The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: In a sense, we're all homeless, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest and home in God. Then we find a home in God's church, but even the church is only a taste of the final home and eternal rest we'll find in heaven.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boyce, preparing you to think and act biblically. The pilgrims left their homes in England and moved to a temporary home in Holland. But in America, they built their final earthly homes and though they were meager dwellings, the pilgrims rejoice and gave God thanks.

Let's join Dr. Boyce as he continues his study of Psalm 107 and shows us that we, like the pilgrims and the Israelites before them, seek both rest and a home. And though we find both in God, troubles still follow until we reach our final home with the Lord.

Dr. James Boice: John Newton was a Puritan. He was also a pilgrim in one sense, although he lived about 100 years after the Puritans we think about. Puritans we talk about having to do with the founding of America. He wrote a verse in his best known hymn, Amazing Grace, that is an app description of the Pilgrim's experience and also a verse by which we can outline this great 107th Psalm that we're studying. The Psalm I've called The Pilgrim's Psalm.

That third verse goes, Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. His grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home. We've already looked at the first part of that in studying the first of the three main parts of the Psalm. The first part is an introduction in which the people of God are called upon to praise him and thank him, verses 1 to 3.

Dr. James Boice: And then there's that long section that we studied in some detail last time, verses 4 to 32, in which a number of situations are presented, from which and in the midst of which God delivers his people. We looked at how God delivers those who have been wandering in desert lands. Some have been wasting away in prison, some have been sick, serious illnesses, and then finally some in peril on the sea. There's a stanza for each of those.

Dr. James Boice: But after it describes the peril and the deliverance, the people of God are called upon to praise him. Now, that's the first main half of the Psalm in terms of its content or message, and it's that that that first phrase of John Newton's hymn describes. Through many dangers, toils and snares we have already come. Many of us can match that in our own experience.

Dr. James Boice: Now, what we come to today is the final part of the Psalm, beginning with verse 33 on to the end, in which we find the psalmist saying how God brings us home, provides us a safe haven for our souls at last. Here's the way he says it. He turned the desert into pools of water and parched ground into flowing springs. There he brought the hungry to live and they founded a city where they could settle.

Dr. James Boice: They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest. He blessed them and their numbers greatly increased and he did not let their herds diminish. The great Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier has a book called A Place to Be, which has a very fascinating thesis, and one that I've found very helpful as I've thought along these lines from time to time.

Dr. James Boice: Tournier says what we all are hunting for in life is a place to belong. A place to be, as he titles the book. And he points out that if we don't find that, we spend all our lives trying to search for it. A child who grows up in a stable home has a place to be. And because they know where they are and who they are, they really are at home anywhere they go in life. They can travel all over the world and they're perfectly at home.

Dr. James Boice: Somebody who doesn't have that, who was never in childhood particularly had a place to be, is always searching for it. What we're told here in this Psalm is that God provides a place to be. He gives us a home. He does it above all in himself. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in you. It's when we come to rest in God as he's made the way open for us to do that through Jesus Christ and his death for us, that we find a home.

Dr. James Boice: And then we find a home in life within the fellowship of the people of God in the church. Not all of us have good homes, and especially in our day, where we talk about dysfunctional families and lack of homes and bad upbringing and so forth. Many have that kind of experience. But there's a taste of what it can really be in the fellowship of the church, a very imperfect fellowship.

Dr. James Boice: As you well know, nevertheless, a sampling of it, which points forward to the third kind of home we have, which is in heaven, eternal home and an inheritance that's laid up for us there, and then nothing really destroys. Now, that's the way we kind of have to think about this ending of the Psalm. Now, since we began last time by talking about the pilgrims, it's worth pointing out that this is what they found literally.

Dr. James Boice: They had been dispossessed of their homes in England and had to leave. And then, when they went across the channel and settled in Holland, those were but temporary homes. When they finally left there and began to come to this country, they were not at home really during that long voyage. Even the Mayflower didn't belong to them. It was just hired for the occasion.

Dr. James Boice: And then they arrived here. But when they arrived here, they began to build homes. And it meant a great deal to them. They were just rude, rustic shelters. If you ever visit Plymouth, New England, and see how they've reconstructed what that must have been and kind of enter into that way of life, you know, how rude a home site it was. But nevertheless, it was a real home.

