The Praise of the Wise (Psalm 111) - Sermon at FFMC 28/2/21

 

The praise of the wise

Psalm 111 

Praise the Lord!
אֹ I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
גְּ   in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
גְּ ² Great are the works of the Lord,
דְּ    studied by all who delight in them.
הֹ ³ Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
וְ    and his righteousness endures forever.
זֵ ⁴ He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
חַ    the Lord is gracious and merciful.
טֶ ⁵ He provides food for those who fear him;
יִ    he remembers his covenant forever.
כֹּ ⁶ He has shown his people the power of his works,
לְ    in giving them the inheritance of the nations.
מַ ⁷ The works of his hands are faithful and just;
 נֶ   all his precepts are trustworthy;
סְ ⁸ they are established forever and ever,
עֲ    to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
פְּ ⁹ He sent redemption to his people;
צִ    he has commanded his covenant forever.
קָ    Holy and awesome is his name!
רֵ ¹⁰ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
שֵׂ    all those who practice it have a good understanding.
תְּ    His praise endures forever!

Introduction

Psalm 111 starts off with the Hebrew word every Christian knows: ‘Hallelu yah’! It ends with a different Hebrew word with the same meaning: Praise! This bracketing the theme of the psalm tells us that it focuses on reasons to praise our God.

 

Like 9 other Psalms, this psalm is special because each line begins with a successive letter of the 22-word Hebrew alphabet. It is an ‘acrostic’ psalm. There is a close relationship between Ps 111 and Ps 112. One tells of the God of the wise man. The other tells of the life of the wise man.

 

Before even saying anything about God, the psalmist tells us 2 things about worship. One is obvious – for him, worship is a communal activity, not just an individual one. He gives thanks to the Lord not just in the privacy of his own home, but in the congregation of God’s people. These are not the nominal worshippers – they are the ‘upright’. There is significance and pleasure as we worship with other Christians who share a real commitment to God. This has something to say to us at a time when pandemic-related lockdowns have radically transformed our church experience. We already have a culture of individualism where we think that we can just worship God by ourselves. We must make greater efforts to stay in community as we worship.

 

The next thing is less obvious: it is much harder to craft a poem as an acrostic than to write whatever comes to mind. This takes focus and control. It takes time and care and concentration. This tells us that worship must not become a casual affair. It is always to be heartfelt (And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, Is 29:13, Mt 15:8) At times it may be a costly sacrifice of praise that comes out of a broken heart (Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Heb 13:15). Worship is more than a social ritual. The craftsmanship is not a tedious chore – the craftsmanship is part of the joyful experience of worship!

 

 

As a young Christian I was taught that worship (or adoration) was to thank God for who He is, whereas thanksgiving was to thank God for what He has done. This is true, but this Psalm does tell us that what God does and what He says are all part of who He is. There are 3 interwoven things the Psalmist tells us we should praise God for:

1. God’s works are great (v.2-7a)
2. God’s ways are great (v.2-7a)
3. God’s Word is great (v.7b-10)

 

1. God’s works are great

The words the psalmist uses to describe what God does are: ‘great’, ‘splendid’, ‘majestic’, ‘wondrous’. ‘powerful’

 

The psalmist tells us that we are to ‘study’ them (v.2) – that is, to learn more and more about them, to carefully think about them, to consider what they mean for our lives. This picture of the entrance to the new Cavendish Laboratory – the Department of Physics at Cambridge University quotes Ps 111:2 (Just as the first slide showed the old Cavendish Laboratory with the same verse in Latin). This is a reminder not just that religion is compatible with science, but that worship of God needs engagement of the intellect.

 We are also to (‘remember’ them (v.4) – that is, to keep in mind what God has done in the past so that we find assurance in the present. God has been, is, and always will be faithful.

 

What are these works?

• We praise because of God’s work in creation (v.2a, 3a).

Like those who saw fit to put a Bible verse at the entrance to a physics laboratory, we also should see God in all He has made. {“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder”)

The Hubble telescope is the most powerful around – powerful enough to spot the light of a firefly at a distance of some 7,000 miles, mostly because it orbits the earth far above the distorting effects of the atmosphere. In 1995 someone pointed Hubble at a seemingly empty part of the sky for 100 hours and saw this– more than 5000 galaxies (not stars!), each  with an average of 100 million stars. The universe is vaster than we thought. And all of it cries out that God is glorious! (“The heavens declare the glory of God, Ps 19:1). The atheist looks at the universe and says. “How small man is!”, but we look at the same thing and cry out. “How great God is!”.  From the complexities of cellular metabolism to the beauties of a sunset, Paul tells us that “what can be known about God is plain to [people], because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world” (Rom 1:18-19)

 

 

 

• We praise because of His gracious salvation (v. 5b, 6b, 9).

