About this sermon
David’s Psalm 65 was sung at the harvest Feast of Booths, just days after the Day of Atonement. It praises God first for atoning for his people’s transgressions and bringing them near to dwell in his courts, then for his power in creation, in history, and in deliverance, and finally for the abundant harvest he gives. Above every other gift, believers thank God for the forgiveness of their sins and the joy of dwelling with him.
Sermon transcript
Psalm 65. I think we all know this is Thanksgiving week. I imagine you may already have some plans for Thursday. And I just want us to be thinking about that as we come into this season today. Thanksgiving Day is traditionally a harvest festival. It’s a day where people offer up thanks to God for what we have. And Psalm 65, just to give us a little bit of background here, this is a Psalm of David. It’s a Thanksgiving Psalm, and it was typically sung during the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths. And we need to note that that Feast of Booths happens only five days after Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. And that particular feast was a harvest festival.
And they, who would participate in that, would live in booths for eight days. They would go down to Jerusalem, they would gather in that place and be there for eight days. And they would have lived in tents. Now I don’t know if you’re planning to do that Thursday or not. I’m not particularly going to be living in a tent, I don’t believe, on Thursday.
But this is what they would have been doing. This is what they had done. And why did they do this? They did this to remind them of their travels, of being redeemed out of Egypt. to the land of Canaan where they would be brought home again. And so this was that remembrance of that time in the wilderness. And so what does David do?
He gives thanks for a good harvest here. He is thankful for what God has done. but he doesn’t begin with that part of his thankfulness. And so we want to look at Psalm 65 here, and we want to look at it as a guide for us for giving thanks to God. And we’re gonna look at it under three portions, his grace, his power, and his generosity. So let’s turn to Psalm 65 and read his word. This is God’s word to us.
Praise is due to you, O God in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed. O you who hears prayer, to you shall all flesh come. When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. we shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness.
O God of our salvation and hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, the One who by His strength established the mountains, being girded with might, who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.
You visit the earth and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide their grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty. Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. The pastures of the wilderness overflow. The hills gird themselves with joy. The meadows clothe themselves with phlox. The valleys deck themselves with green. They shout and sing together for joy.”
Amen. We’ll end our reading there. What a psalm of thanksgiving we have before us. And so I want us to think about it in light of what we have here. But again, not beginning with that part. David does bring that harvest sense in the end of the psalm, but that’s not where he begins. He begins with God’s goodness in providing us a forgiving grace. David said, Praise awaits you, verse 1, O God and Zion. To you our vows will be fulfilled. Why do we owe praise to God? Why is God worthy of our praise? Why are we to fulfill our vows in this sense? Because of good harvest?
Is that what David is telling us here? Well, yes, in the broader context, that’s true. But that’s not the first reason that we are doing this. The reason is found in verse 2. What does verse 2 talk about? The God who hears prayers. He hears us when we pray to Him. And so King David wants us in verse 2 to point out and notice that it is to you, God, that all men will come. We have no choice but to go to Him. He is the only one who is there and he is whom we must turn to. And so we want to look at God’s forgiving grace shown in three different ways here in the text. First of all, we see God’s gracious goodness through his provision of atonement for sin. Look at verse three.
When iniquities prevail against me, when iniquities prevail against me, Do you have that feeling in your life? Sometimes we think, when the iniquities, when our sin is upon us, we think our sins are too great and we can’t go to God because we feel like we can’t stand before Him.
And our sins keep us in this place where we shouldn’t be. Because this is not what God wants for us. He doesn’t want us to be kept from Him. David wrote this, and as we saw in verse two, not that we would stay away from God, but that we would all come to God because of our sin. Our sins should not prevent us from going to God. They should instead drive us to God. They should press us to Him, seeking His forgiveness.
And what I want us to notice here in verse three, there’s a subtle change in the words here. Notice when he first of all says this, David says, when our transgressions prevail over me. When he talks about me. So he’s been talking in the larger person, but immediately, in this sense, he’s very personal. And he says, this is about me. When transgressions prevail over me.
And that’s what the Hebrew really says our, even our ESV translation here, doesn’t have the, our transgressions prevail over me. It says it’s all him, but in the Hebrew, that’s how this comes across. David switches out of us to me and that God will atone in this setting, this kaphar, to cover over, to pacify us, to make propitiation for my sins.
And that’s what he does. He makes this a personal confession. It’s not the king speaking for his people now. It’s the king speaking for himself. And that’s what I must do. I must not speak for the people. I must speak for myself. That’s what you must do. not speaking for others, but speak personally.
