Well, good morning, everyone. It's nice to have Pastor Will in the audience when I'm up here preaching the main service, unlike when he was on sabbatical, so this is great. I'm gonna ask you to take your copy of the Word of God and turn to Psalm 65 with me.

And you say, why this psalm? Well, two reasons predominantly. One is, I guess I should say three reasons. One is I just love it. And there's a really beautiful arrangement. There's a good arrangement of it in our hymnal, I believe. There's a really beautiful arrangement of it in the Trinity Psalter hymnal, which my family's been using in our family devotions. So it's sort of locked inside my heart. It's found its way to just kind of take residence.

Another reason is the psalm is about the harvest time. It's about the end of the year and reflecting on the year and seeing that the Lord in his good providence has provided for everything. That he's good and he's worked his providence for your good. So it's a good providence. He hasn't just spun up creation, or the way maybe the deists classically thought about it, where it was he built the machine, kind of got it running, and then just stepped away. And now it's just running however it will on its own course. But he's actually directed everything towards his good ends. And when you reflect on, the psalm is meant to be a time of worship and singing it, where you would think back on what he has done for you. That is, I think, needed by us.

And another reason to look at it is, I think it tells us and helps us to practice what is most important for us to do, which is worship. There's a number of things in today's world which compete for all of your attention and would present themselves to you as if they are the thing that you should operate your entire life around. And as believers, what we build our life around is worship. And I think particularly corporate worship. So we actually build our life around Sunday. But this is a hymn, it's pure praise. So let me read it, and then we'll consider what it's telling us.

Psalm 65, and I'm reading from the New American Standard Bible. For the choir director, Psalm of David, a song. There will be silence before you and praise in Zion, O God. And to you the vow will be performed. O you who hear prayer, to you all men come. Iniquities prevail against me. As for our transgressions, you forgive them. How blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to you to dwell in your courts. We will be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple. By awesome deeds you answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation. You, who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea, who establishes the mountains by his strength, being girded with might, who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples. They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of your signs. You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy. You visit the earth and cause it to overflow. You greatly enrich it. The stream of our God is full of water. You prepare their grain, for thus you prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly. You settle its ridges. You soften it with showers. You bless its growth. You have crowned the year with your bounty. and your paths drip with fatness. The pastures of the wilderness drip and the hills gird themselves with rejoicing. The meadows are clothed with flocks and the valleys are covered with grain. They shout for joy, yes, they sing.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we praise you in keeping with this psalm as we consider your great and awesome deeds which you've done in righteousness and which you've worked for your glory, but wonder of wonders, you've worked them for our good. You've worked them to bring about our salvation. You've worked them to bring about order in your creation. You've worked them to bring about everything that is needful for us to live our lives. We praise you. and ask that you would equip us to praise you rightly in this hour. Your spirit would be upon us and working in us to stir our hearts up in love and adoration for you, and that you would enable our minds to not just comprehend the truth, but to apply the truth that we learn, and so to praise you rightly. We ask this in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

The doctrine that is most clearly coming out of this psalm, I just want to get this right in front of us from the get-go, is the doctrine of God's providence. And providence is the Lord's careful ordering and ruling and working and guiding of all things for his glory, for the good purposes that he has for them.

Providence is The doctrine that I think is needful in our day, we're raised in a, I guess you could call it a scientific culture, but by scientific, I really mean more the cult of those who talk about science, where it's not just a search for knowledge, but there's a whole materialistic, if I can say that right, materialistic worldview applied upon the observation of natural phenomena.

And if you were raised in this society, you, I'm sure, experienced this in just the textbooks that you interacted with. I know some of us work in the public school system, so you would know this from the material that you are leading students through or helping students to get through. This is in our nature documentaries, or if you remember Nova on PBS, The worldview that is presented to us is that the world around us just is. It came about just because it did. It operates because it does. And it's going nowhere.

But then at the same time, this is sort of extra, they apply this moral concern to save it and to keep it in some sort of pristine primitive states as if that's good, but it's really from nowhere, it means nothing, it's going nowhere. And the disasters that happen in the world, well, I guess they just happen. And the forces that occur, well, I guess they just occur, but thankfully our sun has a lot of fuel left to burn, so we don't need to worry about it falling apart yet, but humanity will have to worry about that in the future.

And there's just an emptiness that's applied to the created world. It's not even seen as created, but this psalm, really takes that thinking, totally rejects it, and corrects it for us.

