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A brief bit of encouragement for your day from God’s Word
Well, good morning. I hope you've had a wonderful weekend and getting your new week off to a great start. And I hope one of the ways you started the week and started your day is spending a few minutes in God's Word.
And if you've done that already today, then maybe you read Psalm 107, which is in the Bible reading plan, the reading for this morning, one of the two readings for this morning. But what a wonderful psalm this is.
It's a psalm that praises God for his enduring, steadfast love. And that phrase, steadfast love, is translated that way in some of the translations. But the first verse of Psalm 107, verse 1, says, O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.
So the King James Version, the New King James, used the word mercy to translate a Hebrew word. The Hebrew word is hesed. And.
It's a little bit.
Misleading or confusing to translate it with mercy. Because when we think of mercy in the English language, we think of not getting some kind of punishment that you deserve. And so that's that's mercy.
But the word doesn't mean that. The word has more to do with.
Like.
Loyalty to the covenant that is based upon the steadfast love of the Lord. So it's saying that the Lord is loyal to the covenant that he has made with his people. And he is loyal to that covenant because of his steadfast, enduring love.
So I like to translate it as the ESV does, pretty consistently, with the words enduring love or steadfast love. The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. And this psalm opens up telling us that the way we need to respond to that steadfast love of the Lord, his enduring loyalty to his covenant, is with deep gratitude.
Give thanks to the Lord. And the reason that we should be giving thanks is because that steadfast love of the Lord is an expression of both his goodness.
And.
Its endurance. Steadfast in itself means enduring. But this passage tells us that his mercy or his steadfast love endures forever. There's no end to it. So today you can count on the Lord's steadfast love.
Next year, you can count on the Lord's steadfast love. Through the hard times, the Lord's steadfast love. Through the great times, the Lord's steadfast love. Through times when you fail him, you can count on the Lord's steadfast love and so forth.
Now the bulk of this psalm gives us several expressions of that steadfast love, that covenant loyalty of the Lord.
Most of those expressions have to do with the way he delivers his people. And so in verses 4 through 42, it shows the various ways he expresses that steadfast love. And verses 4 through 32 are different ways the Lord delivers his people.
So notice first of all, he delivers them in verses 4 through 9 from desolation. He says in verse 4, they wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way, hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Here are people, God's people, who didn't have a place and they didn't have provision.
But God in his steadfast love hears their cry, he answers their plea, and he provides, he satisfies their hunger. As verse 9 says, he satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness.
And how are those delivered from desolation to respond to him? With thanksgiving. Verse 8, and this refrain occurs over and over again in the psalm. Oh that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness.
And that's our word again. Really, it's his steadfast love and for his wonderful works to the children of men. He delivers his people from desolation. He also delivers his people from bondage. And the bondage in verses 10 through 16 is not like the bondage of an enemy that comes and takes captive, but it's more the affliction or the bondage that's self-inflicted.
Listen to the verses. It says in verse 10, those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and irons, there's the bondage,.
Because.
They rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High. The affliction here, the bondage, is a self-inflicted thing. And the idea here is that you know when when we rebel against the Lord and we determine we're going to go our own way even though we know God says don't do that or God says you must do this and we say I'm going to do what I want to do because I think I know better and I think I know what I need to do to give me happiness.
And so we rebel against the Lord. And when we do that the Lord will oftentimes allow us to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get down to the depths. And I just heard recently the story of a man who that very thing happened to him.
His wife was telling me about this story that what a tragic thing this was. He knew better but he chose to go his own way. Anyway, and the Lord brought him to the bottom of the barrel and it was but it was there that he cried out to the Lord.
And there's the remedy. There's the remedy crying out to the Lord and his people when they cry out to the Lord in as in as in verses 13 and 14, they cried in his to the Lord in their trouble. He saved them out of their distresses.
He delivered from bondage and how should they respond? How should we respond when the Lord graciously delivers us from our self-inflicted bondage with thanksgiving again? Verses 21 and 2 or verse 15.
