The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): In our culture where we can get all we need to eat at the corner grocery, we may not appreciate the harvest. But in an agricultural society, in a land with little rain, it was a different story. Today on the Bible Study Hour, we're studying Psalm 65 as David lists the many ways in which the God of the harvest abundantly blesses his people.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. David sees his God as not only the creator of all things but as the one who controls the things he's created. And because he creates and controls, he also provides. Turn to Psalm 65 and discover why the whole earth shouts for joy at God's provision.

Dr. James Boice: If you've ever spent any time studying the Psalms, I'm sure you've had the experience that I have that as you get into one which perhaps you didn't really understand very well before, or maybe hadn't read very often, as you begin to analyze it and think about it, you end up saying, "This is really an extraordinary composition." That's what I feel about Psalm 65. It's an extraordinary, exquisite poem about nature. It's one that I suppose has not normally attracted a great deal of attention from people in the Western world because, being about nature, most of us don't think about that. And yet, it's really beautifully written.

And it's not only about nature, it's also about nature's God, how he is gracious to men and women, how he is mighty in his great acts on our behalf, and how his grace and his power is displayed in his blessing on nature, which yields its great bounty for us. It's exactly what you would expect of a poem written by David, as this poem is identified as being.

Now, we're going to have to work at this a little bit because it's not easy for most of us, who know very little about fields and crops and nature, to appreciate a nature poem. C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful little study, Reflections on the Psalms, has a section in which he talks about nature. He points out that in the ancient world, there were very few large cities, and the vast majority of the people lived in the country. Simply because they lived in the country, they didn't think about the country the way we do.

We think about the country, we think of that as a pleasant, nice place to get away to, kind of to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Farmers don't think of the country that way, and most of these people were farmers. You don't find in ancient literature what we would call pastoral poetry, that is, verses or hymns, or for that matter, songs that describe the landscape of nature as just the way things were. They accepted it that way. And yet, because they lived close to nature, they had an appreciation for it that is greater than anything we have.

Here's the way C.S. Lewis talks about it. He says the Psalmists, who were writing neither lyrics nor romances, naturally give us little landscape, but they do give us, far more sensuously and delightedly than anything I have ever seen elsewhere, is the very feel of the weather, weather seen with a real countryman's eyes, enjoyed, this is pure C.S. Lewis, almost as a vegetable might be supposed to enjoy it.

Well, having written that paragraph, he then illustrates what he's talking about by some quotations from Psalm 65. Well, there's another way we can think about this. This might come a little closer. It's a harvest hymn. That is, it was written to be sung when the crops were being gathered, or perhaps after they were gathered in, as a way of thanking God for the bounty that he gave in the harvest.

Now, we have our harvest hymns, too. We sing them at Thanksgiving time. We sing, "Come, ye thankful people, come," that's one we perhaps know best. Another, "We plow the fields and scatter," sometimes we sing that. We had more of them when people in the Western world lived closer to the soil, but none of our harvest hymns really has the flavor that this one does. This one, as I said, is really exquisite.

Let me just give you some critical comments. Derek Kidner, who has done one of the little volumes for InterVarsity on the Psalms, says rightly, I think, the climax of this Psalm, a stanza as fresh and irrepressible as the fertility it describes, puts every harvest hymn to shame as plodding and contrived. Here, we almost feel the splash of the showers and sense the springing growth about us. Yet, the whole song has this directness, whether it's speaking of God in his temple courts in verses one through four, or in his vast dominion, verses five through eight, or among the hills and valleys, which his very passing awakens into life, verses nine through 13.

Here's one other comment. H.C. Leupold, a great Lutheran commentator, "We venture the claim that this is the most eloquent and beautiful description of the blessings that God bestows on field and meadow to be found anywhere in such a brief compass." Well, it's worth asking how this poem would have been used in Israel and when. I've already identified it as a harvest hymn, and that means it was probably used at the time of the harvest, probably at Israel's harvest celebration, which was called the Feast of Tabernacles.