It’s not enough for us to participate merely in general communal confession of sins and do this as a body. It’s important that we do that, but each of us must confess personally between God and me. That has to be how I confess my sins and how I ask for forgiveness. Psalm 51, David said that against you and you only have I sinned. He speaks very personally when he talks about this.
So maybe you have transgressions in your life, sins that are kind of overwhelming you. Somehow sin seems to be winning the battle in your life and you feel weighed down by your sins. Maybe there’s a very specific sin that you’re struggling with right now that you feel besieged by this sin.
What are you going to do? How are you going to face that in your life? King David was saying, you’re going to go to God with that sin. You’re going to go to him because this is what he wants us to know. And don’t let that sin prevent you from going to God.
In James, he talks about this. If you will draw near to me, I will draw near to you. And that’s the promise that God makes to us. And that’s what David wants us to know. You can go to God and he will come to you. He will forgive your sins. and you will be forgiven. That’s what the end of verse three says. You alone, he is saying to him, you will atone for our transgressions. And you notice that he goes back to the plural us. He goes back to that sense of us again.
You see, your sins may overwhelm you, but I can tell you they do not overwhelm God. In fact, God Himself overwhelms, overpowers your sins. God forgives them as you come to Him, confessing them and asking for that forgiveness. And so we see God’s gracious goodness in that provision of an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God will do it. So what’s the second level of God’s gracious goodness here?
Look at verse four. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We may separate ourselves from God. We may fall back because we think we’re unacceptable and God will not come to us. But God brings us back. That’s what he says here. He chooses you. Bahar is the Hebrew term here. It’s a selection. It’s Him selecting you out of His free, sovereign grace and chooses you, chooses me.
He elects us, even as we see in Romans 8.30. Those He predestined, He also called. Those He called, He also justified. Those He justified, He also glorified.
That’s the choosing. It’s a full choosing. Not getting you on the road, He takes you the whole way through. And that’s what we need to know, that God chooses us. God is the one who works in our hearts by the power of the Spirit to take what is dead and make it alive in Jesus Christ. God is the one who makes us turn away from our sin to Him. in repentance. God chooses us in this very thing. And not only does He choose us, not only does He bring us near to Him, He also makes us to, what does it say here?
Dwell in His courts. Dwell in His courts. We are near Him, not just for a little while, not just for a moment, but we are near Him and remain near Him forever. We are chosen and we dwell in your courts. This is the picture of that perseverance and the preservation that God has for His people, that He works in us. And so we see His gracious goodness in that atoning sacrifice, in that bringing us to dwell with Him, And thirdly, verse four, the last part of that verse, it says, we are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple. God’s gracious goodness brings good things to us.
And of course, we need to realize the context here in the Old Testament, the sins of God’s people were dealt with at the temple. That’s where the sacrifices occurred. That’s where forgiveness was found. That’s where true goodness was for the people of Israel, in the house of God. That’s where everything was cared for. That’s where the sacrifice and the atonement was made. But is that really the truth for us? I hope we don’t live in that Old Testament place where we’re trusting in that. That’s not where our goodness lies.
Our goodness lies in the final, once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross that we have forgiveness of sins. For the sake of Christ, God forgives the sins which overwhelm us. In Christ, He chooses us. By the gospel of Christ, He brings us near to Himself. And for the sake of Christ, He preserves us in the faith. These are the good things which come to us from the house of God. You and I, we are children. We are dwelling in the courts of God’s household. For the sake of Christ, we share the good things of the Father’s house.
Once we have forgiveness of sins, once we see God smiling upon us with His love and His grace, once we know that God has chosen us and we belong to Him, we are part of His family, what should we be? We should be satisfied. We should be content. What more do we need when we have Christ? When we have this dwelling in the house, the grace of Christ is sufficient. for all that I need, and we’re to be thankful for that. So first and foremost, before any other kinds of things that we might give thanks for, let us with King David thank God for His merciful grace, for the forgiveness of our sins. Without that, We’ve got nothing, no matter what the world around us says it has. It has nothing, but we have Christ. And that, we can be truly thankful for. With that, we are filled. And it should be enough. So what is the second look of God’s goodness? It’s shown in His power. Shown in His power. Verses five through eight, there are three ways His power is shown to us here in this passage. First, God’s power is shown in nature. Look at verses 6 and 7.
God established the mountains. The mountains are there not because of some fate or some evolution or some event. of that sort, they are there because God caused them to be there. God stills the roaring of the waves of the sea. All of creation is in his hands. The high mountains, the turbulent waters, the unpredictable seas, everything. is from Him and by His power and He controls it.
