Great Works and Deep Thoughts Psalm 92:5
Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Our message is based on Psalm 92, which is today’s psalm for the one year lectionary series… we typically use the 3 year series.
Our sermon title, from verse 5, is: “Great Works and Deep Thoughts”.
We’re going to go through this psalm verse by verse, so if you’ll turn to Psalm 92 in the front of your hymnal… let’s say the first 3 verses together, verses 1-3, Psalm 92:
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
It's good for the heart to give thanks… it’s good for our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
God doesn’t need our thanks… but it does warm his heart to hear it, just as it warms our hearts to hear thank you from those we love.
Thanking God is good for us…
- Helps us focus on the positive… on what we’ve been given, instead of what we don’t have… making us more content and cheerful…
- Lifts our spirit…
- Helps to make us more generous… in what we give, say and do.
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,
We think of and speak of His love in the morning, and His faithfulness at night, and vice-versa, as we say in Lamentations 3, “Your mercies are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
All day long, to remember God’s faithful love, makes the night blessed and the day joyful; and helps us to be faithful and loving to God, and to others.
Let’s read verses 4 and 5 together:
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
5 How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep!
There’s a song we haven’t sang in a while, “Shout to the Lord”, and it includes the words “I sing for joy at the work of Your hands, forever I’ll love you, forever I’ll stand”…
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
One of the ways we express our joy is through music and singing, which is such a big part of our worship.
We can sing off tune, and yet our words are beautiful to God…
Like the Beatles song, “I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends”, the lyrics go: What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you get up and walk out on me?
God never would.
We may tune others out at times, but God never tunes us out: He hears every word, and responds according to His perfect love and wisdom.
5 How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep!
Great works and deep thoughts! Our God is all-powerful and all-wise.
All we have to do is gaze at His extraordinary Creation to see that.
How awesome, is the created physical Universe… planets and stars and galaxies in greater numbers than we can imagine.
How amazing and complex is all biological creation, especially humanity, made in God’s image, more than body, but also spirit, for the Holy Spirit to live in us at our very core, and so to save us by faith.
But most amazing and wisest of all is the Gospel, which is the love of God at its best, and the wisdom of God at its deepest, and the power of God at its greatest.
Let’s read verses 6-7 together:
6 The stupid man cannot know;
the fool cannot understand this:
7 that though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever;
Apart from God, in our fallen condition, we can’t see His salvation, nor be enlightened by His wisdom.
I’ve done a lot of foolish things in my life. Am I alone on that? Anyone else made some foolish mistakes in life?
God can help us through all our mistakes minus 1, the most foolish mistake of all: refusing to repent, rejecting the Gospel, not believing in Christ, not receiving His salvation.
That’s the one foolish thing there’s no recovery from. So let us live every day holding on to His Word, and receiving His grace by faith, and let us never take our salvation for granted.
Let’s read verses 8-10:
8 but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
9 For behold, your enemies, O Lord,
for behold, your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered.
10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
you have poured over me fresh oil.
When Jesus was born the angels sang: Glory be to God on high! From Heaven’s high throne, Jesus rules and reigns forever. But His enemies are cast down forever.
Siding with Jesus by faith, we live with Him forever on high. Siding against Him, siding with sin and Satan, we perish forever.
Let us always be on the side of Christ.
10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
you have poured over me fresh oil.
In other words, given me strength and blessing.
The horn of the wild ox, as a comparison, maybe think of the wild long horn cattle that lived in Texas in the 1800s. They grew the long, deadly horns to protect themselves against predators.
God is our strength against our spiritual predators… against our own sinful nature, which is a sort of predator that would destroy us from within… and against the devil, and all that opposes God and His Word.
Our strength and protection from the evil that those spiritual predators would impose on us, is the very Word of God they so fear and despise…
… which is why the world would try to convince us to disbelieve and disregard God’s Word, and disconnect from Christ and His Church.
By His Word, in His fellowship, God gives us the strength we need to disavow all that’s wrong and evil in us and in the world, and to stay attached to Christ, and to all that’s good.
Let’s read verses 11 -15 together:
11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green,
15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
It's with sadness that we see the doom of all who reject Christ and refuse the Holy Spirit, and so we stay diligent in our mission to know Christ and make Him and His salvation known.
12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
At the time of King Solomon, beautiful cedars grew tall in the hills of Lebanon… and they were imported by kings for their palaces.
Solomon imported many cedars to adorn the temple in honor to God, thus:
They are planted in the house of the Lord; and flourish in the courts of our God.
In the house of the Lord, at His fount of Holy Baptism, faith is planted in us by the Holy Spirit, and is nurtured with His Word and Sacraments; it grows in us, from a seed to a mighty cedar, a tower of love and faith. That’s the great and mighty work God would do in you.
14 They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green,
While the body declines, and we can’t produce or work as we once could, it’s not so for the spirit. The soul that abides in Christ never declines, but is constantly renewed in the Holy Spirit, and produces an abundance of love in faith by grace.
15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
There never is, and will never be, anything bad about Jesus… and so we can depend on Him completely and forever.
We never have to worry about over praising Him, or speaking too highly of Him, or over selling or over representing Him.
We can speak too highly of ourselves and of others, but never of Christ. So sing His praises, and talk Him up!
Spread the Good News about Him, and when finally, we see Him face to face, we’ll see that, actually, we didn’t speak highly enough of Him.
Our God is better than the best we can say about Him. So praise Him and speak of Him in the best and highest way you can.
Finally, let’s close together with the Glory be:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
And may His peace, which passes understanding, guard our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, whose works are great, and whose thoughts are deep! Amen.