Psalm 65. Let's go ahead and
read through the Psalm beginning with verse 1. Praise waiteth
for thee, O God, in Zion, and unto thee shall the vow be performed. O thou that hearest prayer, unto
thee shall all flesh come. Iniquities prevail against me,
as for our transgressions thou shalt purge them away. Blessed
is the man whom thou choosest, and cause us to approach to thee,
that he may dwell in thy courts. We shall be satisfied with the
goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. By terrible
things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our
salvation, who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth,
and of them that are far off upon the sea, which by his strength
setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power, which stilleth
the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult
of the people, They also that dwell in the uttermost parts
are afraid at thy tokens. Thou makest the outgoings of
the morning and evening to rejoice. Thou visitest the earth and waterest
it. Thou greatly enrichest it with
the river of God, which is full of water. Thou preparest them
corn when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges
thereof abundantly. Thou settest the furrows thereof. Thou settlest the furrows thereof.
Thou makest it soft with showers, Thou blessest the springing thereof,
Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness, and Thy paths drop
fatness. They drop upon the pastures of
the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side.
The pastures are clothed with flocks, the valleys also are
covered over with corn. They shout for joy, they also
sing. Now, in this psalm, in the first part of this psalm,
we see up to verse 4, we see through verse 4 the grace of
God. And last week we looked at the
first couple of verses where it says, praise waiteth for thee,
O God, in Zion, and unto thee shall the vow be performed. Praise
waits for God in Zion, it's in the church, and only in the church
that God is praised according to the gospel, according to his
word. The natural man doesn't know
the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness to him, and
there's no life in the natural man, and God must be worshipped
in spirit and in truth. So there's no praise that comes
except from Zion. And Zion, of course, is the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the one that we praise is the
Lord Jesus Christ. We praise the Father in him,
we praise God the triune God, but the focus of our attention
is, of course, how God has revealed Himself, and God has been pleased
to reveal Himself in His Son, in the Lord Jesus Christ. So
we praise Him. And praise waits for God, because
until the Lord gives us this praise, until He gives us the
grace to know Him and praise Him, until He comes to us as
He has promised in salvation by Jesus Christ, then we can't
praise Him. And so this praise comes to God
from His people who are called Zion, and they praise Him because
of His grace to them and because of His salvation in Christ. And
we looked at that last week, and if you have any... Any more
interest in that, I encourage you to go back to the notes I
send out each week with the Bible Study invitation on Zoom. Alright,
the next thing we saw was that, oh and then also in first verse
it says, unto thee shall the vow be performed And we saw it
last week, the vow that is performed in order for praise to come to
God from Zion is the vow the Lord Jesus Christ made when he
pledged himself for his people who are called his brethren because
of God's adopting work in scripture. All right, he says in verse two,
O thou that hearest prayer, Unto thee shall all flesh come. Now,
again, in this verse, we went over it last time briefly, and
I'm just gonna refer you back to that again, how God has given
us his name as the God who answers prayer, and what a glorious and
endearing name that is, that God, it would be our God, he
would make us his people, he would be a father to us, and
he would hear us, he would not only hear our but He would answer
our prayers. And most of the time when we
pray, we don't know, we can't tell that God is hearing us because
of some audible response or even a physical response, because
our interaction with God is because of His Word and it is by faith. But on the other hand, we do
have this life and this faith through the Spirit of God. We
know that from God's Word. And so even though in our prayers
we don't have the answer of God in a tangible way that we can
feel, what we have is He directs us to His Word to know His will
and to know His work from His Word. And in directing us to
His Word, in directing us to His Word in the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ and telling us what Christ has done and causing
us to put our trust and our confidence in Christ alone, we experience
the peace and we experience the joy that comes in believing Him
and we are. enabled by the Spirit of God
to abound in hope, as it says in Romans 15, 13, so that our
answer comes in that faith that God has given to us to rest in
God's Word, to rest in God's person, in His character. And
here in this verse, we have the greatest assurance that God,
by His very name, is the God who hears and who answers prayer.
