Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So

I was thinking what to do for four weeks here in June before, Lord willing, get to a usual break that church so graciously gives to me and my family in July. We’ll be, Lord willing, going out to Colorado for a week during that time and seeing Trish’s family out there. We haven’t all been out there since 2018 when Trish’s father passed away, so we’ll be doing that for a week and then mostly we’ll be around here, and I’ll be doing some writing and study and other things and watching the Tour de France and lots of fun things. So, these four weeks I thought what to do and I was a little bit jealous over the past months on Sunday evening as the other pastors did the series on the Hallel Psalms. I knew that that was coming and often in the summer there’s been some short series on the Psalms, and I haven’t always been able to do many of them, so I was thinking where to find four Psalms. You may ask, well why did you choose these four? Well, I like them, and it starts Book 5, Psalm 107, 108, 109, 110. I think you’ll find that these are somewhat familiar and yet not the most familiar of the Psalms and this is where we’ll be heading for these next four weeks in the month of June. So, pray with me as we come to Psalm 107 this morning.

Father in heaven, give us ears now to hear that we might receive your Word, not hearers only, but doers. Not simply to understand the text, we start there. To feel what we ought to feel and do what we ought to do and believe what we ought to believe. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Follow along as I read Book 5, Psalm 107. 

[1] Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! [2] Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble [3] and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. [4] Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; [5] hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. [6] Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. [7] He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. [8] Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! [9] For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things. [10] Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, [11] for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. [12] So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help. [13] Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. [14] He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. [15] Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! [16] For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron. [17] Some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction; [18] they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. [19] Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. [20] He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction. [21] Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! [22] And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, and tell of his deeds in songs of joy! [23] Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; [24] they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. [25] For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. [26] They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; [27] they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. [28] Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. [29] He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. [30] Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. [31] Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! [32] Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders. [33] He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, [34] a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants. [35] He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. [36] And there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in; [37] they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield. [38] By his blessing they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish. [39] When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, evil, and sorrow, [40] he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes; [41] but he raises up the needy out of affliction and makes their families like flocks. [42] The upright see it and are glad, and all wickedness shuts its mouth. [43] Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the LORD.

This may be the most important Psalm that you never think about. There are other more famous Psalms, Psalm 23, Psalm 51 that great cry of repentance from David when he’s confronted, Psalm 1 blessed is the man. Psalm 119 the longest chapter in the Bible extolling the Words of God. This psalm you recognize some familiar phrases, but likely is not one of those Psalms that you’ve studied in depth or have heard many, many sermons preached, and yet it is in this very Psalm a microcosm of the entire human experience. Gregory of Nyssa, an early church father, said about this Psalm, “It contains a complete consummation and recapitulation of human salvation”, and that’s not an exaggeration. This Psalm is the story of Israel’s deliverance. It is the story of our salvation, and it is the story of what Christ has done for sinners. 

I want to start, I hope you have your Bible’s open, I want you to notice before we go deeper, I want you to notice the overall structure. Sometimes we think about poetry as being that kind of art form that just wells up within the poets and we have a romantic kind of ideal that true art must be something that breaks all the rules and just kind of explodes out of the artist, and yet I think most artists, especially art that lasts, would tell you that it’s often quite the opposite, that the most amazing pieces of music follow certain rules. Poetry follows a great number of rules related to words and economy and structure, and so it is here with this Psalm, lest we think Psalms are poetry, poetry is art, and art is about feeling instead of rules and structure. Well, this is about feeling, this is meant to be a vehicle of great experiential feeling and it does so with certain rules and structure. So, notice, the deliberate outline of this Psalm. The big idea very helpfully is given to you in the first and the last verse. Verse 1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, his steadfast love endures forever!” There’s the title page, there’s the banner waving over this Psalm and as if the point were not obvious, look at verse 43, “Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things and let him consider the steadfast love of the Lord.” 