Dr. James Boice: And after they got through that first hard winter, which was very difficult, and they had a harvest the next summer, they really were rejoicing that God had brought them and given them a place to live and that they had homes. William Bradford tells about it in his book on Plymouth Plantation, 1620 to 1647. He chronicles 27 years of the first permanent English settlement on these shores. And he spells it all out.

Dr. James Boice: There's that wonderful section in it where he describes in his own words that first Thanksgiving, which is entered into American lore. Almost everybody knows about it. It's interesting that the details that we know most about, the Indians coming and the killing of the deer, Massasoit leading his 90 men and so forth, that you don't find that in William Bradford.

Dr. James Boice: He mentions the harvest and how thankful they were, but he doesn't mention the details. That actually comes from a letter by a man named Edward Winslow, who wrote it home to a friend in England the following year, but we have all of that. Now, these hearty survivors who had lost half of their their people during that first winter, when they when they came to to that first harvest, really were able to praise God.

Dr. James Boice: And I call this the Pilgrim's Psalm because they they must have found this to be an exact depiction in the Old Testament of their experience. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds to men. Verses 8, 15, 21, and 31 because there he brought the hungry to live and they founded a city where they could settle, verse 26, 36.

Dr. James Boice: Now, we should be able to thank the Lord in exactly the same way if we're Christians. Now, let me say that's only one half of the story. There's another half, and that's what this final section of the Psalm is all about, and it's true. God had brought them across the ocean. He had given them homes. They had got it through the winter. Though they'd lost many of their number, they had a good harvest.

Dr. James Boice: But it wasn't the end of their troubles. Lots of troubles are described by Bradford as Plymouth Plantation goes on. He tells about divisions among the people themselves. Some caused by those who arrived at Plymouth from other colonies. They were cheated on occasion by the ships captains who were trying to make a profit at the pilgrims' expense.

Dr. James Boice: He talks about the wars that were taking place among the Indian tribes, which were a great threat to them, and from time to time, resulted in the death of some of their numbers. And of course, sickness came back. It wasn't over that first winter. And the crops, though they did well that first summer, sometimes didn't do well. And they had shortages and all of those things.

Dr. James Boice: Here's God taking care of his people, but the truth of it is that there were hard times again. Now, have you noticed, if you've been looking at Psalm 107, that Psalm 107 acknowledges this pattern? You see, you read the first part of it, it's all praise. God has delivered us when we were wandering in the desert lands. Praise be to God. God delivered us when we were in prison.

Dr. James Boice: He brought us out. Praise be to God. God delivered us when we were in peril at sea. Praise be to God. He delivered us from sickness. And then you get to the last section, beginning with verse 33, and it says he gave them a place to settle. They prospered, but then they experienced hard times again. You can't miss it there in the last section because it repeats the pattern twice.

Dr. James Boice: First of all, it talks about hard times, verses 33 and 34. Then it talks about blessings, verses 35 to 38. Then it talks about hard times again, verses 39 and 40. And then it talks about blessing again, verses 41 and 42. Now, the change between those first two parts that make the main body of the Psalm and this last section that we're looking at now was so abrupt that some of the commentators suggest that what you really have here are two different Psalms that are sort of mistakenly put together by some later editor.

Dr. James Boice: You know, you'll find if you do any kind of biblical study and work through commentaries like this, that whenever the commentator can't understand it, he assumes that it's a poor combination by an editor, didn't know what he was doing. Generally, it just shows that the commentator doesn't know what he's doing. But at any rate, commentators have said that.

Dr. James Boice: And we look at this. They say, well, you have a different tone here in the last section. And we look at it, if we're honest, we say, yes, indeed, we do have a different tone here in the last section. In the first half of the Psalm, we've had nothing but rejoicing. God has delivered us. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Now we come to the second half, and it's not that we lack rejoicing, but what we have here is a more sober, serious reflection on what is actually the case.

Dr. James Boice: It's an acknowledgement that God delivers, it's not denying that, but there are also hard times. In the first few verses, it does this by images. It says God turned rivers into a desert. That's not what we would expect, but then he turns desert into pools of water. It works the other way too. And then it abandons the attempt to describe it by images. It begins to talk about the people.

Dr. James Boice: Now, he blessed them and he caused their their crops to prosper and their herds to multiply, and then describes how their crops didn't do well and their herds diminished and so on. Now, how do we handle that? Does that mean that these two parts of the Psalm are from different hands then, after all? Or does it mean that what we have here are two different conceptions of God?

