Let us pray:

Most gracious God and Father, we are so blessed to have your eternal Word to teach us of yourself and your will for our lives. It dispels our ignorance and leads us into your truth. Father, we are in this world not just for ourselves but for you and your purpose in the earth. Help us to learn more of our mission in this world as we study together today. In Jesus’ precious name we pray. (End of Prayer)

Psalm 105 is a companion Psalm to Psalm 106. Both of them together tell the story of the early years of the Hebrew people. Psalm 105 paints a positive picture of how God kept his promise to Abraham to give his people the land of Canaan and kept his promise. On the other hand, Psalm 106 tells the rest of the story – how they rebelled against Yahweh and fell into the worship of the pagan gods of the peoples around them. Yet even this psalm ends with a declaration of God’s steadfast love for his people and a plea for him to save them and restore the relationship with him.

It's very interesting that a large portion of Psalm 105, our psalm for today, is a direct quote from King David’s psalm of praise when he brought the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem in 1 Chron. 16. In fact, the first 15 verses of Psalm 105 are a duplicate of 1 Chron. 16:8-22. It was a great and joyous day, a day of celebration, when David brought the ark into Jerusalem. The text says in v. 7 there in 1 Chronicles,

7 Then on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord by Asaph and his brothers” – then the psalm begins as we read here in Psalm 105.

Why were David and the people so happy on that day? I think it was because the ark of the covenant, which was placed in the Holy of Holies within the Tabernacle, was where the very presence of the living God lived in the midst of his people. There above the mercy seat on the top of the box that held the 10 commandments the Shekinah presence of God dwelt between the cherubin, the angelic statues whose wings covered the ark.

Here in Psalm 105 there is also cause for great joy among the people of God. There is reason to sing to him. I think the main reason for their joy is what is said in verse 2,

2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!

It is because of Yahweh’s “wondrous works.” This idea is repeated in v. 5,

5 Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered…

We see this idea repeated in Psalm 145:4-5:

A)One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. Psalm 145:4-5

What is the scripture talking about here? It’s talking about the great things Yahweh God has done: his mighty acts, his wondrous works. Can you think of some mighty acts that God has done, some of his wondrous works? What comes to your mind when you consider God’s mighty acts? What hat about creation itself? God spoke the univserse into existence by the voice of his command. At first there was no universe, then he commanded it to come into being, and it did.

Just look around you at God’s creation and you will see his hand everywhere. Sometimes I see the yellow flowers in my yard and am amazed at the brightness of their rich color.

I was in a shoulder doctor’s office last week and on the wall he had these pictures of the internal make-up of the human shoulder with all of its muscles and ligaments and bones and it is an amazing construction in the human body.

What the psalmist does in the rest of this psalm is to give some solid reasons why Yahweh should be praised for his mighty acts - he focuses on historical events. The Hebrew religion and the Christian religion are partners and are both rooted in history: cities, towns, and events – happenings that can be verified by written records and archaeology. Let me just summarize for us these historical events that the psalmist writes about in verses 7-42:

v.7-11 – He begins by stating that Yahweh God promises, he makes a covenant, a solemn promise, to give Abraham’s descendants the land of Canaan.

v.12-15 – Previously, Israel was a small, wondering nation

v.16-22 – But then Yahweh rescued them from famine by sending Joseph, the young son of Jacob ahead, to Egypt where he became Pharoah’s right-hand man.

v.23-25 – In Egypt the Israelites multiplied greatly in number and the Egyptians grew afraid of them and oppressed them.

v.26-36 – Then God sent Moses and his brother Aaron whom God used to send 10 plagues on Egypt which challenged and defeated the gods of Egypt. The last plague was the striking down of all the firstborn of people and beasts in the land of Egypt, including Pharoah’s son.

v.37-38 – After that, Egypt was glad to get rid of the Israelites and send them away with silver and gold.

v.39-42 – Then the nation of Israel, estimated to be 3 million people, departed Egypt through the Red Sea, walking on dry land on the bed of the sea, and went out into the desert. There God placed a cloud over them in the hot day and a pillar of fire to give them warmth at night. He provided food for them, quail and manna from heaven, and provided water from the rock like a river in the wilderness.

v.42 – Why did God do this? To keep his promise to Abraham. And his people were so happy to be delivered from Egyptian bondage that the text says in v. 42 that they came out with singing. Can you imagine 3 million people marching out singing together?

v.44 – Then God brought them into the promised Canaan land and enabled them to conquer the pagan people there and settle down.

v.45 – Why did God do this? Just for their own comfort and worldly happiness? No, but so that they “might keep his statues and observe his laws” as it says in verse 45. So that they might be a holy people like God is holy – for his glory and for their good!