So, the point of this Psalm is right there, no one should miss it, this Psalm is here that you and I might consider and attend to the steadfast love of the Lord. Now notice the setting, verse 2, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from trouble”, and then verse 3 here it’s very important, “Gathered in from the lands, from east, west, north and south.” This is a song to be sung by the exiles upon returning to the land of Israel. Gathered after they had been scattered because of their sin and now returns. So, this is a song of deliverance, to thank God for His steadfast love that He has redeemed His people. You know that word redeemed, its such a familiar Bible language, Christian language, but it originally means to purchase someone like a slave, to purchase their deliverance, to redeem them, like you would redeem a coupon. He has redeemed his people and then, as I pointed out, there are these four main sections. You can see them very clearly and, in the ESV, helpfully there’s an extra space in between these scenes. Verse 4, “Some wandered in desert wastes.” Verse 10, “Some sat in darkness.” Verse 17, “Some were fools through their sinful ways”, and then verse 23 “Some went down to the sea in ships.” 

Each of these four scenes follows the exact same pattern, I hope you noticed it when I was reading the text. First there is a description of a predicament, what’s the trouble, and then we are told the turning point, they cried to the Lord in their trouble, then God rescues them and finally there is an exhortation to thank the Lord for His steadfast love. Each of those scenes unfolds in the same way, predicament, they cry to the Lord, God rescues them, thank the Lord for His steadfast love. And then, at the end there are two other sections stressing this main point. Look at verses 33 through 38, and they’re offset by a space and then verses 39 through 42, and each of these final two sections we have the theme of reversal. God casts down the proud and the mighty and he lifts up the humble and needy. It was a very deliberate structure. First and last verse tell us what the Psalm is about, we get the setting, this is the exiles returning, we have four scenes and then we have two reversals. It is, as I said a moment ago, the story of Israel’s deliverance, the story of our salvation, and the story of what Christ has done for sinners. Those are our three points, I want us to look at each of them.

First then, I want you to see how this is the story of Israel’s salvation. So, I already mentioned in verse 3 the reference to the exiles, but I want you to see there’s a connection between Psalm 105, 106, and 107. Go back and look at Psalm 105. It’s another thanksgiving Psalm and you notice in verse 6 for example, “offspring of Abraham, children of Jacob, his servants.” Verse 9, “The covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac.” Psalm 105 is tracing out the history of Israel and it starts with the promise to Abraham, Issac, and to Jacob, they were few in number, they were sojourners and then it takes God’s people to Egypt and we’re introduced to Moses and we have the Exodus and then, look at the very end verse 44, “And he gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession of the fruit of the peoples’ toil, that they might keep his statues and observe his laws.” So, Psalm 105 traces Israel’s history, Abraham down to Egypt, and Moses the Exodus and it ends with the conquest of Israel. They were given the land of the people of the nations and there they are in the land that they might follow the Lord’s command. That’s Psalm 105.

Now notice how 106 ends. Look at verse 47. “Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise.” It’s a different setting. Psalm 105 is their triumphant history entering the promised land. It ends “We’re in the land to obey God’s statute”, but of course they didn’t obey God’s statutes and they were punished and they experienced the covenant curses that God had threatened, and so Psalm 106 ends not in the land, Psalm 105, but outside the land calling upon God, “Gather us, we’ve been scattered to the nations.” They’re in the land at the end of 105, they’re away from the land, scattered in 106 which is why 107 then is the answer to that prayer. Now gathering them in from the lands. This is Israel’s story in 105, 106, 107, the promise to Abraham, slavery in Egypt, Exodus under Moses, conquest of Canaan, disobedience, exile, salvation, and return. 