Dr. James Boice: We have a God here who always blesses. You listen to a lot of preaching today, especially the popular stuff, the kind of thing you hear on television, that's the impression you get. You trust God, he will always bless you, make you rich. You're never going to have any problems if you're really following God. And then you have this conception of God, which is kind of sober and says, yes, God does bless, but God also sends hard times.

Dr. James Boice: Is it two different ideas of God? Is it really badly combined? Well, the answer is, no, it's not that at all. What we have here is a recognition that life is filled with pain even for Christians. You don't have to read very far in the Bible to find that that's true. God doesn't give us a false impression of what's going on. Life is tough.

Dr. James Boice: I was talking on the plane last night coming back from our meeting in San Antonio. David Wells was sitting beside me and and we were bemoaning what what the problems that exist, not merely in the evangelical church at large, but even the problems we had within our own little council. And David Wells kept saying over and over again, there are problems even in paradise.

Dr. James Boice: And if there are problems in paradise, there are certainly problems in the United States of America, which is anything but paradise. And in our churches. That's what the Psalm is acknowledging. The problems are here. Now the question is, how do we deal with it? How can we praise God even when we have the hard times? Because that's what the Psalm is doing.

Dr. James Boice: Now the answer is, we can do it because the people of God are able to see his wise, loving, and sovereign hand even in their hardships, which is why the Psalm ends the way it does with a humble acknowledgement of God's sovereignty over all things and all circumstances. It's a reminder, you see, that even the bad things in life are in God's hands.

Dr. James Boice: Now, here's the way one of the commentators puts it. This is a good one. H.C. Leupold, an old Lutheran commentator. He calls this the Psalm's important general truth. Not specific truths. We looked at some of them. The important general truth. I quote him. The ups and downs, the success and the failure, the prosperity and calamity in the lives of individuals and nations are entirely in the control of and brought about by the will of the Almighty God.

Dr. James Boice: None are brought low and none are raised on high unless he wills it. Now, before we go on to explore what that might mean, let me just point out that there are several great acknowledgements of that truth in the scriptures. This is not something we just find here in Psalm 107. Let me give you two examples. First of all, from a pagan, a Chaldean, the name is Nebuchadnezzar.

Dr. James Boice: Nebuchadnezzar was this great powerful king that stood at the pinnacle of the mightiest power of the day, and who got carried away with his success. He looked out over Babylon, that great city, containing the hanging gardens that were one of the great wonders of the ancient world. And he took the credit for building it to himself. He said, is not this the great Babylon that I have built by my mighty power, by my strength, and for the glory of my majesty?

Dr. James Boice: And you know the story. God judged him with insanity because anybody who could look out at the world and say, I'm responsible for it, is crazy. And God judged him that way. And so for seven years he lived and operated like an animal. Because that's what happens to us when we take the glory to ourselves. If we won't see ourselves as creatures made in the image of God, we'll begin to see ourselves as animals and act like animals.

Dr. James Boice: And that's just what happened to Nebuchadnezzar. But you know at the end of that story in the fourth chapter of Daniel, we have this significant phrase. It says, I Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven and my sanity was restored. You see, when he stopped thinking that he was the center of the universe and he began to look up to God and trust God, his sanity came back.

Dr. James Boice: And then he has this great testimony. He's talking about God. His dominion is an eternal dominion, not mine. His kingdom endures from generation to generation, not mine. Nothing that you and I do is ever going to endure from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.

Dr. James Boice: No one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done? Everything he does is right and all his ways are just and those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. I'm very fond of saying, not only is God able to humble them, he does humble them. That's the story of what happens in life again and again. It's what happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

Dr. James Boice: And that's what Psalm 107 says. It says it even of the righteous. Have you noticed verse 39? Then their numbers decreased and they were humbled by oppression, calamity, and sorrow. Not the Babylonians, not the pagans, but the people of God. The second great biblical confession of that, to give it to you from a believer, and a Jewish believer, and a woman, and one highly revered is the Virgin Mary.

Dr. James Boice: You know her Magnificat, how she talks about it. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but he has sent the rich empty away. Now I think in that Psalm that Mary is thinking of him humbling the unrighteous and exalting the poor believers. But the principle is a good one, expounded and amplified upon by our Psalm.