What a comfort that is. And it should cause us to do,
as we looked last time from 1 Peter 5, verse 7, to cast all our cares
upon him, for he careth for you." According to 2 Corinthians 1,
all comfort that we experience comes to us from God the Father,
the God of all comfort, and so we take great comfort in knowing
that God is the God who hears and answers prayer. The Lord
Jesus Christ, while he was on the earth, his disciples were
constantly asking him questions, and there were people who were
in constant need of his help, and he was always compassionate,
and exerted power from God to help them. And in many cases,
those... Those miracles that Christ performed
for people were, for the most part, miracles to teach us the
gospel, how the Lord has compassion on sinners, his mercy towards
us in spite of our blindness, or our lameness, or our helpless
weakness, our sinfulness. All these things are, again,
to direct us back to the Lord. through the eyes, the lens of
the gospel, okay? So I just, I mentioned that in
passing. He also says, unto thee shall all flesh come in verse
two, which refers, as I mentioned last week, that this psalm is
a psalm that reveals to us that God is not just the God of the
Jews, but also of the Gentiles, which are called all the ends
of the earth in verse five. So we're gonna get to that in
a minute. All right, the next verse we come to here is in verse
three. And in verse three, he says,
get to that. He says, oh, wait, I went beyond. Oh, here it is. Iniquities prevail
against me, as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. I
don't know if you've ever seen this verse in scripture before.
Perhaps this is the first time you've heard it, that iniquities
prevail against me. Listen to these words. I want
you to think about what the psalmist is saying here and see how this
strikes at the proud heart of the Pharisees who accused Jesus
of being a friend of publicans and sinners. Here, in God's own
word, inspired by the Spirit of God, the psalmist, who is
obviously a righteous man in that way, and God would have
called him a righteous man, says, Iniquities prevail against me.
Now, to prevail means to overcome. It means to constantly be at
war with us. And so what we see here is of
the greatest possible comfort. I know that we think, well, Misery
loves comfort, and therefore, if I'm lame, then I feel better
if someone also is lame, or whatever it might be. We find some comfort
that people are not better than us, or that some people can share
in our troubles, or all those things that are human tendencies. But here we have something that
is not just comfort because someone else is experiencing the misery,
But this is the misery of a person who knows that their own sins
prevail against them, that they are more powerful than they can
defend against, that their own strength is inadequate, and that
they fail. They fail because they're iniquities,
and iniquities mean failure. It's against God when we sin,
and here is a person who takes God's own heart in prayer by
the revealed truth of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit speaking through
this psalmist and saying, iniquities prevail against me. This is a
verse that's very much like Romans chapter seven, where the apostle
Paul says, I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth
no good thing, for to will is present with me, but how to perform
that which is good I find not. When I would do good, evil is
present with me." So this is something that's almost, what
do they call that? A paradox where we're called
righteous by the Lord and we're also revealed to be those against
whom iniquities prevail. What do we do? Well, we go to
the Lord. We go to the Lord with his own
word. God's word said this, iniquities prevail against me. And God even
gives us the answer here, as for our transgressions, thou
shalt purge them away. What is God's answer to the one
who, speaking to God, who hears prayer, brings his own honest
admission that before God, he is an iniquitous person. And
his own iniquities, well, you can say, well, that's his own
dumb fault. Why is he acting as if his sins are some entity
that are not intrinsic to himself? He's saying, no, they're my iniquities.
This is the greatest comfort. I love this verse, and perhaps
one of my favorite verses. I go to it often. This verse
tells us that we can take whatever we are to the Lord in open, transparent
confession, no matter how bad it is. In fact, it's really bad.
It's worse than we can possibly imagine, that God would have
to give his son up to death, even the death of the cross,
in order to have us before Him in holiness. The only way that
can happen is if the Lord, who is the Lord of glory, the Son
of God, took our nature and in our nature bore our sins, suffered
for them at the hand of God in order to bring us to God and
to remove our sins from us. And so this verse is telling
us that. Poor, helpless, miserable, ruined
sinner, bring your sins to the Lord and tell Him. And you know
what you find is that the God against whom we have sinned is
merciful. He is merciful beyond our wildest
imagination so that we can't even believe how gracious God
is that he would make our very sins, our enemies. He would divide
between the good and the bad in this way and say, those sins
against me that you've committed, those are your enemies. That's
your enemy. That's the one that you need
deliverance from. You have no power. And what a
great comfort this is, that God would so designate our sins as
our enemies. That is God taking sides against
our sins and doing so in a way that saves us from our sins. How long can we talk about this?
As long as I have breath in my body. This is the gospel. This
is what God is holding up to his people, those in Zion. Praise
waits for the in Zion. What is it waiting for? What
is the expectation of Zion? That God would save us from our
sins. Do you know that this is the
emphasis of scripture? This is the emphasis, the name
and the glory of God in his son who has taken away our sins.