And we need to think about the world around us as one that exists because it was made by a good creator, as one that operates because it's sustained and ordered by a good creator. as one that has a goal and has a purpose, and part of that purpose is the preservation of life. This goes back to the Noahic Covenant where the Lord, after he judged the whole world with a flood and he brings Noah and his family off the ark, the animals are coming out and the floodwaters are receding, the world's coming back to, really it's coming back to life. And Noah makes a sacrifice to the Lord, and the Lord says he smelled the sweet aroma, and it was pleasing to him, so he approved of the worship being offered to him, and he makes a covenant. And from that point on, all the way through where it talks about the rainbow, is the Noahic covenant, and the Lord says that he will not judge the world with a flood. This is Genesis chapter eight, you don't have to turn there, but if you're just, if you're taking notes and wanna write it down. 

But he says that, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. So some of us in this room are very connected to the land, because you have farms, and you've got farm animals. And for some of us, that's just chickens. For others of us, that goes beyond that. And I don't know if Jonathan's got his sheep yet, but I know he's working on getting that. So some of us in here are very much more connected to the land and can see the provision of the Lord really more clearly day to day. Some of us, it's a few steps removed and it's in the collection of a paycheck in order to provide for our sustenance and for us to live. And I want you to walk away from this morning, thinking about and praising the Lord for the fact that he has ordered every detail for your provision, for his glory. That's what this psalm is telling us. There's so much more we could add to that. We could talk about how he's ordering everything towards the kingdom. We could talk about how he's bringing everything towards the consummation of the new heavens and new earth. We could analyze his good purposes from a number of different angles, but this psalm tells us he's provided for you. So praise him. 

So what's the proposition here? It's this. The works of God compel you to worship the Lord. all the works of God. So, what should you worship him for? Or why should you worship him? Well, because of his works revealed in salvation, it's verses one to four. Because of his works revealed in the forces of nature, it's verses five to eight. And because of his works revealed in the abundant provision, nature, which is 9 to 13.

So let's look at this right at the beginning here. Consider God's providence, his works revealed in your salvation. Notice that this is where the psalm starts. It doesn't start in a consideration of temporal goods, it starts in a consideration of the most amazing and significant good which the Lord has worked for you. And that is that he's brought you from death to life. He's brought you from being far from him, an instrument of his judgment and of his wrath, to be near to him, an instrument of his blessing and his grace.

The verses one to four. It says in the first verse, there will be silence before you and praise in Zion, O God. This is a difficult phrase to translate, a difficult sentence to translate in the Hebrew. It's really saying, that the Lord will be praised. So saying that one of two ways, either that the praise is due to the Lord, so it's obligated, and your translation might say that, or it might say that, simply that praise waits for the Lord. Both of those are, there's one way you could translate a certain word a couple different ways, and by changing the vowels on it to say there's a question about which way it should be understood. It's a textual criticism matter. But both get at this point that the Lord is to be praised. It's either he's going to be praised in time soon, or he needs to be praised now, and it's required that you praise him.

And so why? Verse two, because he hears prayer. Because men come to him, and the idea that here is come to him and are saved. Because he forgives transgressions, in verse three. Because he brings people near to him, in verse four, and satisfies them. with his goodness, the goodness of his presence, of who he is. 

Salvation in the Old Testament is the same as salvation in the New Testament. Nobody's ever saved, ever, without being saved through the Lord Jesus Christ. But in the Old Testament, it was much clearer the boundary between fallen man and righteous God, such that you couldn't just waltz into the holy, holy place where the Ark of the Covenant was, where the presence of God was, because if you walked into the presence of God without coming through the right mediation, without having your sins atoned for, you would be struck down and be killed. 

We know that the, the high priests, when they would come in once a year on the day of atonement to bring the blood of the atoning sacrifice, in order to sprinkle it on the mercy seat. Here's the Ark of the Covenant, you got the two cherubim on each side, and this middle place is the mercy seat, it's the throne of God, it's what it represents, God's presence is here. So the blood was to be sprinkled on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins. Well, if the high priest hadn't consecrated himself properly, he would be struck down so they'd actually tie a rope around his ankle because if he died while he was offering worship and atoning for the people's sins in the Holy of Holies, you couldn't just walk in and get him because you would die too entering the presence of the Holy God. 

The Levites were the chosen tribe in order to orchestrate the worship and take care of the tabernacle and later the temple. And of that tribe, there's a chosen family, the sons of Aaron, who were the high priests. And the Lord created all of these boundaries, which was even reflected in the temple complex where you had the temple itself where the priests could enter. Then you had the outside grounds where those worshiping the sacrifices could come. Then you had further out where Jewish women were allowed to come and then further out where Gentiles were allowed to come. And you had all of these barriers. 