Dr. James Boice: That that sort of thing happens to believers as well. So we we come to trying to make sense of it. And we say, how do we do that? Are we to conclude really that God is arbitrary? You know, sometimes he just feels like blessing us and at other times he feels like making life difficult for us. We ought to know better than that because we know what God is like.

Dr. James Boice: God is all wise, so nothing he does is ever arbitrary, it always has a purpose. Furthermore, God is good, so nothing he does for his people is ever bad. Even bad things are good some way, but also God is omniscient, not we, which means that what God does is beyond our understanding many, many times. And so we have to begin to think about it in those terms.

Dr. James Boice: Now, how are we to think? I want to do something here that the Puritans themselves did. We're talking about pilgrims and Puritans. This is sort of the context for this exposition. You know, one thing the Puritan preachers did, which made for very good sermons, was unfold them along a three-part outline. They usually had an exposition of the text.

Dr. James Boice: And then they had a section dealing with doctrine where they explained the doctrine that's in the text. That's what is left out today in most preaching. People have no idea what the doctrines are. And then they went a stage even beyond that because having exposited the text and explained the doctrine, they then gave application. You'll find that in Jonathan Edwards sermons, for example.

Dr. James Boice: The first is very short because the people knew the Bible. He didn't have to spend a lot of time on it. But he develops the rest of it at great length. And so did the other great great preachers. Now, sometimes they called it uses of the text. How do you use it in a practical way? Now, that's what I would like to do here with this doctrine. The doctrine is this.

Dr. James Boice: Even for the righteous, God sends sorrow as well as joy, hardship as well as material blessing, and yet he is not arbitrary. That's the doctrine. Even for the righteous, God sends sorrow as well as joy, hardship as well as material blessing, and yet he is not arbitrary. Now, what are the uses that we're to make of that? I want to suggest four of them.

Dr. James Boice: Number one, reverence for God. The first use of that doctrine is to encourage on the one hand, reverence for God, and on the other hand, humility in us because God's ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts, and it's extremely difficult for us to even try to begin to figure out what God is doing. Now, let me give an example of that.

Dr. James Boice: Paul in the 11th chapter of Romans that we were studying not very long ago comes to the end of that great section where he's trying to probe the purposes of God in history and provide what is called a theodicy. That is an attempt to justify the ways of God to men. God does things we can't understand. Paul's wrestling with it in those chapters.

Dr. James Boice: And it has to do with the fact that Jesus was a Jewish Messiah, and yet when he was proclaimed to the Jews, the Jews for the most part rejected him. The Gentiles seemed to be believing, and that just didn't seem to make sense. And so Paul is explaining there what God is actually doing. Now, when he comes to the end of that 11th chapter, the Apostle Paul does not say, as many of us today might say, if we had done that in a chapter of a book or a book all by itself or something.

Dr. James Boice: Now, isn't that good what I've been able to explain? Aren't I intelligent? Aren't I smart? I figured it out. Now, if you can just follow what I said, you're not as bright as I am. But if you can just follow that out, then then you'll understand these great mysteries of God too. But Paul doesn't do that. Remember, Paul's an apostle. He's writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He's provided a portion of scripture that the church has been studying down through all the centuries ever since.

Dr. James Boice: But when he gets to the end, what does Paul say? He gets silent before the majesty and the wisdom of Almighty God. And then a great doxology that concludes that chapter, Paul says, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who's known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?

Dr. James Boice: Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? And then he concludes, For from him and through him and to him are all things. To God be the glory. Amen. You see, there's nothing wrong with trying to understand the ways of God. Not only that, we're encouraged to do it. That's why we study the Bible. We're trying to understand what God is doing, and many things we do understand.

Dr. James Boice: They're very clear. But we recognize at the same time there are always things that are going to be beyond our understanding just because God is God. He's infinite. We're not God. We're finite. We can't understand it all. And so we should end up by praising God, revering God, and being humble. You know what Habakkuk did? Habakkuk was facing this kind of a problem.

Dr. James Boice: He had seen all kinds of wickedness among his people in his day. And he was praying for revival. He had a pattern of revival that was from his childhood, what happened under King Josiah. And he was looking to God to do that all over again, praying, God, why don't you do something? Years are going by, nothing's happening. And God gave him an answer.