He says it this way, transgressions are transgressions. He'll purge
them away. He's going to remove them from
us, they won't be there. When God purges, when he cleanses
us, there's no more remembrance, no more evidence. Holy. The result of God's purging is
a cleansing, a white that's whiter than snow. It's wonderful, isn't it, that
God would be so gracious to us to speak this way about our sins. The answer of our great sins
is the cross of Christ. Our great sins against God are
answered by God in the cross. Iniquities prevail against me,
as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. Who else
could do it? Sin is against God. Only God can be gracious, since
our sins are against him. God is gracious. God alone could
remove our sins. Only he could specify what possibly
could be done about our sins. And here he tells us how it's
done, the purging of our transgressions. the Lord Jesus Christ by himself,
by his own blood, by bearing the consequences of our sins,
bearing them as his own in guilt before God has taken away our
sins. That's what the word propitiation means, the removal of our sins
by the sacrifice of God's son. That's where God dwells, between
the cherubim, over the mercy seat, where sinners who can't
lift up their head say, oh God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And here he says, as for our
transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. Does that give us
faith in Christ? Thou shalt purge them away. Here's
the one we have to answer to saying he is gonna purge away
our sins. What a great text of scripture
this is. And it's consistent with other
places in Micah, the book of Micah chapter seven. I'm sure
you know about this, but it's good to remind ourselves of it.
This is the whole essence of the reason why Christ came into
the world, to take away the sins of His people, to save them from
their sins. In Micah chapter 7, He says in verse 18, Who is
a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passes by the transgression
of the remnant of his heritage? God passes by the transgression
of his elect, the remnant of his heritage. He retaineth not
his anger forever because he delights in mercy. You see that? What a blessed text. He will
turn again. And that means since our sins
have separated us from God, God would find a way to turn himself
to us again. He says he will turn again. He
will have compassion on us. He will subdue our iniquities
like the Egyptians. And thou wilt cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to
Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou has sworn unto our
fathers from the days of old. You see, this is the covenant.
This is the oath that God took and promised to Abraham that
in Christ he would justify the heathen. He would take away their
sins. He would make their sins like
the Egyptian armies, like Pharaoh himself, and cast them into the
sea. and drown them in the sea, and
all of Israel would stand on the sea, looking at the dead
bodies of their iniquities in the death of Christ, and they
would say, the Lord is a strong man of war. He's destroyed my
enemies. He's my strength, and therefore
I will sing to him. I'm referring to that song that
Miriam and the people of Israel sang in Exodus 15. Let me just
give you the opening words of that song. He says, in Exodus
15, then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the
Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he has
triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath
he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song.
He has become my salvation. He is my God. I will prepare
him a habitation my father's God, and I will exalt him. The
Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. You see
this. God is saying this is my name,
a man of war who took the battle against our sins and won it and
cast our sins into the sea, destroyed them gloriously in the death
of Christ. All right, and Psalm 65, back
in Psalm 65, he says in the next verse, this is grace, isn't it?
You see the grace in these first two verses, three verses? And
then he says this in verse four, blessed is the man whom thou
choosest and causes to approach unto thee that he may dwell in
thy courts. We shall be satisfied with the
goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. The temple,
that's where God dwells, where God dwells in all of his glory,
in all of his holiness, with his people. It's his house. And the goodness of his house
is constantly on display. The constant topic of discussion
and admiration is the goodness of God. And what does he begin
here with that? What what is the topic here?
God's and the Lord says, according to his word, that the man whom
the Lord chooses is a blessed man. And we know that the Lord
Jesus Christ is, first of all, God's chosen one. The one God
has chosen. Psalm 89 speaks of Christ as
the one God has chosen. I have laid help on one who is
mighty. I have exalted one out from among
the people. That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's chosen him. He's chosen him to be Christ.
He's chosen him to save his people from their sins. He's chosen
him and he chose all of his people in him. When God chose Christ,
he chose all of his people in him. It makes no sense to be
the savior if there's no sinners. There's no there's no savior
without someone to save, someone given to him to save. So God
has chosen and given a people to Christ to save them. and the
foolish wickedness of man that would change the electing will
of God, that choice of love that is performed by God before the
foundation of the world and say that God did it because he saw
what a man would do or a person would do. That is wickedness. That claim is utter base wickedness. And we shouldn't tolerate the
claim that such kind of an argument is just simply trying to make
fair an objective analysis of scripture. No, it's not. It makes
no fair analysis of scripture to say God chose people because
he saw what they would do. No. It was done without cause,
being justified freely. That means without cause. God
found no reason in us. It's called unconditional election,
meaning there's no conditions in us that God ever found or
would ever look for because he found everything in his son. Who is worthy to open the book,
to loose the seals thereof? No one was found except the Lamb. And so we're chosen in Christ.