The awesome displays of nature that we’ve seen are not just accidents. These are things that God has brought to be. And I think before the space age, these were probably the most incredible things. But in our time now, we can see to the tops of the Alps or the Himalayas. They can see how these things tower above us. Their hard, cold, remote, and frightening grandeur. We can see the change in the seas.
When you see the globe of the Earth from a distance, it’s an incredible thing to see what is there. and yet God controls it all. Jesus Christ, we know, in that storm says, peace be still. And it’s immediately still. God is the One who controls the elements. So we see His goodness and His power through nature. Secondly, we see God’s power in history. We see it in history.
Verse 7, the second part of that verse, David says that God stills the turmoil of the nations. Nations are fighting. They’ve been fighting for as long as there has been sin in the world. Clamoring and making noise and fighting back and forth. How many civil wars are going on right now have gone on and in God’s providence will continue to go on. God stills the turmoil of the nations. Why do the nations settle down? Why do they settle? Look at verse 8. Why do they settle?
Because they who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of your signs. The world looks on and is in awe. Think about this. Remember when the Israelites were coming out of Egypt on their way back to the land of Canaan. The Canaanites heard the rumor of what God was doing for his people, and they got scared just hearing about what was happening. Scriptures will talk about their hearts melting and their knees knocking.
And why was that? Because here was a true God that was unlike their gods. This God of Israel actually had the power to do something. not like their gods that were just blocks of wood and stone and lifeless. The God of Israel was an incredible God because He was a God who brought deliverance. That’s our third sense of His power, His power for deliverance.
We saw that as they moved out of the land of Egypt. They had been brought down there and through all of the plagues and the miraculous things, God brings them out. And then what does he do? He conquers the land of Canaan as they come back in. He is the one who brings this about. And future beyond that, God delivers his people from Babylon.
Think of the stories that we know where God destroys thousands of people in the armies. where Gideon and his foes, they were destroyed, not by Gideon, but by God. We have an incredible picture and the church, even in its New Testament times, as it goes through its persecutions, God is there. You read the book of Acts and you see how God protects and keeps his church in miraculous ways. He delivers us, and I would say God continued in history to show this, raising up men like Athanasius or Augustine or Martin Luther, John Calvin, just all kinds of people that God has brought up to protect and keep and save His church. Even such events as the Spanish Armada, I think, can be looked at as God’s deliverance of those who they were going to come in. Because you have the Reformed believers in England and the Netherlands who praised God and thanked God for showing His control in the storms that affected that Spanish Armada as it’s broken into pieces off the coast of Scotland. This is the God who has power and shows His goodness through deliverance. God is the one who answers the cries of His people. He’s the one who has these deeds of deliverance and the hope of all the ends of the earth.
And when does this happen? Verse 8, the second part, this happens from morning till dawn. And it brings us joy from morning till dawn that we see how God is working to show His power. So we thank God, first of all, for His grace in our lives, that He forgives our sins and He makes us dwell with Him. And then we also thank God for His power in nature and history and for how He uses His power to deliver His people and advance His kingdom. Well, thirdly, we see God’s goodness as He shows His generosity, verses 9 through 13. David said that God cares for the land.
Verses nine and 10, it talks about this. Verse, he waters the land. And you have to understand the land there. You know, here we get a lot of rain and we, you know, maybe think a little bit about are we gonna get rain or we’ve been without rain for a few days or weeks. But there, water is absolutely incredibly important in Israel. He waters the land in this incredibly dry and arid place. It’s a life and death issue. If you don’t have rain, if you don’t have water, things and people and animals are going to die. The rain from the clouds here is described as a river. And a river that comes from God’s holy place. What an incredible picture that David paints for us here. And here’s that picture.
The farmer plows up his fields. When he plows his fields, the dirt is hard as can be, and it just stands up straight. There’s nothing to it but dryness. And then what happens? God brings the rain to fall upon that, and it softens up the furrows, makes the land receptive to receive seed.
Now, I don’t know if there’s anybody but Bruce here who does a lot of planting. I don’t know if there’s any farmers, but when I was up in Canada, I had a dairy farmer who planted his fields. I knew what it was to see this process. And those farmers are totally dependent on God. There’s not enough water to water your fields, to bring these things to bear. You are trusting in God.
And that’s what the farmer does. He does these things. He plants his seeds in that field, and then the Lord blesses it. The Lord causes it to grow, and the year is crowned with God’s lard, our bounty of harvest that comes. And then I love this presentation in verse 11 here. At harvest time, what do we do? We thank God for His great generosity in providing a good yield. And the picture we have here is of this cart. God is driving through here with His cart. And this cart is so full that it’s like things are falling off of it into the fields. And that’s how God provides the abundance of that crop to them. It’s as if God personally visits every field that’s there and he drives that car down that field and it just tumbles out onto those people’s fields for their abundant produce.