For the psalmist, and for every Israelite, God’s salvation was seen in the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, his provision of manna in the desert (‘He provides food for those who fear him’) and the conquest of the Promised Land (‘in giving them the inheritance of the nations’). This is the ‘redemption’ that he sent to His people. On Sinai God had made a ‘covenant’ with His people to be their God.  We have a much greater salvation - not from physical, but from spiritual slavery. We have a much better covenant, written on our hearts and not on tablets of stone. We have a much better Saviour – not Moses, but our Lord Jesus Christ, and so our reasons for praise are correspondingly greater than that of the Psalmist’s.

 

• We praise because of His constant provision (v.5a)

We praise Him also for all that He gives to us – daily sustenance, health and life, work to do, things to learn, family to appreciate and many, many comforts we enjoy. As he provided daily manna for the Israelites, so He daily provides for our needs. This is His gracious care for us. Every pleasure, every blessing, comes from God’s hands.

 

• We praise because of the victory He gives (v.6b)

The Israelites had to overcome physical enemies, but we do not wrestle against ‘flesh and blood’ (Eph 6:12), but spiritual beings that war against our soul. Our ultimate enemies are spiritual beings, not our family members or bosses, colleagues or agents of the government. And God promises us victory over every enemy of our soul.

 

 

2. God’s ways are great (v. 3a, 4a, 7a)

Next, we are told that God’s ways – His good character, is never separated from the works that He does. God is ‘righteous’, ‘gracious’, ‘merciful’, ‘faithful’, ‘just’.

 

We praise because of the goodness of His character. He is not a god who does things without meaning. All He does is an expression of His own good character. Creation was ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31). Everything in our lives – even the really hard, heart-breaking, painful things, comes from His goodness. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28) His plans for us really are for our good, not for our harm.

 

 

3. God’s Word is great (v.7b. 8)

Finally, we praise because of His word. His precepts are ‘trustworthy’, ‘established forever and ever’. We can depend on them. We can throw our whole lives on the certainty of the Bible. His Word will never become irrelevant, it will never lose its truth and power. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mat 24:35) When we ‘perform’ His word faithfully and uprightly, we please Him and we find that we will never be let down. Unbelievers will depend on many, many other things – their wealth, their connections, their acquaintances, their fame, their looks, their power. We have the unshakable, eternal Word of God to trust in and to obey.

 

 

 Conclusion

The last verse of the Psalm seems to take a big jump in terms of logic – from speaking about reasons from praise, the psalmist starts to talk about the ‘fear of the Lord’. What is the connection between the last verse and the rest of the Psalm?  Surely, everything Psalmist says about the greatness of God’s works, God’s ways and God’s Word is to encourage us to fear Him. Truth about God must lead us to a change of attitude toward God.

 

God desires us to fear Him. The phrase “love God” or “love the Lord” occurs in the Bible 16 times, but the phrase “fear God” or “fear the Lord” occurs 54 times. But what does it mean to fear the Lord?

 

We know from the next verse (Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments! Ps 112:1) that the fear of the Lord brings blessing and great delight - it is not a bad thing – a cringing terror of punishment. That is a wrong way to fear the Lord. What is it to fear God? It is to respond in sincere and humble reverence towards Him. It is to centre our lives around His reality. We must bow in awe before Him. -  our great Creator, our gracious Redeemer, our generous Provider and our conquering Protector. ‘Fear’ is a short form of saying that we know God and relate to Him as we should.

 

But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. (Is 8:13,ESV)

“If you fear him, you need fear nothing else.” (Is 8:13, TLB)

 

 “The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.” (Oswald Chambers)

 

When we fear Him rightly and ‘practice it’ – when God is the most important Person and our highest value, we become wise – we have a ‘good understanding’ of the truth of life. We can apply all the Bible teaches to all our life situations. It means that our faith is real in the real world. It means true discipleship. So let us who are “upright, in the congregation” join the Psalmist in magnifying God and practicing this kind of wisdom. Hallelujah!

 

Video here