So the Psalm ends in v. 45 with, “Praise Yahweh!” This is the same way Psalm 106 ends, with this praise to Yahweh. And the close of psalm 106 is the close of the 4th book in the book of Psalms, of which there are 5 altogether, ending with Palm 150 which also ends with “Praise Yahweh!” Do you see the point? All these acts and wonders of Yahweh were written that we the people of God might stand in awe of him and declare his praise, that we might glory in his name!

Yahweh to be praised for all these wondrous works among a small, insignificant people. There was nothing special about these people. They weren’t good-looking, they weren’t strong, they weren’t powerful, they weren’t rich. What made the difference between them and all the other tribes and people groups of the earth? It was because God chose to love them. As Moses wrote:

Deut. 7:6-8 - 6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

The same is true of each of us, is it not? We did not have anything within us or about us that was deserving or merited God’s love and choice, but of his own free will and sovereign love he chose each of us to belong to himself. All we can do is receive and marvel and give thanks. Have you received today, and are you marveling, and are you giving thanks? Are you singing as the Israelites sang when they marched out of Egypt. If you belong to Jesus Christ he has set you free from the slavery and condemnation of your sins and you are a free person, free to live for God, to be an instrument in the world to bring honor to God and blessing to other people. God saves us for something bigger than ourselves.

So the mighty works that the psalmist is rehearsing here is what Yahweh did to keep his covenant with Abraham and his descendants by delivering them from Egyptian slavery and bringing them into the promised land of Canaan.

Egypt was perhaps the most powerful military power on earth, yet Yahweh was more powerful and delivered his people. The pagan peoples in the land of Canaan were also powerful but God enabled his people to rout them and defeat them and settle in the land with their own vines and fig trees.

It was the mighty work of God who took a small and insignificant people group and brought them into a land of plenty and of rest.

Verse 44 says, 44 And he gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession of the fruit of the peoples' toil,45 that they might keep his statutes and observe his laws.Praise the LORD!

Note again, the purpose of Yahweh doing all this for his people is so that they would become his holy people, obeying him, being in relationship with him, praising him.

It’s always been a question in my mind as to why the people of Israel never seemed to wholeheartedly obey the repeated commands in the OT to tell of his glory among the nations, to make him known, to spread his fame. For example, Psalm 96:1-3 says,

Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD all the earth!2 Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!

Actually, all these exhortations to make Yahweh known among all the nations, all the people groups, did come to pass. It may have seemed delayed to my limited human understanding, but it did come to pass. It began to come to pass when God sent his Son from heaven to be born of the virgin Mary.

At just the right time in human history God sent his Son into the world, born of a virgin, born under the law, to redeem those under the law.

If we look at how the Gospel of Matthew begins, the first 17 verse outline the lineage of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who bore the Messiah. We see there that Joeseph’s ancestry is traced all the way back to Abraham and then to King David and through the Babylonian captivity, and then to Jacob, the father of Joseph – three sets of 14 generations each. And it was through all the apostacy of the Hebrew people all those years when they forsook Yahweh and fell into idolatry with all its despicable practices. Yet God preserved the line of the Messiah, the promise to King David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of rulership forever. These are historical, written records. Go to your Hebrew Bible and your Greek Bible, if you have them and can read them, and go to your English Bible or your Spanish Bible and your will see it there, recorded in black and white, preserved hy the Holy Spirit down to the present hour so your and I can know the history of God’s people and the history of the coming of the Son of God into human history. The ternal Son of God, who was before time and above time and the creator of time, entered our time and space history to reveal himself to us, to live among us, to die for our sins on the cross and be raised from the dead on the third day, to appear to his disciples on at least ten different occasions over a period of 40 days, and then to ascend before their very eyes back to heaven to the Father’s right hand from where he had come 33 years beforehand.

The scripture tells us in Luke 2 that there were shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem where the baby Messiah, the anointed one of God, was born, keeping watch over their flock by night when an angel of the Lord appeared to them and said,

10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Note that the angel said this news of a Savior is for “all the people.” And so the Savior of the world was born. A new day had dawned in human history. God had stepped out of heaven and taken upon himself full humanity. The second person of the eternal triune God did not lose or compromise his full deity but he added humanity to himself. His deity was largely concealed or hidden during his earthly ministry although sometimes his glory broke out and a glimpse of it was seen, as on the mountain of transfiguration when Moses and Elijah appeared with Jeus and his body was transformed with a glorious light.