And look at verse 12, even the grasslands of the desert overflow. Now, when we think of grasslands, we probably think grasslands here are not grassy until the rain comes. And so when David speaks of the grasslands of the desert, he means the dry regions in Palestine. And then when God brings that rain into these dry grasslands, that’s when he visits them with his blessing and the grass is produced and it brings this harvest of lush green grass to that place.
And even the hills are happy about this. The hills are made happy. Look at verse 12, the second part here. The hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows are covered with flocks. and the valleys are mantled with grain. They shout for joy and sing.”
What a glorious picture of this. And I know in Israel, when I was there a few years back, to see this actually in place. It’s just a marvelous thing to see these settings because this property is barren without rain. It’s so dry, and yet when this is there, what incredible abundance of crops and animals are all brought into place.
And it is for joy. It’s a shout for joy. We go to the store. We don’t have any concern whether anything’s happening out there in the farm fields and in those places. We just expect to go to the store and buy whatever we need. But in this world, everything.
They needed to have this come together, all together, the hills and the meadows and the valleys. And it was the shout and to sing for joy to God because this was what was there. What a beautiful picture of what God does in showing his generosity to his people. So Thursday is Thanksgiving. And we’re going to thank God for his generosity in providing a good harvest, in providing us with the things we have in our life.
But what if it had gone otherwise? For some people, they didn’t have a good harvest. What if God, through the weather, had destroyed the crops or they’d never come? What if the stores and produce stands and the places that we go to and expect to find food were empty? Would we still be thankful? We should be. Hopefully, we would be. How can we be thankful in the midst of the lack or loss of these things that God blesses us with? We find it in Habakkuk. Habakkuk chapter 3, verse 17 says this.
Though the fig tree does not bud, And there are no grapes on the vines, Though the olive crop fails, And the fields produce no food, Though there are no sheep in the pen, And no cattle in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength, He makes my feet He enables me to go on the heights. Even in the midst of these hard things. I would take this back to the end of verse 4. What does it say there?
We are filled with the good things of your house. We’re thankful for the harvest, yes, but if God had not given a harvest, we would still be thankful to God for the good things of His house. We would still be thankful to God for that forgiveness of our sins that comes through Christ. We would still fulfill our vows that we made to Him. And so, we are to be thankful whether it’s good or not so good. We’re to be thankful for God’s mighty power in nature and history and how He has intervened and delivered His people in incredible ways, we’re still to be thankful for these things. But if God, in His wisdom, were to use nature and history to test us and to discipline us, if we were to suffer natural disasters or war or oppression or persecution, Would we still be thankful? And I hope we say yes for the primary blessing, the very first thing in which we thank God is the forgiveness of our sins for His grace in choosing us to dwell with Him in His courts. We are to be satisfied with the goodness of His house. It is enough. With God’s grace, We’ve got everything. Without God’s grace, we’ve got nothing.
Let us offer our thanks to the one to whom all praise is due. Let us thank him for the harvest. Let us thank him for his awesome deeds in nature and history. Let us thank him for his deliverance. But most of all, let us thank him that he has brought us to himself. bought us through the work of His only Son, Jesus Christ. And for the sake of Christ, He has forgiven our sins. His Spirit works faith in us, and God the Father brings us to Himself. We will dwell in His house. He preserves us in faith. And with that, we are satisfied. It is enough. Let’s pray.
Our Lord and our God, we come to a time in our culture where the world tries to be thankful and thankful for things, thankful for stuff, thankful for experiences, thankful for people. And yet Lord, those are good things and we should be thankful for them, but Lord let us be thankful for what you have provided in Jesus Christ. First and foremost, forgiveness for our sins, redemption from our sins, that saving grace of salvation that changes what is dead to being alive in Jesus Christ. Lord, if there is anyone here at this time who doesn’t know this area of thankfulness in their life, who hasn’t experienced salvation, Lord, show them how the rest of it is hopeless and only leads to despair, that it is only through the grace of Jesus Christ, coming to Him, repenting, and trusting in Christ alone for our salvation, that we will find what is truly good, what will truly satisfy. Lord, those of us who may get caught up in this time of year and dealing with all the things that are coming in the next days and weeks ahead of us, let us focus our hearts and our minds on what is truly worth thanking you for. that we would be truly satisfied, that we know the good things of your house, and that we dwell in your courts for all eternity. We thank you for that wonderful gift that we have through Jesus Christ, and it’s in his name we pray. Amen.
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