Feast of Tabernacles was the longest and the most joyful of the Jewish celebrations. It began on the 15th day of the seventh month, which they observed as a Sabbath in addition to whatever other Sabbaths there may have been, and then it continued until the 22nd day of the same month, which was also observed as a Sabbath. So, it was observed for eight days in all. This was after the crops were brought in, and the people were celebrating the harvest. One of the things they did as part of the harvest festival was to bring what they called the firstfruits. They brought the first of the fruits to come in from the fields and they laid it up before God as a token recognition that all of this bounty had come from him.

There's one other little feature of this Psalm that may help us to place it at this time of the year, and that is that this Psalm is one of only three in the Psalter that uses the word "atone" or "atonement." You find it in verse three. Now, that's not necessarily significant, but it may be because of this fact: this harvest festival that came in the seventh month was immediately preceded by the Day of Atonement. And so, the reference to the atonement here might indicate that this is something that would be fresh in the minds of the people as they gathered in the crops and sang this hymn.

Well, there's little question about how it should be outlined. Sometimes it's difficult to outline the Psalms, but it's not at all difficult to do this. It's exactly the way the New International Version has it: verses one to four, then five through eight, and then nine to 13. I mentioned Derek Kidner. He gives us little titles to the three sections, which are helpful. It goes like this: number one, the God of Grace; number two, the God of Might; number three, the God of Plenty. Well, if you look at it, you'll see that the third of these stanzas is the longest, and that is no mistake because it's building toward that climax. That final stanza that talks about the bounty of God in nature is the thing for which the first two stanzas prepare. So, let's look at them and do it a stanza at a time.

Any Psalm which is focused on a national holiday, a Jewish festival like this one, might very easily have become nationalistic. That is, it might just think about the blessings of God and the Jewish people, the Jewish people only. But however special the relationship between God and his own chosen people might be, the God of Israel is, nevertheless, the God of the whole earth. And that's reflected here, perhaps significantly, in a harvest hymn or harvest song. After all, there's such a thing as common grace, and the God who blesses the fields of the Jewish people is also the God who sends prosperity into the fields even of nations that don't know him.

So, you have a kind of universalism here. Verse one declares that praise awaits God in Zion, that is in Jerusalem where this festival is taking place, but the very next verse, verse two, recognizes that God is a prayer-hearing God to all men who will come. Now, we ought to say that's a right and proper kind of universalism. That word universalism sort of scares people because it sounds like heresy, and as it's commonly understood, it is heresy. Universalism in the heretical sense is the view that all nations have their religions, but it really doesn't matter because every religion really is just a different path to the same God. Sometimes it's described as different roads leading up the mountain. No matter what road you take, eventually, you get to the top. That's a false kind of universalism.

But there is a proper kind of universalism, and it's this: all are able to come, willing to come, invited to come to the true God. Now, that's what you have here. This is exactly what Jesus meant when he was talking with the Samaritan woman. You recall that she had a different view of religion because of the religion of the Samaritans, and she wanted to get him into a discussion about where you should worship. She said, "You know, you Jews have your way of doing things, you say you ought to worship in Jerusalem, and we Samaritans have our way of doing things. We're told that you ought to worship here in Samaria on Mount Gerizim. Now, you know, what do you think? What is it? You're a Jew, probably you think you ought to worship in Jerusalem."

Jesus first of all established the priority of God's revelation to the Jews. He says salvation is from the Jews. God revealed himself to the Jews, that's the true God. So, he discounted the value of all the pagan religions, including that of Samaria, which was sort of quasi-Old Testament. But then he went on to say that he was bringing about a change because of his death that would open the way of salvation to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, because of what he did. And he said in the future, people are going to worship neither in Jerusalem nor on Gerizim, but they're going to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Now, that's what you have here in the Psalm.

I should point out that it's not only in verse two, which I mentioned. You also find it in the words "the hope of all the ends of the earth," verse five, and "those living far away fear your wonders," verse eight. And it's worth noting, also, that this same emphasis is found in the next three Psalms. You find it in Psalm 66 and 67, and also 68. So, you have a little block of four Psalms here that are tied together by this universal note.

