1 O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;
3 And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south.
4 They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in.
5 Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.
6 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.
7 And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.
8 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
9 For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.
10 Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron;
11 Because they rebelled against the words of God, and contemned the counsel of the most High:
12 Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help.
13 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.
15 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
16 For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder.
17 Fools, because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.
18 Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death.
19 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.
20 He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.
21 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
22 And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing.
23 They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
24 These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.
25 For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
26 They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.
27 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.
28 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.
29 He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
30 Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
31 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
32 Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
33 He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground;
34 A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
35 He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.
36 And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation;
37 And sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.
38 He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.
39 Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.
40 He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way.
41 Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock.
42 The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.
43 is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.
God delivers us from dangerous physical harm and spiritual rebellion, and therefore we ought to thank Him for His grand salvation.
In the several scenarios painted in this Psalm, we get a poignant sense of our own spiritual impoverishment, our cursed state of corruption and bondage. It is the picture of the man who is wandering in a desert without food and water for days. His face is peeled raw, his lips are sore and bleeding, his clothes are shredded and stained with his own blood. He crawls over the hot, blistering desert floor; all hope is fading. The situation is utterly desperate. In such a condition, God comes to us and delivers us into His kingdom of joy and peace. Great relief floods our soul as we think of God’s goodness to us. If He has opened our eyes to His truth and His salvation, we will respond in rousing cries of gratitude and praise.
But what about those who failed to apprehend His mercy? Perhaps you have seen men sink into the depths of wicked rebellion, family fragmentation, adultery, sexual nihilism, murder, or suicide. You have seen their bodies and souls increasingly corrupted to higher orders of pain, misery, and decay. In view of this, give thanks to God who has delivered you from this sentence of death, for your life is now filled with love, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
A child feels joy and security in the arms of his father and mother. How much more should we feel that joy and gratitude, having been recipients of the loving kindness of the Lord? May God give you the eyes to see it, and the heart to receive it!
Verses 1-3.
The theme of the Psalm is plain from the beginning. The Psalmist insists that thanks be offered for the goodness of God and His merciful, covenant faithfulness. He becomes increasingly persistent with this exhortation throughout the Psalm, hoping that many would join Him in offering these sacrifices of praise to God.
Primarily, we are called to thank God for His redemption. The backgrounds of those whom God redeems are varied. He redeems those who have had zero contact with the Gospel since Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth were saved in the ark - such as cannibals from the jungles of New Guinea. But He also redeems Jews who rejected Christ the Messiah 2000 years ago. He redeems Muslims who rejected Christ 1400 years ago. He also redeems those who have faded away from the Christian faith in the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Western Roman Church several hundred years ago. Occasionally, He even redeems young people who were raised in Christian homes but rebelled from the faith and spent fifteen years in the swine pen of fornication or homosexuality. There is no telling whom our God may redeem. Their rebellion and apostasy may be old and crusty or new and virulent. Either way, God can break through it all and redeem these people from the hand of the enemy.
This gathering works its way out eschatologically from the beginning of the church until now. During the first four centuries, He gathered some from Judea, Syria, North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, France, and Great Britain. By the 1100s, He had redeemed representatives from as far north as Iceland, west to Portugal, and east to Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. The Gospel finally reached the New World by the 1600s. In the last three centuries, the Gospel has made it around the globe into every corner and almost every small tribe in South America, Burma, Siberia, the South Seas, New Guinea, and Indonesia. You would be hard pressed to find a 100 square mile land mass anywhere in the world that has not been visited by a missionary of the Gospel of Christ’s redemption. The gathering is progressing nicely.
Verses 4-9.