We're chosen in Christ. And let this be the cause for
raising our voices, as it says in verse one, praise waits for
thee, O God, in Zion, because he has chosen us in Christ. And
by Christ and in Christ, He has purged our sins that prevail
against us, and He has heard our prayers in our Savior, in
our High Priest, in our Advocate, our Intercessor, our Surety.
He has heard the plea. He has heard the offering. He
has heard the intercession of the Righteous One, the Lord Jesus
Christ. So God could find nothing in
us. He looked upon the imaginations
of man's heart and he said it's only evil continually. For whence
then would a man choose God? There's none that seeketh after
God. There's none that understandeth. They're all gone out of the way.
None that understand. How could a man without a spiritual
life in him, a natural man, a man of the flesh, how could he somehow
receive the things of the Spirit of God, reaching out and creating
himself out of his nothingness or raising himself out of his
death? These kinds of claims are not
honor to God, they're not they're not they might honor a sinful
man in the minds of a wicked man. But election is God's will
to save. He chose us to salvation. He chose us in Christ. And what
a blessed thing that is, isn't it? We don't boast in the fact
that God chose us with some secret subconscious thought that God
did this because he found something in us. That would be to take
glory to ourselves. That would be to say that God's
choice of us really was just a recognition of who we are.
That is proud, chest-thumping, ignorant, wicked man. raising
himself up with some kind of importance. The worm of the dust,
it reeks with the wickedness of man's imagination to claim
that God looks and finds something in us to choose us. No, He did
not. If there's anything in us, God
created it. And there's nothing in us by
our fallen Adam, there's nothing that remains that God could find. We are absolutely unrighteous. There's not a man on earth who
does not sin, who's just before God. Ecclesiastes 7 verse 20. All right, let's keep going here.
In verse 5 of this psalm, it says, it says, by terrible things
in righteousness will you answer. us, O God of our salvation, who
are the confidence of all the ends of the earth and of them
that are far off upon the sea. All right. By terrible things
in righteousness will you answer us, O God of our salvation. I like the way that the verse
here identifies God. He is the God of our salvation. What a name. The Lord has become
my salvation. Amazing grace, how can it be
that thou, my God, should die for me? In order for God to save
a man, why would God do that? Because he's good, because it
delights in mercy, because he delights to take and lift the
beggar from the dunghill. That's what Hannah prayed in
first Samuel chapter two. God does this because he is good.
Don't don't ever think for a moment that any part of the blessings
that come to us are a result of what we've done. It's all
we have to give it all back. All the praise has to go back
to him. So here again, the praise that comes from Zion comes this
way. By terrible things in righteousness,
will you answer us, O God of our salvation? God's judgments
are terrible. to those who receive them. The
judgments of God must fall. There's no way that God is not
going to judge. His justice must be satisfied. He will balance his accounts.
There's not going to be books in God's accounting that are
left without being honestly balanced. Sometimes I sit down to balance
things out and I use a spreadsheet And the spreadsheet, you know,
takes columns and rows and it adds things up and subtracts
according to the formulas that you've put into it. Once you
put those formulas there, if you say, add A and B, and you
look at the result of that, it's not going to give you an error,
not if it's a working piece of software. God's books are absolutely
without possibility of error, and his judgments will fall.
We get a small taste of his judgments throughout history. like in the
case of the flood, for example, or Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
tower that fell on those in Luke chapter 13, I think it was. Jesus
said, do you suppose that those on whom that tower fell were
more wicked than the rest of men? No, no, he says that. And so here we see that throughout
time and history, God has demonstrated a measure of his judgments. But
for God to save His people, the true terribleness of His judgment
had to fall, because God is not going to clear the guilty. Something had to be done about
our sins in order for God's books to be balanced, in order for
God to be pleased without compromise in all of His holiness. with
us. How could that be? Well, God's
judgments had to fall, and it's a terrible thing, but those judgments
have fallen upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And because they have
fallen on Christ, then we were judged in Him. There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus because condemnation
fell on Christ. He says in Romans chapter 8,
let me read the rest of that, I started to quote it, let me
read the rest of that, because he tells us how that condemnation
is removed from us And he says it in verse two, for the law
of the spirit of life, which is a reference to the gospel,
applied by the spirit of Christ. He says, the law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
death. How did God make us free from the law of sin and death?
