The Bible Study Hour

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Dr. James Boice: We’re studying Psalm 111. Let me introduce it by reminding you that at the end of the last book of the Psalter, Book 4, we came across a number of Psalms that were chiefly praise Psalms. Each began and ended with the word Hallelujah, which means praise the Lord. We had two sets of them, actually: Psalm 103 and 104, which went together and formed a little pair, and then Psalms 105 and 106.

Now, Psalm 111 is another one like this. It begins with the word Hallelujah, translated "Praise the Lord" at the beginning of verse one. It's actually the first of a little grouping like this. You see that Psalm 112 begins the same way, and so does Psalm 113. In fact, Psalm 113 also ends with the words "Praise the Lord." It's not the only little grouping of this nature. There's another one that occurs later, following the Psalms of Ascent, and then at the very end of the Psalter, there's that well-known grouping of five Psalms, each of which begins and ends with the word Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.

I suppose that's a way of saying that although the Psalms deal with all sorts of subjects, when you get right down to the end of it, the heart of the people of God praises God. There are all kinds of things in the Psalms. There are Psalms that deal with pain, doubt, danger, discouragement, personal and national tragedies, and other things of that nature, but in the final analysis, the people of God praise God. It asks the question, does that mean that we understand everything that God is doing in our lives, that all of these difficulties, these pains, these sorrows are completely comprehensible to us? The answer is, of course, no. We don't understand in detail what God is doing, but we do know enough about the nature of God that in spite of all these things, we end up saying God is good, and God deserves our praise, and we desire to praise Him.

There's something else that ought to be said about Psalm 111 as we begin, and that's to point out, as I think you'll also notice at the bottom of the NIV in a footnote, that this is another acrostic Psalm. The acrostic Psalms are Psalms that are arranged around the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In this case, we have a perfect acrostic Psalm. There are 22 lines, barring the opening Hallelujah, and they each begin with a sequential letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Altogether, there are nine of these Psalms. The best known is Psalm 119 that we're going to come to. It's the most elaborate. It has 22 sections. Each section has eight verses, and the first line of each of the eight verses begins with a sequential letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So the first section of eight verses all begins with Aleph and Beth and so on. Some of them are not exact, and in some, the order of the letters even exercises some variation. But here you have a perfect acrostic Psalm. Not only is this a perfect acrostic Psalm, Psalm 112 that follows it is also a perfect acrostic Psalm.

As a matter of fact, the two belong together, obviously intentionally. The first is an acrostic poem about God. That's the one we're going to study today. And then the second one is an acrostic poem about the godly person. And that's the one we're going to study next week. So here you have a poem about God that's an acrostic. Here you have a poem about the godly person that's an acrostic. When you begin to look at the substance of the Psalms, you find another tie, that the same things that are said about God in Psalm 1 are said about the godly person in Psalm 2, which is simply a way of saying what is obvious: you become like the God you worship. You worship a false god or an idol, you become like your false god or your idol. If your idol is money, you'll become brittle like the currency, and you'll lose what we would call humanitarian values and disciplines. But if you become like God, if you worship the true God, then you will become strong, gracious, compassionate, righteous, generous, just, and steadfast as He is. Those are the things that are said about God and the godly man in the Psalm.

What's the theme of Psalm 111? It's the goodness of God displayed in His works. You underline these things, you'll find that word "works" in verses 2, 6, and 7, and then you find the equivalent word "deeds" in verse 3, and you also find the word "wonders" in verse 4. So that's an introduction to give you an idea what we're going to find.

Now, after the initial Hallelujah in verse one, both Psalms 111 and 112 begin with a two-line sentence that introduces the Psalm’s theme. Very easy to notice that, isn't it? In the second case, that's Psalm 112, it's a beatitude that picks up on the last verse of Psalm 111. The end of Psalm 111 is talking about the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, and Psalm 112 begins with that note. It says, "Blessed is the man who fears the Lord."

In Psalm 111, the theme is praising God. This is what it says: "I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly." Because that's the theme, it's worth thinking about just a little bit. I want you to notice a couple things here about what the Psalmist considers proper praise or worship of God. First of all, the Psalmist says that he's going to praise God himself. Now, he wants other people to do this too, and as a matter of fact, the bulk of the Psalm is going to be encouraging that. He's talking about the goodness of God in order that we might praise God. The very first line says that. Praise the Lord, that's what he wants us to do. But he's not asking us to do something that he isn't doing himself. And so what you find in this opening theme is his own word of praise. This simply means that if we want other people to praise God, we have to praise God ourselves. If we want other people to serve God, we have to serve God ourselves. If we want other people to honor God, we have to honor God ourselves. We have to set an example.