Now the Psalm presents a number of motifs depicting the work of God’s salvation of His people, all of which we should be able to relate to on some level. When God’s people wandered in the wilderness for forty years, it was a less-than-optimal condition for these millions of people. They had no homeland for their own. They had no fields that would produce food. Their only hope for survival was God above. As they cried to God for food, He provided them with quail and manna sufficient to keep them alive for forty years. Sadly, they soon forgot the source of the manna. If food rained out of the sky upon us, we would be impressed for the first couple of weeks. But it wouldn’t be long before we would assign the cause of it to some natural process. After all, isn’t that what the anti-supernaturalists do in the present day? They purposefully ignore the invisible, supernatural hand of God, and refuse to give Him thanks. This was the legacy of the children of Israel.
The manna is only a symbol of something even more important. Manna filled the stomach. But our needs are deeper than that. Those cities, built by vagabonds like Cain, are filled with lonely people. Anonymous relationships predominate. These cities rot out from the inside with poverty, drug-abuse, broken relationships, crime, and porn shops; and the larger the city, usually the worse the conditions. Gradually, they lose their roots and the city is just another flop-house for vagabonds who have no place to call “home.” The problem, of course, is that we were created for relationship with God, and all other relationships will languish when this relationship fails. If we cannot find the city where God dwells, we will forever wander in the desert. However, by God’s grace we will find this city, even in our journey through the cities and countries built by men. When we enter the city of “brotherly love,” we know we have found “the city of the living God” (Heb. 12:22), because whoever abides in love abides in God (1 John 4:16). This is the city of God’s habitation, and it is the city where all true believers want to live. If you have found this fellowship of believers, you may notice that the city is only in the process of being built! We are still very much in tabernacles, and according to Hebrews 13:14, we have no continuing city here. But be assured, we are on our way to the celestial city, where we will take permanent residence with God forever. God is leading us by the right way to the city of habitation.
Each of the motifs in the Psalm finishes with a heartfelt cry, “Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!” That God should rescue the lonely, wretched soul wasting away in the middle of a desert, bring him to an eternal home in a beautiful city, and provide for his physical, spiritual, and relational needs forever, is a blessing beyond our wildest expectations or imaginations. Here is cause to be exceedingly thankful.
Verses 10-16.
The second salvation motif is a familiar one. It is the picture of slavery and bondage to sin. Whether the bondage appears in the form of the hell-forged chains of tyranny or the velvet-laced chains of existentialist self-consumption, it doesn’t matter. Most men are unaware of the desperation of their condition because they do sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Over time, layers of chains form, and they pull tighter and tighter on the man in his rebellion. The basic problem is that he has rebelled against the words of God. He argues against the wisdom of the Most High as if his wisdom could countermand the omniscient God who wove together the fabric of the entire universe.
What can possibly penetrate through the layers of self-deception and the self-contentedness that settle around these men who refuse to reckon with true reality? As long as the chains bind soft about their arms and legs, they grow comfortable in such a state. This is where the Spirit of God begins to work. He shows them the futility and the misery of their condition. He makes them uncomfortable in their sin and brings them to the end of themselves (verse 12). This is the point at which their mouths begin to form the words, and they eke out a cry to God for His help. Immediately, He rushes to their aid, delivers them from the horrible dungeons, and breaks their iron chains in pieces. Men who, at one point, were under the absolute control of their flesh, hopelessly addicted to alcohol, pornography, or self-worship are released from the power of these things. They feel the chains loosen. Their relationships repair. Their lives fill up with joy and peace as they have never experienced before. It is truly amazing to watch this happen, especially if it has happened to you. The sight of it is more spectacular than some fellow breaking a six-inch diameter iron pole in half with his bare hands. If men are impressed when they watch a powerful man break out of a prison cell sixty stories under the ground, they need to give God the glory for His powerful acts of deliverance. Surely, God’s deliverance of His people out of the bondage of the great empire Egypt was impressive. But the release from the powerful grip of sin and the devil is a million times more impressive. Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!
Verses 17-22.