All of this was illustrative and was teaching that Salvation, holiness, righteousness is to be sought through the mediation that God provides, but also true blessing is on those who are able to come near to God. And this, what does verse four say here? How blessed is the one who you choose and bring near to you. How can you be brought near to God? Well, you're brought near to God if you're saved. if your sins are paid for, if you're given righteousness, if you're made to be brought from death and deserving of the wrath of God to now alive and righteous and able to stand with God and be with God. 

This first four verses here are all about salvation. So that makes me think then, when we look at verse two, O you who hear prayer, to you all men come, that the first prayer which the Lord hears is the prayer of save me, O God, forgive me. That's the first prayer he hears. That's the prayer that when all men come to God, they pray, and they find that he does hear them, and he does save them. that he finds their sins to have been paid for by the blood of his son at the cross, which is what all the Old Testament sacrifices were looking forward to and were meant to be pictures of. 

In verse three, iniquities prevail against me. As for our transgressions, you forgive them. The Lord forgives sins, iniquities and transgressions, two terms for sin. Transgression really is highlighting the violation of the law of God. You transgress the law, you go against it and violate it.

These iniquities, these sins prevail against the sinner, but when he comes to the Lord for salvation, He finds forgiveness. The Lord is certain to forgive those who come to him. This is laid out quite clearly in 1 John. I don't know if I could say laid out, it's just stated as a fact that when you come to the Lord and confess your sins, that the Lord forgives.

1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins. He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Why? Because in chapter two, verse one, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He himself is the propitiation for our sins. He satisfied the penalty due for our sins. That's what the word propitiation means. is the sin payment, the sin offering.

The Lord Jesus Christ, in his death, burial and resurrection, makes it to where God is righteous to forgive you your sins. So when you come to him, Though your sins, think of the hymn, though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though your sins are above your head, they're prevailing against you. They're like an armed man who's coming to destroy you and who is snuffing the life out of you. Though that be your case, when you cry out to the Lord for salvation, those sins are gone.

Forgiveness, when God forgives, he doesn't forget the sin as if it just disappears out of his mind, but he forgets it against you. It is no longer a mark against you that demands his wrath. All the wrath for your sin has been paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ. And if the Lord reserved wrath for you after having paid for it, he would be unjust because the payment has been made. It'd be like the judge demanding payment for you for a parking ticket when you've already paid for it. So I don't care if it was paid for, pay it again. That's not just, you have every right to appeal that decision and get that overturned.

The Lord does not require from you satisfaction for your sins when they've been forgiven, because when they're forgiven, they're paid for by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder this is where the psalmist here, David, starts. No wonder he wants to praise the Lord right from the beginning, because the Lord is a righteous, holy, and forgiving God. who makes a way for you to come near to him through paying for your sins and forgiving you your sins and finding payment for your sins in his son.

I'm not being, it's the term anachronism where you bring it from later in history and move it back into the opposite side of history, getting all jumbled up here. This is what the whole sacrificial system is pointing to, to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when David would come before the Lord and would come through the sacrificial system, that he's believing that the Lord is providing a substitute for his sin. And so he's justified on the blood of Christ whom he's looking forward to. We have the benefit of looking back and in our Bible seeing all of it explicitly made clear to us. But when David is able to say, you forgive sins and you bring me near, we know that that's through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is remarkable.

So what is the first reason that you should worship the Lord? The first reason you should worship the Lord is because he saved you. His righteous works have been worked out for your salvation. Think about this, where the New Testament says, if this is what he's done for us, how much more will he give us all things? If he do not spare his own son, to save us, how much more will he provide for all of our needs is the doctrine being taught.

Another reason to praise the Lord, and you see here that David's not trying to get you to somehow just get out of the world you're living in. But he then directs your eyes, not just from what was done for your spiritual need, but now how the Lord is working in creation around you. In verses five through eight, we see that we should praise the Lord for his providence over the forces of nature. In these verses, unlike the verses that follow, he's not considering these miraculous works of ordering nature as bringing about abundance for you. That comes later, where in verses nine to 13, you can tell all of it's about watering the earth so that it brings forth grain so that then it yields great flocks. And what's the obvious connotation here? That you have food. You have clothing, you have sustenance, you have property and provision. But in verses five to eight, the emphasis is really on noticing that God is sustaining the good order of creation that we live in.