Well, we just read in Psalm 65, verse three, he purged our transgressions. He says, for what the law could
not do, what could the law not do? It couldn't justify us. It
couldn't make us righteous. It couldn't clear the guilty.
He says what the law could not do, just like in John eight,
when the woman was brought to Jesus who had committed adultery
in the very act, they holler in to the presence of Christ
and they want to accuse her and condemn her. The law couldn't
clear her. The Pharisees couldn't think
of how this could be done. He says what the law could not
do. in that it was weak through the
flesh, my flesh, your flesh. God sending his own son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh, in the flesh of Christ. And then he goes on that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. And what
is the righteousness of the law? What is what comes if a person
is able to keep the righteousness of the law? Life. Eternal life. If as long as you keep the law
perfectly and completely, you live. But of course, no one ever
has and no one ever will. It's not possible. This is impossible
for men. But with God, all things are
possible. The Lord Jesus Christ did. And he not only fulfilled
the law in its obedience, in the sense of keeping the commandments
and the precepts and statutes, but he kept it in its spirit
when he offered himself in love for sinners offered himself to
God, bearing their sins, in order to balance the scales of God's
justice and to take away their sins before God's face, so that
God would be satisfied, pleased. His glory would be set forth,
the brightness of His glory, which is the forgiveness of sins,
would be set forth in the death of Christ. That's what he's saying
here. That's the righteousness of the law. the life given to
us, the spirit of God given to us, all of it because Christ
bore our sins and fulfilled the law in his death. All right.
Christ fulfilled the law in the cross. What a blessing. What a blessing. And therefore
God can answer us in righteousness in that judgment. That's what
he's speaking of here. By terrible things in righteousness
wilt thou answer us, O God, of our salvation. You see the connection? God's terrible answer is our
salvation. It's consistent, isn't it? He
says, by terrible things in righteousness, because the death of Christ was
a righteous death, and it was a righteous obedience, a righteous
offering, everything about it was holy, God has answered us,
the God of our salvation. That's our salvation, isn't it?
He goes on. Remember what Jesus said. He
said, my soul is troubled. This is the judgment of God.
My soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save
me from this hour? No. For this cause came I unto
this hour. And then he says, Father, glorify
thy name. And that's what he did. God honored
his righteousness. He honored his son. when he put
him to death to give him a people saved from their sins, saved
from death. And that's the answer of God.
What a what a great answer that is. Judgment. The judgment of
God has fallen on him on on Christ. The judgment of God has fallen
on Christ and has fallen on his people in Christ. Therefore,
judgment is no more. There's no more judgment. There's
no more judgment. He says being now justified by
his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. The judgment
of God against sinners, wrath. And we're saved from wrath through
the Lord Jesus Christ because we're justified by his blood.
All sin has been removed. There's not a sin, not a single
little tiny, unimaginably small sin is left. Absolutely nothing left. All
right. He says, he goes on in verse
five. He says, according salvation
to the ends of the earth, look what he says, who are the confidence
of all the ends of the earth and of them that are far, far
off upon the sea. So he's a salvation to the ends
of the earth. In Psalm 48, Psalm 48, verse
10, it says this. There's a verse in Psalm 48,
verse 10. It says, according to thy name,
okay, whenever you read his name, this is who God is. This is how
he makes himself known. This is the way we know him.