This third motif is somewhat like the last one except that it focuses on the curse of sin in the lives of men. Human beings may attempt to deny the reality of sin (or moral evil), but they cannot deny the existence of the effects of sin (or metaphysical evil) in the world. They can argue all day long that fornication and other sexual perversions do not constitute moral evil, but they cannot deny the reality of diseases like STD’s, HIV, and AIDS. They want to refer to the sin of drunkenness as “alcoholism,” but they cannot possibly ignore the consequences of the life choices these people make, whether it be the cirrhosis of the liver or alcoholic poisoning. Fools make foolish choices, and they ruin their own lives by these choices. Occasionally, however, they cry to God in their troubles, and He saves them out of their predicament. This may not be true of everybody. But there have been millions who have come to the very precipice of ruin in their self-destructive life patterns, and they have received mercy.
Some may not resonate with the Psalmist’s passionate call to praise the Lord for His goodness. But that is because they have not been “delivered from their destructions.” But those who know what it is to be freed from the deceitfulness of sin and the bondage of evil will gladly join in with joyful praise to God for His “wonderful works to the children of men!”
Verses 23-32.
Nobody feels the power of nature as much as those sailors who sail the high seas. Even those who ride in the gigantic aircraft carriers can feel the power of the ocean waves shoving the ship hither and thither. This is something that those on dry land will not experience. In fact, most people who have never experienced hurricanes and volcanoes will come to feel very safe and secure where they live. They may even come to believe that they control their own destiny. They are at the mercy of nothing and nobody. But this is not the case with the sailors! Not a day goes by that they do not feel the power of a million tons of force rolling against the sides of the ships. They have firsthand experience with the power of God every day. But when the waves and the winds pick up force during the storms and hurricanes, the sailors can see even more of the great potential of God’s mighty works. As forty and fifty foot waves crash onto the deck of the ship, things can get pretty “crazy.” They soon realize that they are at the complete mercy of this terrible storm. Since it is God who raises the stormy winds, these men also learn that they are at the mercy of the Almighty Lord of nature.
God has broken many a sin-hardened, calloused man on the high seas during some of these wild storms. This is where John Newton, the “slave trader,” was convicted of his sinful rebellion and cried out to God for His salvation. Men must learn to fear God, before they come to receive His mercy. So many times, God has used these natural disasters, the ravages of war, and disease to wake men up to the realities and dangers of His judgment. And whatever men will face in space and time is nothing in comparison to that which awaits them in eternity.
As these puffed-up, self-possessed, sin-hardened men fall on their knees and cry out for mercy, God hears their cry and saves them from their harrowing circumstances. It is humility for which He waits. As the storm abates and the ship slides into the safe haven, you can imagine the huge feelings of relief that fill the souls of these sailors. This is the emotional conditioning by which men and women will be drawn to praise God for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men! When an entire congregation, led by elders in a church, have all just disembarked from a vessel in the wild seas of sin, they will together emote in corporate praise (verse 32).
Verses 33-43.
In 2009, an organization called “Voting Search.org” identified Detroit as the most liberal city in America, which means that the city was very favorable to sins like homosexuality, abortion, and the forced redistribution of the wealth. What happens to cities like this? Over the last ten years, the city of Detroit has lost 25% of its population and now runs a $327 million annual deficit. Along some blocks in the city, only one or two occupied houses remain, surrounded by trash-strewn lots and vacant, burned-out homes. Scavenging hooligans have stripped anything of value from empty buildings. Arguably, it is now the most depressed city in the country. As a rule, the cities and the countryside will always reflect the character of the people that live there. All of this assumes that there is a God in the heavens who holds these nations to His holy law. When cities like Sodom, Gomorrah, or Pompeii attempt to violate God’s law, they can be sure that He is powerful enough to enforce His law. Whether the cities are consumed within a few hours or they rot slowly over decades doesn’t really matter. The economic vitality of the marketplace, the farming community, the land, and the motivation and creativity of the workforce will all be affected by the wickedness of the inhabitants.