Now these four scenes in 107 they may depict something of the actual trials the exiles faced as they had to return to the land, but even if they’re not literal historical vignettes, they are meant to give a spiritual picture of God’s people and describe the plight from which the nation had been delivered. So, this is first of all the story of Israel. Here’s what happened to Israel. Now the second heading, here’s where we’ll spend most of our time. It is not only the story of Israel’s deliverance. That would be interesting, and we like the Bible and we like to know our history and we could say, “Interesting, I hadn’t seen the connection of those three Psalms before.” But it’s not only that, it’s the story of your salvation. It’s the story of our deliverance. I pointed out the word some that begins these four sections and that’s a fine way for the ESV to render it, and it makes it easy to see these scenes, but we do need to realize that each of these scenes begins in a slightly different way. It doesn’t actually begin with some, and that’s important because we don’t want to think that we’re looking here at four distinct groups of people, that the camera is zooming in, okay we’re gonna look at some, here’s some wanderers, that’s one group of people. Then we’re gonna look at some people who are afraid, that’s another group of people. As if they were all distinct people. The first scene begins with the words, “They wandered”, the second, “Those sitting”, the third scene begins with the word “fools”, and the fourth scene begins “Those going down.” Now here’s why that is important. I agree with the majority of the commentators who says we are not meant to see four different groups of people, but we’re meant to see God’s people from four different angles. It’s not unlike if you were here for the Revelation series a couple of years ago. The key to understanding Revelation is to realize that we’re not seeing this picture and then this picture as if it’s one massive timeline from chapter 5 to the end of the book, but we’re seeing a recapitulation, that is we’re saying, let’s look at what’s happening in the world with this set of pictures and now let’s look at it from this set of pictures, that’s what we have. And if you are honest, you will recognize yourself in one or more of these scenes. You’ll recognize yourself perhaps in the past, and you can say praise God cuz that was me. You may recognize yourself in the present. You may find your heart praying for your kids or your grandkids or someone you know, or a neighbor as you think they’re here in these four scenes. 

Scene 1 we can entitle, The Homeless are Given a Home. The predicament, they’re wandering, they’re hungry, thirsty, no city to dwell in and then the deliverance, in each of these sections the deliverance exactly matches the plight that the people are in. So, the predicament in this first scene is that the people are wandering, they’re hungry, they’re thirsty, and they have no place to lay their head. They have no city. And so, verse 7, the deliverance is God leads them, He gives them a city to live in, and verse 9 He satisfies them with good things. The homeless are given a home. Have you ever felt far from home, you don’t have to be literally on the streets homeless, you may even be here this morning and you’re here in a very comfortable place and you may be far from your physical home, from the place of your birth, or this can be even more painful. You look around and you think, no, this is where I’ve been for a long time, and I know lots of people and lots of people know me and yet there’s something in your heart that feels like everyone else has a place to go but me. Or maybe you feel aimless like these wanderers in the desert. Or you have this unquenchable thirst like everything you have done or tried has left you empty and every time you thought, well that next thing, once I get to college then it’s all gonna make sense, no once I get out of there, no once I’m married, no once I have a kid, no once I have grandkids, no once I’m retired and you’re always, (sipping), and you’re still thirsty like when you go on a run and you’re parched and you grab a Coke or a Mountain Dew or something with a lot of sugar, it sounds like a good idea and you realize it makes you more thirsty. That’s the way the world works, gives you this shiny sugary drink, you’re thirsty and they get a nice advertisement, and they see just the beads of sweat coming down, it’s always grabbed out of some mountain stream or polar bears are drinking it, you think surely this is gonna be good. And it is good, and it leaves you even thirstier. 