Now the question is, since this has a universal tinge to it, how can sinful men and women, Jews as well as Gentiles, approach a holy God? How can sinners, because that's what we are, hope to have their prayers answered by a God who is holy? The answer, of course, is the atonement, and that is what is talked about here. God providing a sacrifice by which an innocent victim bears the punishment of those who are actually guilty. Now, there are plenty of passages in the Bible that talk about the problem. Isaiah 59:1 and 2 explains the problem in rather classic language. It says, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, your sins have hidden his face from you so he will not hear." Sin causes God to hide his face from us.

But the sacrifice, the sacrifice of atonement, covers or atones for the sin so God can deal graciously with the sinner. In the Hebrew language, that word 'atonement' is actually the word 'kopher', which means a covering. And specifically, it refers to the way that the blood of the sacrifice was used to cover the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant within the most holy place of the Jewish tabernacle.

You know, I'm sure, the symbolism of that. The ark was a box, and it contained the law of Moses. And on this lid of the ark, there were cherubim whose wings stretched outward and up and formed a little space above the ark. And in a symbolic way, God was understood to dwell there between the wings of the cherubim. Now, that picture is a picture of judgment, the holy God looking down upon the law in the ark, which you and I have broken. The God of the universe must do right, the holy God must judge sin.

But then on the Day of Atonement, you see, that's the word, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest came with the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkled it upon the lid of the ark, thereby putting the evidence of the death of the innocent victim between the holy God and the broken law. And so the blood covered over the transgression, as it were.

Now, that's a picture of what Jesus Christ has come to do. The Psalmist, of course, is thinking of the day of atonement, and he says God, the gracious God, has provided an atonement for our sin. We look back and we say, yes, and he's done it in Jesus Christ. That was the fulfillment of the Old Testament picture. And because of that, now the way is opened into God's presence. You recall that that most holy place of the tabernacle was shut off from view. Nobody could ever go in there except the high priest, and that only once a year on the Day of Atonement. But when Jesus Christ died on the cross, God tore that veil in two from top to bottom, and the way was opened because the atonement had been made. Sin had been covered over. Only in the case of Jesus Christ, it had not only been covered over, but it was borne away forever.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the way atonement is spoken of here is that it's described as something that God has done. Do you notice that? It's not the people who make atonement, it's not even the priest who makes atonement, though you might perhaps understand the priest as being instrumental. Rather, it is God. Verse three: "You atoned for our transgressions." Now, why is that? Well, it's because God is exceedingly gracious. And that's what the Psalm is talking about. Indeed, even the next verse speaks about it because it speaks of the one who has been brought near to God by virtue of the atonement, now being blessed with every good thing. "We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple." That verse sets up the rest of the Psalm because the Psalm is going to talk about how God blesses us with every good thing.

One of the commentators is named Stewart Perowne, and he summarizes it this way. It's worth reading. "In Zion, God is known, there he is praised and worshipped. He is the hearer of prayer, that's his very character, and therefore all flesh comes to him. All who feel their weakness, all who need help and grace seek it at his hand. It is true that they who thus come, come with the burden of sin upon them, their iniquities rise up in all their strength and might and would thrust them away from the presence of the holy one, but he himself in the plenitude of his mercy covers those iniquities. He will not look upon them and so suffers sinners to approach him. And how blessed are they who thus reconciled and pardoned are suffered to draw nigh. Of that blessedness may we ourselves be partakers, may we be filled and satisfied with it all." That leads me to ask, before we go on, do you know that blessedness that comes from God himself? It's what Marion Clark was talking about earlier tonight when he was giving his testimony, the blessedness that comes from knowing that Jesus Christ has borne your sin and that God himself has taken charge of your life and will protect you and keep you and lead you and eventually bring you safe to heaven. You're never going to know the other blessings until you first of all know that he has made atonement for your sin.