And then secondly, this Psalmist says that he's going to praise God with all his heart. "I will extol the Lord with all my heart." Now, some people don't praise God at all, of course. They don't know God, and so they don't praise Him. That's not surprising. But what is surprising is that so many of the people of God who do know God praise Him half-heartedly. I say that's surprising because if we are to know God at all, we are to know Him as the great, sovereign, holy, majestic, loving, compassionate, and steadfast God of the universe, which He truly is. That kind of a God demands wholehearted worship. And yet it's a sad thing that in so many of our Christian assemblies, we really hardly worship God at all. As a matter of fact, we have a sad declension from a high pattern of worship in the American churches today, where rather than focusing upon God, often we come to church and we chiefly focus upon ourselves. I don't mean to suggest that the worship of God has no bearing upon ourselves and that the Bible doesn't speak to our own needs. Of course it does. But the people of God are called above all to worship God, and when we come to God, that's what we ought to have a sense of doing.

And then thirdly, the Psalmist promises to praise God in the council of the upright and the assembly. There's probably a difference implied in those two words. Council probably refers to a smaller group of the genuinely upright. The word assembly refers to a larger group, the whole larger congregation. But in any case, what's involved is a public profession and public praise. That is, the Psalmist is saying here that he's not just going to praise God privately in the secrecy of his own home, but rather he's going to praise God in a way that other people are going to hear it, and he thinks that's proper. He wants us to do it as well.

Now, all of that has great bearing on how we worship God. We have been finding as we studied these Psalms, especially those that come toward the end of the Psalter, that they're telling us an awful lot about worship. This is the great worship book of the Bible. And as we study it, we find lots about how our worship should be. We need to apply it. We need to think about it in a very practical way. And what this is saying is this: we should set an example in worshipping God and praising God by actually doing it. When we do it, we should do it intensely and with our whole heart, and also we should worship publicly and identify publicly with the Christian assembly.

Oh, we just ask the question, are we doing that? Do you do that? Do I do that? If we're worshipping on Sunday, we're doing the latter. We're identifying with the people of God, the Christian assembly. But then we have to ask, do we do it at other times as well? Do we see our primary identity in life as being a Christian alongside other Christian people rather than being in the world and of the world? And as far as the other things are concerned, do we worship intensely and do we prepare for worship in order that we might do it well? One thing we should do is spend some time on Saturday night preparing for worship instead of some of the things we otherwise rather do. We ought to get some rest so that we come to church refreshed on Sunday morning and can worship wholeheartedly. How can you worship wholeheartedly if you're dead tired? You know, if you had an important business opportunity the next morning, you'd get proper rest the night before. If you had to compete in a major athletic contest in the morning, like the marathon that's going on today, you'd get rest the night before. I'm sure the runners that are out there today got their rest last night. Why should we do less as the people of God? We shouldn't do less for God. We should actually do more.

Now, that's the theme. That's verse one. Verses two through nine are the body of the Psalm. Let me introduce verse two in this way. In Cambridge, England, there's a well-known science laboratory called the Cavendish Laboratory. It is named after the great 18th-century English chemist and physicist, Sir Henry Cavendish. He lived from 1731 to 1810. This laboratory is distinguished by having over the door of its old main building the words of Psalm 111, verse two. That's the verse that says, "Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them."

Now, sometimes when verses are used in that way, that is taken out of the Bible and made a slogan or put upon part of a building, they're taken out of context. That's not the case here. This is a very appropriate use of the verse. Because what the Psalmist is talking about is the actual works of God in the broadest possible way, beginning with creation. And so the scientists who were involved in that laboratory at the time of the building of the building said, yes, this is the task of those Christians who are scientists. That is to consider the works of the Lord, ponder them, and actually delight in them.

Now, later on, the Psalmist is going to be talking about the particular works of God toward Israel in providing for them at the time of the Exodus. We have to understand those verses beginning with verse five in that way. But here he's writing more broadly. And what he's talking about here really is what we would call nature, God's deeds generally, the greatness of His works and the glory and the majesty of His deeds and the unforgettable nature of His wonders. Those are the words he actually uses. It's a way of saying, and it's true, that wherever a person looks, if they look knowing anything about God at all, they see the wonders of God. All creation displays the glory of God. The firmament shows His handiwork.