This is his reputation, if you will, his character. According
to thy name, O God, so is thy praise. Unto the ends of the
earth, thy right hand is full of righteousness. All right. So God is telling us God's name
is known to the ends of the earth. And we know that that can only
be if God is saving people unto the ends of the earth. Then again,
in Isaiah 43, the Lord promises, he says, I will say to the north,
give up and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from
far and my daughters from the ends of the earth. There's a
lot we could say about this scripture, but my point here in quoting
this is the ends of the earth. And notice God's sons and daughters. Isn't this an Old Testament revelation
that God's people have been adopted, that they're made to be his own
children? This is. And who are they? Are they in
the land of Israel only? Are they only the physical descendants
of Abraham? No, this is that Gentiles also. So we see the revelation of this
mystery that was made known to us in the Old Testament revealed
here. And and it is wonderful to look
at. He says also in Isaiah 45, Isaiah
45, verse 22, Look unto me and be saved all the ends of the
earth, for I am God and there is none else. Now, that's the
proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ with sovereign authority,
sending, proclaiming the gospel throughout the world and telling
all people everywhere, look unto me. And I like that verse because
I'm one of those people who naturally doubts that my name could possibly
be included. Here, he says, all the ends of
the earth look unto me. I have his own word is the warrant
I have to look to Christ is his own word. He says to look so
we can look, we can rely on him to save us from our sins. Isn't
that what he's saying here? That's why we look. He says in
the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall
glory in that same text. All right, and then in Jeremiah
16, verse 19, he says, Oh Lord, my strength and my fortress and
my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come to thee
from the ends of the earth. So here we have an explicit statement
in the Old Testament, the Gentiles and the ends of the earth are
synonyms. And they shall say, surely our
fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there
is no prophet. Because we know that God has
saved us from doing those very things and thinking those very
ways that all the world is doing. And then in Isaiah 49, verse
six, he says, it is a light thing, speaking to the Lord Jesus Christ
in prophecy, it is a light thing that thou shouldst be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved
of Israel, I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." So
there you have it. And in Acts 13, he explains that. The Lord has commanded us, saying,
this is the Apostle Paul preaching in Acts 13, he says, I have set
thee, Christ, to be a light of the Gentiles that thou shouldst
be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. So this statement
in Psalm 65 and verse 5, that He is the confidence of all the
ends of the earth. This is a promise that Christ
is the Savior of the elect among the Gentiles also. God's elect
are among Jews and Gentiles, every kindred, tongue, people,
and nation. He redeemed us to God by His
blood. All right. Now it says the confidence of
all the ends of the earth. There's only one basis for confidence. I remember watching that movie,
I think it's a Disney movie, with Julie Andrews, The Sound
of Music. Remember, they had a song in
that movie. And she's singing this song very
enthusiastically. She says, I have confidence in
confidence. Julie Andrews, Disney movie,
Sound of Music, I have confidence in confidence. You know what
that is? You know what that's called? That's called illogical. That's circular reasoning. You
can't say, I have confidence in confidence. If you do, you're
putting your trust in your trust. It's like saying, I have confidence
in my confidence to get me across this gorge that's a mile deep. So I'm absolutely confident I
will not fall because I'm confident that I won't fall. That's just
stupid, isn't it? Go ahead. Good luck with that,
buddy. We know that's wrong, right?
And yet, let me show you something in Scripture. Look at Ephesians
chapter 3. I want to draw your attention to this text in Ephesians
chapter 3 to show you what men do today in religion. In Ephesians
chapter 3 and verse 12, I'll read verse 11. He says, according
to the eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus,
our Lord, in whom, obviously in Christ Jesus, our Lord, we
have boldness and access with confidence, listen carefully,
by the faith of him. So here, what is our confidence?
the faith of him, the faith of him. In fact, if you were familiar
with the Greek language, which I'm not, but I have read enough
about this from the references, the words here, the words of
Christ, of him, it says here, is a word that means that the
faith that's being spoken of here belongs to Christ. Faith belongs to Christ in this.
In fact, if you were to look at it in the original, it would
just say, Faith Christ, or Faith Him. And without that grammar,
the Greek grammar, you wouldn't know whose faith. It doesn't
say faith in him, it just says faith him. And it's like in English
when we say Bob's sled, we would put apostrophe on Bob because
we know that it has to be somebody's sled and in the sentence Bob
and sled have to be connected some way. You wouldn't just say
Bob's sled. So you say it's Bob's sled, and you identify the sled
as belonging to Bob. Here in this text, in the original
language, it's Christ's faith. It belongs to him. Our confidence
is in the faith of Christ. It's not in our faith. And that's
what I wanted to point out here. And the reason I call this an
example of how religion does this is because all modern translations
For example, the New International Version or the English Standard
Version, which are popular and commonly used in churches, they
say it this way, access with confidence by our faith in him,
which is the Julie Andrews claim, I have confidence in confidence.
And so that's ridiculous. And if they were honest, they
would have to say, that makes no sense. Confidence in confidence? I have confidence in my confidence?
No, I have confidence in Christ's faith. And the reason we have
confidence in the faith of Christ is because he gave himself to
do the will of God because he believed his word. He believed
God. He trusted, they said on the
cross, they accused him, mocking him. He trusted in the Lord that
he would save him. Let him deliver him. He said
he was a son of God. Let God save him if he's his
son. So that was his, he believed that. God had revealed it to
him in his word. He stood upon it. And man shall
not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Christ
believed God. And that's the reason he loved.