Did the sun come up this morning? You know, is that a blessing? Yes. It happens every day. It's just how the system works. It does so because the Lord is sustaining it for you. It says here in verse five, by awesome deeds you answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation, who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea. So it's this transition from Lord hearing prayer into now he reveals that he's able to hear and answer prayer in his power over the world. What has he done in the world? Well, verse six, he's established the mountains by his strength. He's girded, being girded with might. This is him who's girded with might. And so then the mountains and their strength, and they seem like fixtures, immovable fixtures. Even if Mount St. Helens blew its top off, and it's not this perfect mountain like it was beforehand, it's there. It hasn't moved. That demonstrates that the Lord's power. Can you go out and move a mountain? You say, well, if I have faith like a mustard seed, I could say the mountain be taken up and cast into the sea. Yeah, but you can't move it. You would need a whole nation with all of its resources organized and directed towards ripping it up and blowing it up and shifting it in order to bring something like that about. It's there because the Lord put it there.

What about the ocean? One of the things I love about the Oregon coast, I noticed this is a distinction with the Southern California coast. Southern California coast has these sandy beaches that just stretch out forever. And the water is just kind of lapping up against the coast. And I wasn't there during the rainy season or that. I'm just thinking of the summer. But with the Pacific Ocean on the Oregon coast, it's pounding the rocky headlands. And we have our own sandy beaches as well, but you usually have to wear a raincoat. And there's some power that's just obvious in the ocean, where you look at it and you immediately have a sense of, I'm really nothing. with how much power is being displayed here. All the energy that's displayed in these waves moving and beating against the rocky headlands where we've had to put these lighthouses up on top of this headland because they'd just be swallowed up by the ocean if they weren't up there.

You think about these roaring seas, the roaring of their waves, and then the tumult of the peoples, and so it's even the people's activity is being considered here. The Lord stills the roaring of the seas. In the time of the Lord Jesus, when he was ministering on earth, he actually did this quite clearly for his disciples. Or he's on the boat, he's sleeping, because, He's trusting the good providence of God, and he knows that he's gonna make it from one side to the other. There's no problems, even though to the disciples, the ship is sinking, and they cry out to him. He gets up and he just says to the oceans, to the waves, the Sea of Galilee, peace, be still. And it goes from raging, roaring. And with the Sea of Galilee, it's like the Great Lakes where you can get these competing winds that come from a couple different directions. And so it just causes the lake to just turn into this huge, stormy, chaotic sea. And it goes from that to tranquil. You think about that. It's the power of the Lord over creation. If he's that powerful over creation in ordering it, how will he not also direct his power, which is what verse five has told us about, to answer you, to meet your needs, to provide for you.

The ordering of creation in verse eight here, we should also see that when creation operates as it's supposed to operate by the ordering of its God, it brings glory to God. You see this in verse eight. the second part of verse eight, you make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy. Now, there's some question about whether or not that's talking about the people who are all over the earth from the dawn to the sunset. So they're just on all parts of the earth. But if you take it literally at what it's saying in you, it could be that it's a metaphor, and that would be just fine. But if you just take it at face value here, it makes it sound like what Verse 13 is also saying, at the end of verse 13, which is that creation itself is bringing joy and bringing glory and bringing honor to the Lord. The Lord receives glory, it's almost trite to say, by being the Lord. but by being in control over all things and having all things operate as it should operate, as he sustains it. And when it does so, you and I look at it and we give glory to the God who's master over it.

The Lord Jesus Christ, I just wanna show you that this is our Lord. Yes, he stilled the sea, but also Colossians makes the point that He's the one who's ordering, sustaining and upholding all things. When in Colossians 1 verse 15, it says about the Lord, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, firstborn there meaning that he's first in rank. not that he was the first creation in all creation. He's the Lord over all creation. Verse 16, for in him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. Say for him, like just for his use? Well yeah, but it's not like he needs the fruit from your apple tree in order to live. So what purpose does creation serve for the Lord? It brings some glory. It brings some honor. He's before all things and in him all things hold together.

The Lord Jesus himself. is the one who is this great God, Psalm 65 talks about, who establishes the mountains by his strength, who stills the roaring of the seas, who receives glory and honor through the operation of his creation. So then that brings us to the final section, which is that we should worship God for his abundant provision, which he provides through nature. This is where we see the provision, where the food's actually on our table. And we pause before we eat, because we give thanks to God that he provided this for us. And this is what these verses are really talking about. They talk about just the natural order in nature. excuse me, the hydrological cycle. Verse nine, you visit the earth and cause it to overflow. You greatly enrich it. The stream of God is full of water. You prepare their grain and thus you prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly. You settle its ridges. You soften it with showers. You bless its growth. 