Yet, on the other hand, God is also merciful to the poor, the humble, and the hungry, especially to those who look to Him for their every need (verses 35-38). When the first Pilgrims and Puritans settled in the American colonies, as many as half of them starved to death within the first year or two. But they cried out to the Lord for His mercy and covenanted to walk in His ways. Within a few centuries, this land became the most productive country in the world to the point of producing a full one half of the gross world product. He multiplied the nation greatly from a mere 40,000 people in 1640 to 300,000,000 in 2012. But it wasn’t long before the nation became intoxicated with its own success. Excessive pride purged the universities and schools of God’s worship. The nation broke God’s law at every opportunity. Almost all of the mainline church denominations began ordaining homosexuals to serve as ministers in “God’s house.” Between 1960 and 2012, the American people killed at least 80,000,000 of their own children and the nation’s birthrate imploded. The economic systems cracked and the social systems buckled. God poured contempt on their leaders and caused them to wander in the wilderness where there was no way. But still, there were a few families who survived this terrible socio-economic disaster. They rejected the lifestyle of the birth-imploding materialists. They built family economies, and discipled their children in biblical faith and character. They averaged a birth rate of 5.0, while the rest of the country hovered around 1.6. While these big households reintegrated their families in education and business, they may not have enjoyed the standard of living of the professional two-income households (with their 1.6 children per household, and 6,000 square foot homes). But they were content, and they rejoiced in the blessings that God gave to them. They were just happy to be together, and they cultivated love, joy, and peace in their Christian homes. As the modern socialist systems practiced euthanasia on their elderly and killed their young in the womb by the millions, the Christians rejoiced greatly with the birth of each child and they were thrilled to care for their aging grandparents in their own homes. In time, the world will see God’s preserving grace upon His people. The proud social planners who brought about the ideological plagues of materialist humanism and existentialism upon all of our institutions, (science, medicine, economics, banking, education, sexuality, marriage, farming, and politics), will see the utter failure of their efforts and “all iniquity shall stop her mouth.” But those that stayed faithful to God’s ways will understand the lovingkindness of the Lord in preserving His people through it all (vs. 43)!
Over and over again, the Psalmist coaxes us to give God the praise that is due Him. This is the duty of every spiritual leader in home and church. If we can get a little heartfelt praise out of our families and church congregations, we have accomplished the most basic purpose for life. It is not always easily done. First, men must see God’s wonderful and powerful works. If you can see these things with your eyes or hear of them with your ears and believe them with your heart, then you can praise Him!
Here are several practical ways in which you can warm your heart toward grateful praise:
Consider the condition of others who are still bound in their sins, and suffering the dreadful consequences of their life choices. What makes you any better than they, but the grace of God working in your life?
Think about how God has already blessed you with so many of His good gifts. Maybe you’re not in heaven yet, but hasn’t He given you enough thus far in your life that you could praise and thank Him all the rest of your days?
Consider the futility of all other “means of salvation.” Politics is incapable of purifying the world of evil. Other man-based religions have not purged the world of war, divorce, disease, child abuse, thievery, and addictions. Man has proven himself incapable of saving himself. Only God can save us from our sins, and He did it through the Lord Jesus Christ.
We need to get the picture of what God did for us before we can respond in joyful praise. This Psalm presents various pictures of God’s redemption, but we should also tell our own stories of God’s deliverance, (both physical and spiritual) in the context of worship.
1. Review the four motifs that describe God’s salvation, presented in verses 4 through 32.
2. What is the city to which God is leading us? Is it here on earth or in heaven?
3. How might somebody be afflicted because of their iniquity? Give several examples of this.
4. Which famous Christian experienced the frightening motif of the storm at sea found in verses 26 through 32?
5. Provide several examples of cities in the history of the world that were destroyed by economic ruin or natural disaster, because they were disobedient to God.
6. Give several examples of Thanksgiving Psalms.
1. Which of these four motifs in this Psalm do you relate to the most, and why?
2. How did God redeem our family, both as individuals and family? What was the spiritual heritage of our family? What are the sins that we have seen God overcome in our lives or in the lives of our grandparents and great grandparents?