That's the reason he gave himself an obedience of the cross, is
because of his faith. And we have confidence in the
Lord Jesus Christ, in his faith. That's our salvation, by the
way. So back to Psalm 65. Our confidence is the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's not our confidence. We don't
trust our faith. We trust Christ's faith. And
what a great thing that is because how good is your faith? The best
believer in the world, if you could say there was such a thing,
would always have some unbelief mixed with their faith. And so
it's foolish to say confidence in confidence. All right. Now,
In Psalm 65 in verse 6, I want to read now from verse 6 and
following. He says, which by his strength,
actually the last part of verse 5 says, the confidence of all
the ends of the earth and of them that are far off upon the
sea, And using that last part there, upon the sea, he goes
on, which by his strength sets fast the mountains, being girded
with power, which stills the noise of the seas, the noise
of their waves, and the tumult of the people. They also that
dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens. Thou
makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. Thou
visitest the earth and waterest it. Thou greatly enrichest it
with the river of God, which is full of water. Thou preparest
them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest
the ridges thereof abundantly, Thou settlest the furrows thereof,
Thou makest it soft with showers, Thou blessest the springs thereof,
Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness, And Thy paths drop
fatness. They drop upon the pastures of
the wilderness, And the little hills rejoice on every side.
The pastures are clothed with flocks, The valleys also are
covered over with corn, They shout for joy, they also sing."
Now when you read this, I could see someone writing a song about
nature, if you want to use that word, about creation. and going
out into the forest and singing a lullaby to the trees, and to
the mountains, and to the rocks, and you know how they do, they
kind of, on the kid movies, they'll have somebody seem to be enraptured
by the moment and the creation around them, and they're just
overtaken, and they're singing, and they're throwing flower petals
here and there, and they have some kind of a funny smile on
their face, and you kind of wonder if they're really in touch with
reality. Is that what this is doing here
in these words? It's obviously using creation here. But I want
you to see this without going into a long, drawn out explanation
of this. I want you to see this. that
when someone, let's say, gives you a gift, and let's say they
give you something really great, really great, you were not expecting
it, and you really needed it, and you've admired this for a
long time, you didn't have it, you couldn't afford it, and they
give it to you freely. And you think, man, this is wonderful. You've given me a brand new swimming
pool or something, you know, something you've always wanted
but could never afford. Is that where your admiration would stop,
is at the swimming pool? Or would you stop and think,
no, wait a minute, the person who gave this did something that's
really beyond my expectation, and it's incredible. What a wonderful
gift that was, and the person who gave it is more important
to you then in the moment than the gift itself. You're indebted,
you're thankful, and you tell them, I can't believe you did
this. What made you think of me like
this? What made you think to do something so nice to me? You know, you begin to think
about the person. That's what gifts are intended to do, to
raise, to elevate in our thoughts the giver. And creation is intended
to raise in our admiration the Creator, right? But who is the
Creator? Who is the Creator? It's the
Lord Jesus Christ. God has created all things by
Jesus Christ. Ephesians 3, chapter 3, verse
8. And in Colossians 1, verse 16,
He created all things and they're all created by Him and for Him
and for His pleasure they're created. We can see that creation
is the work of Christ. It's the work of God the Father,
and it's the work of the Spirit too, but God specifically identifies
creation as Christ's work. And, you know, for example, in
Hebrews chapter 1, He made all things by the word of His power.
He upholds all things by the word of His power. And He created
all things. He made the worlds by Christ. So it's clear from Scripture
that the Lord Jesus Christ made all things. Without Him, John
1 verse 1 through 3, without Him was not anything made that
was made. He was there, He did it by His
Word, all-powerful, He is almighty, His Word accomplishes His will.