That brings us to stanza two. It's one thing to know that God is gracious, it's quite another thing to know that he's also able to help out. Let me give an illustration. Just in January, there was an earthquake, as you know, out in Southern California, and there was a great deal of damage done. They're still trying to repair it. Roadways were destroyed, buildings collapsed, fires broke out, there was flooding. I read one account of a man who lived in an apartment building where literally scores of people were trapped. He did what he could. He worked strenuously for hours to free them, and in time, he freed about a dozen people, except there was one man he couldn't save. And in the stress of that day, this strong, helpful man wept uncontrollably. You see, he wanted to save the people, but he couldn't save them all.

Fortunately, it's not like that with God. God is gracious, but he's also mighty. And what that means is that his strength is more than equal to any gracious design he may have. That's what this second stanza is pointing out. It mentions three displays of God's power. Now, remember it's poetic, and it's also talking about nature, so these displays of God's power are expressed in this way: his power is seen first in the raising of the mountains, and secondly in the calming of the seas, and then thirdly, drawing on that, in the quieting of the nations.

Now, the high mountains and the turbulent seas are some of the most awesome displays of nature that you and I can see. I suppose until the space age, where we have caught a glimpse of the heavens and have been exposed to spectacular pictures that people never had before, the mountains soaring in their lofty grandeur and the seas and all their turbulence and even danger were the most awesome things that men and women could see. The seas quiet down after they have been raised up, you ask the question, "Who controls the seas?" The mountains rise in their glory, you say, "What has raised the glory of the mountains?" The Bible answers God because the Bible sees God as the cause of all effects.

In our scientific age, we've sort of lost that connection. We think in terms of immediate causes, and because we think in terms of immediate causes, we think we understand everything ultimately. But of course, there's the cause before the immediate cause, and the cause is God. And that's what the Bible has. Leopold says, "They did not set themselves into place or become firm and immovable, but God established the mountains, giving proof thereby that he's girded with power." The same way he talked about the seas. They didn't compose themselves. He says God calmed them.

Now, the same thing is true of planting and harvest because that's where the Psalm is moving. It's going to talk in the last stanza about God's blessing in nature. And we say that too in some of our hymns. I mentioned one of those harvest hymns earlier. Here's the way it goes. It was written by a man named Matthias Claudius and then translated by Jane Campbell home in the last century. But here's a verse that says this, "We plow the fields and scatter the good seed in the land, but it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand. He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine and the soft refreshing rain." Now, that's the way the Bible looks at it.

In the Bible, the seas are often used as an image for the nations, the nations rising and falling the way the sea rises and falls. And I suppose it's because of that association that in this second stanza, David also talks about the nations. God raises the mountains, and then he calms the seas, and he says, yes, he also calms the nations. It's a way of saying that God is the only one who can ever really give peace, not peace treaties, not the cunning of this world's statesmen, only God. That's why it is right to pray for peace. Bible says explicitly, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." You see, it's right to pray for peace because God is the only one who can give it. And we need to live righteously so we will be a people that God will grant peace to.

Well, verse eight says that the report of God's work spreads throughout the earth to all people and that this calls for songs of joy. Well, songs of joy are sung sometimes, but more often than not, our tongues are silent. Well, we come then to the last stanza for which the two previous stanzas have prepared us, and it's about the people's harvest. And it tells us that God who has been gracious in making atonement for our sins and who is mighty and displays his strength in nature, has blessed nature by giving it abundance from which we live.

The first thing it talks about is God's caring for the land by watering it. Now, it's a little bit difficult for us to appreciate that because we live in well-watered lands. Sometimes we have too much water, and we have flooding and we kind of wish we had a little bit less. They very seldom had that problem in Bible lands. It's a very arid place, and so when God blessed the land with water, it was literally the blessing of life rather than death because if the rains didn't come, the crops didn't grow. If the crops didn't grow, the people didn't have anything to eat and they died. Now, it's hard for most of us to appreciate that.