Dr. James Boice: And God said, yeah, all right, I'm going to do something, but what I'm going to do is send the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem. And Habakkuk said, now, hang on here, you've misunderstood me. That's not what I was praying for. I was praying for revival. And God said, no, we're going to we're going to punish the people for their sins. And then he had this great moral problem.

Dr. James Boice: Habakkuk said, how can that be? I I I know my people are not holy, that's why I'm praying for a revival, but they are certainly more holy than the Babylonians. They don't have any knowledge of the true God at all. And yet you're going to give victory to the Babylonians and Jerusalem's going to be destroyed. God said, yes, it's what I'm going to do.

Dr. James Boice: And Habakkuk couldn't understand it. And so what does he do? Well, we come to the very beginning of the second chapter after all that problem is spelled out, and we find him saying he's just going to be quiet and wait and see if God might give an answer. I'll stand at my watch and station myself upon the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

Dr. James Boice: As he waited, God did speak to him. And what God said to him was this, the just shall live by faith. Is that an answer? Well, yes and no. It doesn't explain why the Babylonians are coming. There isn't a great deal of insight into the future there, though a lot of it is spelled out as the book goes on. But it is an answer.

Dr. James Boice: It says you're not going to understand everything I'm doing, but you should have faith in me and revere me and stand humbly before your God. So that's the first use. Second use is that this doctrine teaches us to look for things that are eternal. In other words, the second use of the doctrine is faith. Instead of placing our affections and attention and drawing our understanding of life only from that which we can see, all of which is destined to pass away.

Dr. James Boice: We're to get our stability and faith from things that are not seen and that are eternal. Now, Abraham is an example of that. You know, the story of Abraham. God called him out of Ur of the Chaldees, the same general area of the ancient East where Babylon was later. And God brought Abraham into a land that he promised to give to him and to his his descendants.

Dr. James Boice: And Abraham in a long, long life, at least twice as long as our lives today, never possessed any of it, except a tiny little plot that he bought from the Canaanites in order to bury his wife Sarah when she died. He didn't possess any of it. And furthermore, he he he had all kinds of troubles while he lived there. There were famines. How was he going to get by?

Dr. James Boice: He didn't have enough money or food to take care of his people. And there were enemies. There were these kings of the East that invaded. And he got into a battle once trying to rescue his nephew Lot and his family. All kinds of problems like that. And he didn't even have the son that God had promised because he said, you're going to have many, many descendants.

Dr. James Boice: But what did Abraham do during that long period in which he didn't possess the land and had hardships and didn't even see the fulfillment of God's promise? What Abraham did was live by faith. He said, God is a faithful God. God is a good God. God has made promises to me. Therefore, God is going to keep those promises, even if I don't see the fulfillment of the promises now.

Dr. James Boice: The author of Hebrews, who tells his story at great length in the 11th chapter, where he talks about all the other great heroes of the faith, sums it up this way. He says, Abraham was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. In other words, he had a heavenly perspective. He was looking for things that are invisible.

Dr. James Boice: And let me put it this way. Although there are ups and downs in life for the people of God, the end is going to be up. The end is heaven and blessing and holiness and fellowship with God forevermore. How do we know it? We know it because God is both good and sovereign. He always accomplishes what he wants to accomplish, and what he wants to accomplish for his people is good.

Dr. James Boice: Now, I think Psalm 107 ends on that exact note. Because what it says in verse 43 is this. Heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord. Now, remember, he just talked about the hardships and and the famines and the herds diminishing and all of that. But he says, heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord.

Dr. James Boice: Here's the third use of the doctrine. It's calling sinners to repentance. You see, although the ways of God in this life are not always things that we are able fully to understand, there's nevertheless is a pattern in life that secular observers recognize as well as Christians. And it is that there is some correspondence between actions and results.

Dr. James Boice: The wicked may prosper for a time, but they do get into trouble eventually. And their end is terrible. And and the the godly may suffer for a time, but there is blessing there for the godly nevertheless. In other words, it it pays to do the right thing, even if you're speaking just as as a pagan. You see, there is a a morality to the universe.

Dr. James Boice: Now, we can say on the basis of that, as we speak to those who are not believers, if there's a morality in a universe now infested with sin as we see it to be, so that there is actual punishment for the wicked, certainly there's going to be great punishment at the last day, when the God of the universe, who has created it all and presides over it all and is sovereign, is going to bring about a judgment which exalts his righteousness and punishes human sin.