The apostle Paul talks about what happened in human history when God sent his Son into the world and the part God gave him in making this known. We read in Col. 1:25-27 - …I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Paul talks about this “mystery” that now became known. What he means is that the time was ripe for God to reveal to the human race that even the Gentiles were to be brought into the fellowship with Yahweh, and the great mystery now made clear is that Christ would dwell in the hearts and lives of his people, both Jews and Gentiles. In other words, the Gentiles were to have full rights and citizenship with the believing Jews – no difference – all saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul writes again in Rom. 15:8-12

8 For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” [2 Sam. 22:50]

10 And again it says,

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”

11 And again,

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” [Psalm 117:1]

12 And again Isaiah says,

“The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;in him will the Gentiles hope.” [Isa. 11:10]

Paul probably wrote the letter to the Romans in 56-57 AD. At that time there were both Jews and Gentiles in the church. Probably all the new churches in the Mediterranean basis had both Jews and Gentiles. For example, we read in Acts 17: 10-12:

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

So it seems the majority of the new believers were Jews, but there were also Greeks, that is, Gentiles, in the congregation.

So, I think that Paul and the other leaders probably would not have imagined how extensively God would fulfill his promise and prophecy to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles in the years and centuries to come. It is estimated today that the total population of ethnic Jews , that is, Messianic Jews, in the Christian church worldwide is way less than 1%. That is, more than 99% of the Christian church today is made up of Gentiles!

Why is this? It’s because of what Jesus said in Matt. 28:18-20

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What has been happening the last 2,000 years? The Christian church, its preachers and people, have been declaring the gospel to friends and neighbors and schoolmates and people they rub shoulders with in the marketplace and at their jobs.

It’s like parable of the mustard seed:

31 He [Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” Matt. 13:31-32

The most populous religion in the world now is Christianity with about 2.3 billion adherents.

The prophet Daniel spoke of these days:

Daniel 2:44

44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.

My friends, the “tsunami of “salvation began back on the Day of Pentecost and it has not let up since.

What has the church been doing? We have been proclaiming the “wondrous works of God,” “the mighty works of God” in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The commission, the charge, the obligation that Jesus has given to his church has not ended, it has not yet been completed. There are still millions of people, billions who have not had an opportunity to hear a real gospel presentation. How can they believe unless someone tells them. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The Holy Spirit takes the gospel presentation that we give to people, and he creates faith and repentance in them so they can believe and be saved. God has given us the privilege and responsibility to be instruments in his hands to bring the gospel to other people. We share and he saves. We have a work to do and he has a work to do. Both are necessary for people to come to Christ.

Now the apostle Paul was the greatest preacher and defender of the Christian faith in all of our history but look at his prayer request in Col. 4:3-4:

3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— 4 that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

In his sharing of the gospel with people, as when he was in the prison in Rome, Paul knew he was totally dependent on God to open the door for him to be able to do this, to have the boldness to do this. So he asked for prayer from his fellow believers. He asked them to pray for him that he could make the gospel clear and understandable to those with whom he would share Jesus.

God’s mighty works have been revealed, beginning with creation, then thrugh the history of Isreal, the birth of the nation, the deliverance of the nation from Egypt, and the coming into the promised land.

But even greater events followed, specifically the sending of God’s Son into the world to save his people from their sins. It was no small matter for the Son of God to become flesh and bear the sins of his people and suffer the wrath of God in his own body as a substitute for what we deserve. Then he rose triumphant over sin and death and hell and Satan and over all evil – to destroy these things forever – and bring his everlasting reign of righteous, healing, joy and peace.

God has done mighty things in history – the greatest event was the sending of his Son. The announcement still needs to be made. The gospel still needs to be proclaimed.

But we cannot do this in our own strength or wisdom. We must have the guidance and blessing of the Holy Spirit to be able to do this.

But God can use us, God will use us, as we ask him to - as we are alert to the opportunities he will open up for us.

As Paul asked for prayer to be able to share the gospel, so I want to pray for us today, that God will use us, that he will open up the door for us to share the gospel with those whom God brings into our path as we go about our daily lives.

Every day is an opportunity; every person we meet can be an opportunity. An opportunity to be used by God to call out of the world his own elect people.

May God help us and make God use each one of us to declare the mighty works of God in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh give thanks to Yahweh; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!

Let us pray:

Great God, our heavenly Father, you have done great things in human history and supremely you have sent your Son to rescue your people from our sins. Lord, use us now in our everyday lives, open doors by your Spirit, that we might speak the gospel of Jesus Christ to those whom you bring our way.

Give us wisdom and sensitivity in what we say to each person. Help us present the gospel clearly. Please use us to call out your beloved elect people from the world into fellowship with you and with your church. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.