The homeless are given a home. Here’s the second scene. The prisoners are set free. The predicament, look at it there beginning at verse 10, darkness, affliction, chains, hard labor, they fell down and notice, this is important, these are not innocent men and women. This is not a picture of those who have been imprisoned unjustly, but it says very clearly, verse 11, “They rebelled against the Words of God. They spurned the counsel of the most high. “No these men and women have burned bridges in their lives and now they look, who will help me, how did I get into this mess. I told you before that one of the things I had to do in preparation for pass through ministry and it was very scary to me and I felt very unqualified for it, had to work for a season in addictive behavior center. This was not even a Christian environment, and I tried to get in the Gospel wherever I could, working with men and women who were mainly addicted to heroin, drug of choice at that time and that place, and they all had different stories, that were all kinda the exact same story. Tried this, got hooked on this, they burned bridges with people that loved them, with people that tried to help them, with their family. Most of them did not come from positions of destitution and poverty, many of them came from good places or good homes, or middle class upbringings and every single one of them, I would like to say that they were all just ready to receive Christ as their personal Lord and savior, no not quite that, but I can tell you every single one of them realized, “This is not the life I signed up for, this is not where I thought I would be.” Maybe you’ve felt like that, you’ve spent through all of your good capital and all you see around now seemingly is darkness, and to make matters worse, it would be one thing if you felt like, “Well people have just treated me unfairly and I need to get a lucky break in life”, but no, if you’re honest you realize you are in the chains of your own making. You rebelled, you didn’t listen to people who were trying to tell you the truth and now you’re confined, and you’re bound. Commentator Derek Kidner has this great phrase, he says, “In scene one the problem is that the world is too wide and in scene two the problem is that it is too small.” You’re wandering, you’re lost, you’ve got this great big world, you don’t know where you’re going. And now scene two you’re cramped, you’re confined, you’re bound, but deliverance comes, and God brings them out of darkness, he bursts their bonds apart, he shatters doors of bronze, he breaks open the bars of iron. How else can you be delivered from bars of iron unless a strongman comes to set you free.

Scene three. The sinners are healed. Look at the predicament there starting in verse 17, fools, fools suffering for their folly. They have sewed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, and you read in verse 18, “They loathed any kind of food.” Have you ever felt that, say I’m absolutely sick to my stomach, I’m so bound up with grief or anxiety or I see the mess that I’ve made in my life, I don’t even wanna eat. Maybe you have a mom who tries to care for you as moms often do, you need to eat something, you’ll feel better if you just eat more, eat your troubles away. And you get to that place where you think, I don’t even, nothing even sounds good. All I can taste in my life is regret, the future looks bleak. In moments of despair, you’re not even sure what you have to live for. You notice a deliverance, His Word healed, He delivered them from destruction. God can do this in your life, He really can. He can speak a Word; one little Word will fell him. He can give you a Word and suddenly things don’t seem so desperate, the clouds part just a little. Not usually all at once, your life doesn’t usually go from cataclysmic thunderstorms to bright shining rainbows and unicorns, but you can see a cloud just a little bit as God comes, brings His healing mercy, reminds you of His steadfast love. You know who hates your sin more than you do, God does. You know who’s more willing to forgive you than you are, God is, and there’s a final scene. 

The fearful are comforted. You see verse 23. Notice now the predicament is not so much our sins are our sighs. Maybe you were listening to these first three scenes, especially number two and number three and you think, “Okay, that’s not me right now.” I don’t think that I’m suffering because of my sins or because of my folly or my rebellion against God, but it may be, not your sin, but your sighs, meaning you look out like these men did and you see great waters, mountains to the heavens, and troubles down to the deeps and it’s such a remarkable description of what we feels like sometimes as our problems seem so much more massive than your ability to handle them. You don’t know where you’re gonna get the hours in the day, you down know if you even have anymore tears to cry, you don’t know how you’re gonna get through next week let alone the next decades and you feel like this. Verse 26, “Your courage has melted, your reeling, you’re staggering like a drunk man. You’re at your wits’ end.” You’re saying, “I don’t know what to do.” What you have in your life this morning is panic and the deliverance to meet that need as God calms the storm, He brings them into a safe haven. That moment when you cry out to God and say, “The world is too big, my problems are too big, the loss of this loved one is too big, this diagnosis is too big, the unknown ahead of me is too big, I’m lost at sea, I can’t do this.” God says, “I can bring you to a safe haven. I can calm that storm.” 