There's some points at which a writer of the Psalms should really be a farmer, or who has at least spent some time in the country, and I have a great disadvantage at that point because I haven't done it. And so I come to this last stanza and I say, how do you really enter into this and have that feeling for nature that a true country person would have, as C.S. Lewis talked about it? How do you appreciate nature like a vegetable? Well, you have to do the best you can. And as I read this stanza about the water, I do remember being high in the Alps at one time in the spring shortly after the passes had been opened after the winter snows, and sitting in a fresh Alpine meadow where millions of wild mountain flowers were beginning to open their multicolored petals to the sun.

A person might think that high in the Alps it would be dry, because we think of water and we think of the ocean and lakes and mighty rivers, that sort of thing. You don't think way up in the mountains it would be very wet, but as a matter of fact, it is, particularly in the spring. And that's what impressed me, all these little tiny twisting mountain rivulets that literally laced the meadows. It was hard to walk through those mountain pastures without stepping in the water, was actually so wet up there, and I remember thinking that it really was an evidence of God's abundant blessing on the land. Now, I didn't know what Psalm 65 was about at the time, but if I had known it, I could have said quite well and wisely, "You care for the land and water it, you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it. You drench its furrows and level its ridges, you soften it with showers and bless its crops." If you're a farmer, if you've lived in the country, maybe you have some sense of what that is.

Now, there are also the crops, and that's what verse 10 mentions. In the same way, unless you've been a farmer, you can hardly appreciate this, the joy that a farmer has looking out on the fields which he has planted and watching the rising rows of soybeans or corn or other grains stretching out beautifully in the sun. Any farmer works, farmer works very hard, but it's not the farmer who makes the seed grow. It's God. And a believing farmer who looks out senses something of the abundance and power and grace of God in that blessing.

Well, let me give you one more experience. I have to dig a little bit to get close to nature, but I do remember an experience when I was a boy being invited to spend the afternoon and have dinner with friends of my family who owned a small farm. It was August, and there was a field of corn that was just ready to be harvested. As a matter of fact, we had corn that afternoon that was freshly picked from the fields. And what I remember most was walking with my friends down the rows of corn in the middle of the field. We were sort of cut off from everything else. Seemed to us that the field was immense and almost endless. It was another world, a beautiful, wonderful, virile world entirely separate from the predictable normal world in which we lived. It was like as diving under the ocean, being with the fish or being high up in the mountains where you escaped all of the other experiences of life. And I remember thinking a little bit that it is amazing the abundance that God gives.

Well, that's what David is talking about. We may be because of our Western industrialized, urbanized world remote from it, but we still eat the food and it's God who makes it grow, and we should at least to some extent be thankful. Now, the last line of the Psalm is striking and unexpected because after having described how God has watered the earth and caused it to bring forth in bud, David suddenly says that the meadows, valleys, flocks, and grain all shout for joy and sing.

Now, that's a poetic fallacy, of course. Meadows and valleys and flocks of grain do not shout or sing or do anything else than only self-conscious, articulate personalities do. But in their harvest splendor, they seem to, which is what David is saying. And as a matter of fact, if they could cry out literally, they would do it because you remember at the time of his entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus said, when the Pharisees wanted him to rebuke his disciples for their praise, "If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." Well, here is David with the eyes of faith and spiritual vision looking on the fields and the grain and the meadow and saying they shout for joy and sing.

The bottom line of that is that that's what you and we should do. If inanimate objects literally can't praise God, we should. And of course, that is exactly the way the next Psalm begins. Perhaps you've noticed the connection: the last line of Psalm 65, "they shout for joy and sing"; first verse of Psalm 66, "shout with joy to God all the earth"; and the next verse, "sing to the glory of his name." And that's what we're going to do. We're going to sing a hymn, number 372, which is based on Psalm 65. It's a translation of it, and we're going to do it as soon as we pray.

Our Father, we thank you that we have had time to study this Psalm together. And though it expresses an experience of life that most of us are remote from and few have entered into deeply, it nevertheless points to you as the gracious and powerful God who has displayed this toward the children of men. And we are among them, and we are recipients of that blessing. So, our Father, as we sing, we pray that you'd give us grace to do it well because we know the one from whom all these great gifts come. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

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