To Israel, this would have been especially noteworthy at the end of the year when the hills and the landscape turns from brown to green. And you notice this in, I remember noticing this in Los Angeles. Everything was brown, brown, brown. And then sometime in January, all the hills turned green. It was still a pale green compared to the Pacific Northwest, but it was green. And all of a sudden, everything came to life. And this river that was behind the house that me and my wife were living in, which was just a dry dust bed with trees growing in the middle of it, all of a sudden, there was moving water in it. and that huge LA wash right outside Grace Church where you walk through it and you see homeless people walking in and out of it because it was dry all the time. All of a sudden there's water moving through it and the whole landscape comes to life really quickly. 

Very similar from what I understand to Israel where during the summer everything's brown and then the rains come. And life shows up. Everything turns green. The stream of God here in verse nine, I don't think it's talking about a specific river or a specific body of water. It's talking about water. It's talking about rain. It's talking about the provision of hydration that comes from the Lord in directing the forces of nature. And so the rains come, the earth drinks it in, It grows grain. The flocks then are able to consume the grass and the greenery that's being produced, and they're able to grow and grow in abundance. And it says in verse 11, you have crowned the year with your bounty. your paths drip with fatness. 

That word paths there could be probably tracks or wagon tracks or carts even. It's the idea of there's so much provision that the Lord has brought that it's like overflowing the wagons that we're using to harvest and then bring it into the storehouses. The Lord provides. He provides for your life. He makes a way for you to eat, to have shelter, to have clothing, to put gas in your car. He makes a way. If you are one who has livestock or animals or land that you're tending, he provides for the plants to grow, for the animals to thrive and breed. He provides, and he makes a way. And the danger, as I mentioned at the start of our society, is to think that if I can just manipulate the right pieces, I'll be master over this, and I will get it to produce a great yield. And if not, I guess that's just an accident of nature, and it's random chance happenings and circumstances, and there's really nothing I can do. 

But we need to Remember is that the Lord is working in his created order to bring about your life and your livelihood. Your life, the Lord concerns himself with it. It's really remarkable. And he doesn't just leave you with a better temporal, physical life until you die and then you just disappear. No, but from the very beginning, he provides for your greatest need, which is your salvation. He doesn't forget your temporal needs. He doesn't forget that you need food on the table, but he provides so much more than that by providing for your eternal security. I think of that hymn, Creation Sings, the Father's song, creation itself is manifesting the glory of God and his provision and his care, and his care for his people through it. 

So what would be the applications out of this as we just land the plane here? I just have three for you. First, are you here as one of God's people? who experience what verses one to four have talked about. If you are, you have ample reason to praise him. You belong to him. You've been brought near to him. He's heard your prayers, and he still hears your prayers, and he provides for you. He satisfies your greatest need by bringing you into his house, which is into union with his son, obviously, and it's and the greatest application of that. 

Secondly, look around you when you're driving home, when you're out on your property, when you're filling a glass of water this afternoon, or making your Sunday dinner, if it's not already cooking right now, and realize the Lord rules and governs all of these things for His good purposes, and one of those good purposes is your life. And praise Him for that. 

Thirdly, look back at this year. Consider the trials you've been through. Consider the difficulties you've already gone through, and how the Lord has made a way for you each time. and praise him for caring for you, for providing for you. We come to church to worship the Lord for his glorious works, which tell us who he is. So I would say, worship the God of your salvation. We get a chance to do that in one of the ways commanded by the Lord here in a few minutes in the observation of the Lord's Supper. And these elements are a picture and a taste, they're engaging all of your senses, to remind you that the Lord's body was hung on the cross, as payment for your sin, and that his blood was spilt to secure the new covenant for you, where you can be brought near to God, justified, righteous according to God's law, and able to stand in his presence, worshiping him.

We have an opportunity to worship him very strikingly in the observation of the Lord's table here in a few minutes. So we have ample reason to worship the Lord. So as we go, worship Him.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do worship you and praise you for your greatness, your goodness, your good providence and orchestrating all things and including our needs and the satisfaction of our needs in those good purposes of yours. We praise you. and we delight in you and ask that you would enable us to think rightly about you and so to be sanctified and made more Christ-like in the observation of the Lord's table here in a few minutes and in our singing here, which we are about to engage in. We praise you in the name of our Lord and Savior, amen.