to seek him and seek his face and remember his wonders and not forget his marvels and the judgments uttered by his mouth. From God's perspective, this is exactly why he did this, exactly, precisely, to produce a people who would do just that. Look at verse 44 again and follow the flow of thought here. He gave them also the lands of the nations that they might take possession of the fruit of the people's labors so that for this purpose they might keep his statutes and observe his laws, so that they might be a people who are faithful to him, that they would be a people devoted to worship to him and to proclaiming his glory among the nations.

God did it to set apart a people for himself. And in light of that divine history then, Israel should fulfill their purpose, which is the concluding words of verse 45, Hallelujah, translated, praise the Lord. Those who receive the provision of God in keeping with the promise of God should devote themselves to the praise of God.

Let me say that again. Those who receive the provision of God in keeping with the promise of God should devote themselves to the praise of God. Here in New Testament times, as we gather together as New Testament believers, having received the forgiveness of our sins, new life in Christ, we've received a great spiritual provision from God in addition to the physical things that he's done for us over the course of our lifetime.

God has given us a spiritual provision in keeping with the promises that are made in the New Testament toward us. Did not Christ say, the one who comes to me I'll certainly not cast out? Did you come to Christ crying out for mercy and your sin?

What did you find? Was he faithful to his promise? Did he receive you and forgive you and cleanse you and welcome you and adopt you into the family of God?

Didn't he do that? Didn't he keep his promise and indwell you with the Holy Spirit? Hasn't he been faithful sustaining you throughout subsequent course of time? Hasn't he been a comfort to you in your sorrow? Hasn't he blessed you in ways that go beyond all that you ask or think? Hasn't he given you joys without number, even in the course of sorrows and sadness and trials that come?

Hasn't there been an abiding presence of the Spirit of God in you? Isn't that the provision of God? Isn't it what he promised? Well, beloved, if that's true, then surely the call that's made to the nation of Israel can apply to the church of God in the New Testament. Look at Israel and see that God remembers his word. Hear the promise of Christ in the New Testament and renew your hope, your trust, and your praise in him. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5, he said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. Philippians 1, 6, He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Oh, beloved, oh, beloved, look at the cross of Christ and all the promises that flowed through him, through his own lips, and through his apostles.

And look at how much God has promised and how much he has done and how much more he will certainly do. And then follow the call of the psalmist in your own heart and give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name. Sing to him, sing praises to him.

Remember his wonders which he has done. Beloved, he is the Lord our God. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

Let's pray together. Our great God, our loving Father, O Lamb of God, indwelling Holy Spirit, the faithfulness of the triune God is imprinted all over the history of the redeemed. We see it in Israel, in Old Testament times. We see it fulfilled in the person of Christ, in his coming, the ultimate seed of Abraham.

We've seen it in our own lives. We will see a greater fulfillment yet to come. O God, with the psalmist, we recognize your works. We thank you that you have remembered your promise. And as the psalmist calls us in Psalm 105, we humbly reply, praise the Lord. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us on Through the Psalms. You know, if you're enjoying this podcast, I think you would love to join our church on our livestream on Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. Eastern or 7 p.m. Tuesday evening, also Eastern time. You can find that livestream link at truthcommunitychurch.org. Again, our livestream link is found at truthcommunitychurch.org.

We hope to see you there. God bless you. Thanks, Don. And friend, Through the Psalms is a weekend ministry of The Truth Pulpit. Be sure to join us next week for our study as Don continues teaching God's people God's word. This message is copyrighted by Don Green. All rights reserved.