This is Christ. Now, creation therefore speaks
of the Creator. But it's not only because He
created all things. But because God has designed
creation in order to speak of Christ, so that we would see
that creation itself is crying out, look to the one who reveals
God in his saving work. Okay. So each of these things
has to do with that. In Psalm 36, we went over this
when we looked at that Psalm. Psalm 36, listen to these words
in verse five. He says, thy mercy, O Lord, is
in the heavens, the heavens of God's creation, and thy faithfulness
reacheth unto the clouds, faithfulness in clouds. Thy righteousness
is like the great mountains. Thy judgments are a great deep,
like the sea. Psalm 36 verses 5 and following
is where I'm reading. He says, Thy judgments are a
great deep, O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent
is Thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men
put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." You see, all these
things are physical things. We're familiar with these things,
aren't we? We know what wings are. We know what the shadow
of wings are. We know why little birds hide
under the wings of their mother for safety, to hide from the
enemy. We know about the deep, don't
we? We know something about it. Have
you ever been on a boat in the ocean and wonder how deep it
is? He goes on in verse 8 of Psalm 36, They shall be abundantly
satisfied with the fatness of thy house. Thou shalt make them
drink of the river of thy pleasures, for with thee is the fountain
of life, and in thy light we shall see light. So these are
physical things, but what are these physical things all talking
about in Psalm 36 and here in Psalm 65? They're talking about
the attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is the revelation
of God. And God is using things we're
intimately familiar with naturally to help elevate our minds to
the greatness of Christ, in this case, His mercy, His faithfulness,
His righteousness, his judgments, his loving kindness, that he
could be our trust, the one we believe and rely upon, the fatness
of his house, his abundance, the river of his pleasures, and
the fountain of life. All these things are to teach
us that all these things are to be found in Christ, who is
both the creator and who stooped in order to save his people.
So that in Psalm 65, he's now taking another turn. First, it
was about the grace of God. Now it's about his power and
his abundance of his grace seen in the way he describes the salvation
of his people in Christ by these terms in creation. So even though
creation is not God by any means, creation is inadequate really
to describe God, yet he's taking the things about creation that
we have some sense of, the immensity of it. For example, when you
look at the stars, or the oceans, the power of it, these things,
in order to draw our minds to the greatness of the Lord Jesus
Christ in our salvation. Okay? So, let me go on here. All right, so I'm gonna stop
with that comment on that, and then go on to the next part here. Let's see. Let me say this also
about the creation here, because this is verses six through 13,
he's talking about this. Let me point out something that,
for me, is a great amazement. You know, the things we talk
about with God, when we talk about God knew this, He determined
this from eternity. or his power is, you know, nothing
can resist his will. When we talk about God in these
ways, what is it meant to do? It's meant to humble us, first
of all. It's meant for us to have complete
trust and confidence in him, and to see that he who is high
has stooped so low, to see his greatness and his humility and
all these other things. It's to give us comfort, isn't
it, and assurance. that if God is for us, who can
be against us? So I point that out. But in the
case of Abraham, remember God's promises to Abraham? God promised
some things to Abraham. And if you look at Galatians
chapter 3, you know that God's promises to Abraham were to save
his people, which included Jews and Gentiles, by Jesus Christ. Read that in Galatians chapter
3. It was to justify the heathen in Galatians 3 verse 8. And so,
and he did that, of course, he justified them by the blood of
Christ. He was cursed for us to redeem us from the curse of
the law and to give us his spirit. But then, so that was a promise
that God made to Abraham, a spiritual promise. But God also made physical
promises to Abraham, didn't he? Remember, he said, I'm gonna
multiply your seed. It's gonna be like the stars
of heaven. Go outside, look, look at the stars. It's gonna
be like that. And they're gonna dwell in this land here, this
land of Canaan, and this land is gonna be their land. I'm gonna
give it to them. So there were also these physical
promises that God made to Abraham. But have you ever thought that
God's physical promises to Abraham were also pointing to the spiritual
promises that God made to Abraham? So that even in the creation,
Now, as it says here in Psalm chapter 65 verses 6 through 13,
when God is using creation and describing His abundance of His
power and of His grace in that towards His people, He's showing
us that not only are there spiritual blessings given to us explicitly
in Scripture, but everything else that God has given to us
is pointing toward eternal realities in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so we're out of time right now. I should probably take just a
little bit of time next time to give you some correlations
here between the things mentioned and what they fulfill. But I'll
do that next time because I don't want to go over our time limit
tonight. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your many mercies to us. Your word is deep, it's exceeding
broad. And it's broad because it does
encompass the Lord Jesus Christ. who is infinite God and His work
is an infinite work to save us from our sins which required
an eternal death and had offended an infinite God. And so we find
these things that you've given to us are beyond measure, unspeakable
blessings, indescribable. The height and length and breadth
and depth are beyond knowledge that we can have in this world. And so we just stand in amazement
and we, as it were, in silence before God. Our words are inadequate. They fall so far short to give
adequate praise to Him. And yet we see something of it. And so we lift our hearts in
praise. And to the ends of the earth, you've saved your people
from their sins by the blood of the Lord Jesus. And you've
chosen us in Him. and given us to him as the objects
of your infinite grace and the power of your almighty arm to
save us from our sins. What a great God and Savior we
have. In his name we pray, amen.