And we have then two final stanzas of reversals. Just look quickly at verses 33 through 38. This is deliberately covenant language, Leviticus, Deuteronomy have all these warnings. If you as God’s people follow God’s ways, you’ll have blessing and blessing means prosperity and it means children and it means livestock, and fruitful land, and if you don’t then He will curse your land. And that’s exactly what we see. Do you notice the opposite 33 and 34. What’s God doing. He is cursing the land because of His people’s iniquity. He turns rivers desert, water thirsty, fruitful land salty waste. Why, because the people were evil and then it switches just like that. In verse 35 is just the opposite. Now the desert becomes pools of water, now the parched land is not salty anymore, it becomes springs of water. Now you’re no longer hungry, but He gives you food, you’re no longer homeless, He gives you a city to dwell in, why. Verse 38, “Because you have been blessed.” What we read in that famous passage in Chronicles, “If my people who go by my name will repent and will turn, I will heal their land.” And so, He does and it’s the same pattern in verses 39 through 42. The proud and the wicked are brought low. In verses 39 and 40, diminished, brought low, oppression, evil, sour, pours contempt on princes, makes them wander, that’s casting down the mighty and the arrogant, and then it all switches in verse41 and 42, “But he will raise up the needy, he will make families to be like flocks, he will give you great blessing.”

Notice, the turning point in all four of those scenes is exactly the same. You can’t miss it. The turning point in every one of those scenes of desperation, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.” In many ways to be a Christian is just that simple and just that hard. It’s very simple. Number one, do you know you are in trouble?. Number two, will you ask for help? Number three, will you cry to the Lord? Whether you feel that sense of trouble right now, we don’t all feel these scenes always at the same time, praise God not all of life is like this, but live long enough and all of you will have these experiences of these four scenes and some of you are experiencing them right now and the turning point, it’s so obvious, what’s the lesson, will you cry to the Lord? Every parent, we have this experience of at times watching our kids and we just so much want them to ask for help. Parents like to come in and offer the help, or do the help, and when they’re young and little and they need your rescue and they can’t do anything about it, then you do it. And they get older, and you need them to say, “I need something from you.” And so the Christian life is God our heavenly Father urging, pleading, calling, waiting that you in the midst of your distress would come to the end of yourself, come to the end of thinking, I know how to figure my way out of this, I’m smart enough, I’m brilliant enough, I’m good looking and doggone it people like me, I can do this. And you realize, no, a Jehoshaphat prayer, when you don’t know what to do, our eyes are on you Lord. We absolutely are surrounded, and we don’t know what to do, but we cry out to you for help because you love to hear us. 

Do you remember the story of Jonah. He did almost everything wrong. He disobeyed the Word of the Lord, he went the other way, he almost ruined the vessel he was on because it was cursed. Later he complains about the plant that withered, he’s a whiner, and it’s worse than that, Jonah has a heart that desires mercy for a vine more than he desired mercy for the Ninevites and you say, “Well he preached the Gospel to the Ninevites”, well the only Gospel we have recorded that he preached is he went in there and he said, 40 days and you’re gone! He might have actually liked that message, and then they repented. There’s really only one place we know for sure in that famous story that Jonah gets it right in the belly of the whale, when he’s helpless and he cries out for deliverance, and he actually prays with the language of the Psalms. Have you considered that the Lord may have you in this season of difficulty, of trial, of trouble, of discouragement, of panic, of confusion, He may have you there for the very reason to teach you and to teach me to cry out to Him and say, Lord you’ve got me in this mess, what could you possibly be doing. Well one of the things He is surely doing is to teach you the lesson of Psalm 107, “And then they cried to the Lord in their trouble. God always hears the cry of a humble broken heart in their trouble. He never puts his fingers in his ears and says, too much, no, no, no, you’ve got too many sins, not this time, I’m not falling for this one again. Last time you called out in trouble and you’re in the same mess again, I’m not doing it.” He loves to hear when you pray, you cry out.