Dr. James Boice: You have to face up to that. And so we can say to people who are going merrily along life's way, perhaps even prospering along life's way, there is a day of reckoning. And this is a day of grace. What the gospel tells us to do today is repent of our sin and trust Jesus Christ so that when the time of the final reckoning comes and we stand before the presence of Almighty God, and our sins are exposed, we find ourselves not condemned for our sins, but saved because Jesus Christ has borne the punishment of those sins in our place.

Dr. James Boice: In other words, even a doctrine like this that seems to be just for Christians and the things that go on in their life has an evangelistic edge. And then finally, the fourth use is Thanksgiving. Believers should thank God for being what he is and acting as he does. Not only when things are going our way. That's what the Psalm is doing, isn't it?

Dr. James Boice: You know, the Apostle Paul did that. The Apostle Paul had tremendous hardships. You read the Corinthian letters and find him spelling out there the kind of things he went through. None of us have even come close to that. Beaten scores of times with rods and shipwrecked and starving and persecuted and in danger of his life. All those things he spells out again and again.

Dr. James Boice: But what Paul says, I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Philippians 4:12. And so he instructs the Philippians, just as he would instruct us if he were here. He says, so don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Dr. James Boice: So let's do it. This 107th Psalm ends by telling us to do three things. Number one, give thanks. Number two, tell others. Number three, heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord. Let me tell you about Alexander Duff. You know who he is? Probably not. He was the first missionary sent out by the Church of Scotland to India, back in the early 1800s.

Dr. James Boice: He and his wife set sail with other people that were going to the subcontinent in October of 1828. The ship was called the Lady Holland. A few months later, as they were attempting to navigate the Cape of Good Hope, the ship ran aground. It was February 1930, the middle of the winter. The pounding surf soon destroyed the ship, washed everything away.

Dr. James Boice: Miraculously, all of the passengers survived. They all got to shore, but there they were onshore with nothing at all. Absolutely everything had perished. One of the sailors was walking along the shore to see if he could perhaps find something to salvage from the wreck. And he came across two books. One of them was the Bible, and the second was the Scottish Psalm book.

Dr. James Boice: He found the name of Alexander Duff in both of the books, so he brought them to Duff, who was one of the ones who survived. Duff had been transporting 800 books to India. It was to be a library. He was trying to set up a theological school and so forth. Eventually, he did get there, and he did establish a theological college, but of those 800 books that he was taking out, only those two remained.

Dr. James Boice: Now, in spite of that great loss, the story of Alexander Duff tells us that he gathered all the survivors around him, and he opened the Bible to Psalm 107. And there he read to the survivors the Psalm, concluding with the words, Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord. Can you do that? Most of us haven't lost anything, to speak of.

Dr. James Boice: We ought to be doing it. Some have lost. We've had a member of the congregation this past week lost everything in a fire or apartment house over in New Jersey. Absolutely everything. The next day she didn't have another bit of clothes to put on, everything. And here were people who did that, but they say our God is nevertheless a good God.

Dr. James Boice: I can't begin to explain why that happened, but he's a good God, and he's sovereign, it's not an accident. And so my duty is to heed these things, to be wise in God, and I know of God, and to praise him, and to praise him. Have you been blessed? Shame on you if you don't praise him all the time. Let's pray. Our Father, we are thankful for your goodness to us.

Dr. James Boice: You're a great God. You're far beyond our understanding, but we do know that you're a good and gracious God. We have it in Jesus Christ. You saved us at the cost of the death of your Son. You're all wise. You know what you're doing. At the end of history, everyone will look on and say, what a what a marvelous plan of salvation was unfolded by the great Almighty God down through all those ages of history.

Dr. James Boice: We just had little bits of insights into it here and there, little by little. That's the kind of God you are. And here we are. We're caught up in the midst of things. Some in the midst of loss, but most of us buried by prosperity. And we don't much think that you're a good God. We don't reflect on these things. We only get religious when something goes wrong.

Dr. James Boice: And then we're complaining, and we don't consider the great love of the Lord. Forgive us, Father, for that. And grant that as you speak to us through your word, you've done that this day, done it in this hour. Grant that we might be set on fire once again to talk about you often and fervently and wisely and persistently to people who are perishing apart from Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Dr. James Boice: Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church.

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