Oh that men would give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love. The Lord delivers from desolation, from bondage and then in verses 17 to 22 he delivers from folly, from foolishness. And it's foolishness that expresses itself sinfully, but there's a difference between the self-inflicted bondage of the previous section here the the sufferer suffers because of foolish sinfulness as it says in verses 17 and 18.
Fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities were afflicted. Their soul abhorred all manner of food. They drew near to the gates of death and the the deal here is that the fool gets himself into this mess of affliction because he has really kind of scorned instruction.
It's like he had the opportunity to learn he had the opportunity to hear but he just kind of I don't need it. I don't need to hear this and he goes his own way. It's not so much he's rebellious like he knows what he's to do or he knows what he's not to do and he says I don't care i'm gonna do it anyway.
Here's a guy who doesn't even want to listen to what he's supposed to do and that gets him into a heap of trouble. But in verses 19 and 20 there is a gracious remedy. They cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he saved them out of their distresses.
He sent his word and that's interesting. The word that was.
Ignored.
He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. And how should they respond? Same way. Oh that men would give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love. The Lord delivers from desolation, from bondage, from folly, and he also delivers from catastrophe.
In verses 23 through 32. It's a very it's a very singular narrow example of a case where the Lord delivers from catastrophe. You could expand it to all kinds of catastrophes, but he's talking about sailors out on a ship on a storm-tossed sea.
You could you could just as easily describe the person who's trapped in in the middle of a hurricane or caught in the surprise tornado or any kind of natural disaster, catastrophe like that, a flooding or whatever.
And here the person is caught in this catastrophe.
In that catastrophe they they cry out to the Lord. And the Lord graciously responds in verses 28 through 30. They cry out to the Lord in their trouble and he brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm so that its waves are still.
Then they are glad because they are quiet. You ever been there in the middle of some kind of catastrophe like this? And then you cried out to the Lord and some way somehow he brought the calm.
Well,.
How are you to respond to that? You guessed it. You guessed it. Oh that men would give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love. So one of the ways the Lord demonstrates his enduring steadfast love is through deliverance.
Another way he expresses that steadfast love is through his provision, what he provides. Verses 33 through 38 talk about that provision. Sometimes the Lord will withhold what is needed as a way of punishing a wayward people.
But the focus of this section is on his provision in verses 35 through 38. He turns a wilderness into pools of water dry land into water springs. Boy, we need that don't we right now in our region? We need the water springs.
We need the pools of water. We need some rain. And we can pray to the Lord to deliver us or to provide for us that rain that we need. And the Lord does in his steadfast love. He provides what is needed.
How are we to respond? How are we to respond? Again with thanksgiving. So the Lord shows his steadfast love through deliverance through provision and then in verses 39 to 42, he shows his steadfast love through great reversals.
Through great reversals. And look at those the description of those reversals in verses 39 and 40. When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow the Lord pours contempt on princes and causes them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way.
There is a reversal where the oppressor, the prince that is oppressing, is overcome and the oppressed are are delivered. In verses 41 and 2, he sets the poor on high far from affliction and makes their families like a flock.
He overcomes impoverishment. A great reversal. And when that's the case, how can you help but rejoice? In verse 42, the righteous see it and they rejoice. Rejoice at the steadfast love of the Lord. Now this psalm ends with an encouragement to soak it all in.
To contemplate it. Listen to verse 43. Whoever is wise will observe these things and they will understand the steadfast love of the Lord. If you're wise, if I'm wise, we're going to take note of those expressions of his steadfast love.
How has he delivered me? How has he provided for me? How has he how has he affected a great reversal in my life? Those are expressions of his steadfast love. Take note of those things and attend to them.
Attend to them. The word observe in verse 43 expresses the idea of attending to, contemplating upon, keeping watch upon those things, observing and preserving these things, not letting them go. So let me encourage you.
Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open. Look for expressions of the steadfast love of the Lord. And every time you see it,.
Oh.
That you would give thanks. We thank you our Father for the way you demonstrate your steadfast love to your people.
May we be.
Attentive to these things. May our eyes be open to them and may we respond with great thankfulness and gratitude and praise. And this we ask in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Monday.
Hope your week gets off to a great start. God bless.