And here’s the final story. It’s not the longest, but it’s the most important. This is a story of Israel’s deliverance. This is the story, the human story of our sin, our predicament, our suffering, our need for salvation, and it is the story of what Jesus Christ has done for sinners. I hope by this point you have exploding in your mind all sorts of examples where Christ’s life and ministry is the incarnation of Psalm 107. First think that Jesus Himself was given an exile experience. Jesus was, in a manner of speaking, in a far country. Jesus knew hunger and thirst. Jesus had no place to lay his head. Jesus was bound as a captive. Jesus was led through the valley of the shadow of death into the abyss, into darkness, and he died and suffered and was buried. Jesus experienced this exile. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why am I in exile from you, but not only that, you think of all the times in Christ’s life and ministry where the very deliverance spoken of in Psalm 107 is the exact deliverance that Christ gave, “Are you hungry? He says, I am the bread of life. Are you thirsty? Whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst again. Are you homeless, I go to prepare a place for you. In my father’s house are many rooms. You afraid of death, I am the resurrection and the life. Are you wandering, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Are you mired surrounded in darkness, those who walked in the shadow of darkness have seen a great light. Do you need to be set free; Jesus came to set the captives free, Peter, Paul, Silas in the Book of Acts, but even more importantly, freedom from sin, self, and the devil. Do you feel sick, by his wounds you are healed. Are you there in the midst of the storm, Jesus said peace be still and the storm was silent. Are you far from home, He can bring you there.” 

Luke 13:29 this parable of the kingdom Jesus says, “People will come”, notice the language”, “from east and west, from north and south. He is gathering and has gathered the people from the four corners of the earth just like Psalm 107 said. Luke 153, “He has filled the hungry with good things.” If your experience in life right now is lost, hunger, thirst, exhaustion. If you are like that prodigal, isn’t Psalm 107 the story of the prodigal son, squandered his inheritance, kicked out of the land because of his own folly and sins, who says I’m so hungry, if I could only eat the pods that the pigs will eat. Darkness, death, that’s all the prodigal has, that’s all the predicament of Psalm 107, but there’s deliverance. If you turn around and head for home the Father will run with open arms and meet you and greet you and embrace you and kill the fatted calf, this is the story of what Jesus Christ has done for sinners. So, what is our response? Well, I said it at the very beginning, it’s given in verse 1 and it’s given again in verse 43, our response is to consider the steadfast love of the Lord. If you say, what can I do, my life is a mess, I have darkness, I have fears, what can I do? It’s really very simple, you can cry out, you can consider, and you can give thanks, give thanks. 

Ah, I hate that your senior pastor is sometimes a whiny Christian, but he is. I was gonna say ask my family, don’t ask my family. Compliance, yet complaining at times. When I have virtually nothing but good things all around me and if you have eyes to see it, so do you, even in the midst of pain. What marks the Christian? There are many ways to answer that question. Here’s one of the most fundamental marks of a Christian. You say thank you. You ever notice at the end of Romans 1 it’s this graphic chapter of all of these sins and goes through sins of men inflamed in lust for men and women exchanging natural relations with other women and you think, well surely those are not my sins and then you get to Romans 121, “They neither glorified God nor did they give thanks.” You know what’s at the heart of all of that sin, they couldn’t recognize the gift God had given them, they couldn’t give thanks. Do you have eyes to see the world as God would have you see the world. Gilbert Burnet was born in Scotland in 1643, he was a philosopher, a historian, he was appointed the Bishop of Salisbury in England and each year Bishop Burnet visited the parishes under his charge and the story is told that one year he came to a home, if you could even call it a home, because it was so destitute, so ramshackle he immediately felt sorry for whomever had to live in this dwelling and yet as he drew closer to do his parish visit, he could hear in this ramshackle home a voice singing and shouting praises to God and he looked into the window and he saw a pitiful creature to him, a woman as poor as he had ever seen, and behold her was an even more pitiful meal. There on a simple stool was a piece of black bread and a cup of cold water, but as the Bishop leaned in feeling sorry for this woman, maybe even a little repulsed, he saw that her eyes and her hands were lifted to heaven that she might give thanks for her meal and this is what she said, “What, all this and Jesus too?”

Charles Spurgeon said about verse 43, “Those who notice providences shall never belong without providence to notice.” Do you have the eyes to see all that God has given you and consider and rejoice and give thanks. Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good. For His steadfast love endures forever, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Let’s pray.

Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word, for your many blessings, help each one of us man, woman, child of whatever age at the beginning of life, nearing the end of life that we might do just as this Psalm instructs us. To consider, to pay attention, to look for the steadfast love of the Lord. We thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.