And so if we look into the heavens to the microcosm, we see the glory of God displayed there. We see it in the multitude and the majesty of the stars and the mysteries of the quasars and the black holes and the distribution and the composition of the planets. If we look down into the microcosm, to things that you can only see through a microscope, we see the majesty and the glory of God displayed there. We see it in the quarks and neutrinos and the cells of the body and the mind and in matter. There's a mystery to all living things.

Well, the unbeliever can look at these things and ponder them, and many do. That's the very basis of the scientific enterprise. But the Christian, in addition, looks at these things, ponders them, and delights in them because he sees them as the works of the almighty and ever-glorious God. And so it leads him to delight in God Himself. Isn't that a wonderful thing? When you look at nature, do you do that? Do you delight in the God who has made it and yet who is infinitely above and beyond everything that you see?

I think this comes out in a very interesting way in the Psalm because the adjectives that sprinkle these verses describing the works of God are not just descriptive of the works of God; they're also descriptive of God Himself. Look at it closely and see if you don't agree with that. The Psalmist tells us that the works of God are great, glorious, and majestic in verses 2 and 3. But these verses also refer to God since He alone is truly great, glorious, and majestic. After this, there's a section with adjectives that refer explicitly and exclusively to God, namely the fact that He is gracious and compassionate. If nothing else, God is gracious and compassionate in creating a world of such beauty and putting us within it to enjoy it. You see, the Christian looks at these things and he says they're great. But the reason they're great is because God is great. He looks at them and says they're wonderful. But the reason they're wonderful is because God is wonderful. You see, that's where you have a whole new dimension to it. It's strange that so many, including scientists, can look at these evidences of a supernatural creation and the greatness of our God and be unmoved by it. Arno Gaebelein writes in his commentary that it proves the truth of the Bible that man by nature has a darkened mind and does not know God.

Well, when we pass to verses 5 through 8, there's a change. It's not evident in the New International Version text, but one of the great Lutheran commentators, Leopold, points out that the verbs in this section change from present to past tenses, simple past tenses, not present tenses, which is the way the New International Version renders them. What this means, because they're past tenses, is that they refer to specific past events. And that's our clue to understanding what he's referring to when he mentions food, covenant, lands, and works and precepts and all of that. All of that is referring to the specific goodness of God in His works toward His people, the Jews, at the time of their Exodus.

Look, food in this context refers to God's providing the manna in the wilderness for the people during the years of their desert wandering. Covenant is the covenant established at Mount Sinai. The works of verse 6 are God's works, His miracles in delivering the people from Egypt. Giving them the lands of other nations refers to the conquest of Canaan; it could hardly be anything else. And verses 7 and 8 highlight the giving of God's law. So here the Psalmist is passing from praise of God in a general way, the display of the majesty and greatness of God in nature, to the specific manifestation of those same qualities in the deliverance and preservation of His people, past tense.

But now they're present tenses too, aren't they? Which is why the New International Version translates them that way. It is true that God did these things for Israel in the past, but is it not also true that He continues to do them for His people? That's because of His nature. It's what He's like. So you look at the law and you say, yes, He gave the law at Sinai, past tense. But the law is also a present possession, isn't it? We have it in the Bible. So the Psalm says, His precepts are steadfast forever. You look at this matter of food. God provided food for His people in the wilderness. But isn't it true that God also continues to provide food and the other necessities of life for His people? Jesus even encourages to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." It's part of His prayer recorded in Matthew 6. And as far as the covenant goes, which is also mentioned in these verses, well, that too, by its very nature, is a present possession because the covenant is an eternal thing. Not only that, as Christians, we're participants in a better covenant than that that was enjoyed by the Old Testament people. The whole book of Hebrews teaches that. It says in the seventh chapter, verse 22, that Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. And in chapter 9, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Well, we look at all of that, the great acts of God on behalf of His people. And don't we say with the Psalmist at the point at which he began, "I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly." We need to do it.

Well, there's another parallel when we come to verse 9 where it speaks about redemption. We say redemption from what? Well, from Egypt, of course, and perhaps even from the Babylonian captivity if the Psalm is written late, which is what most of the commentators think. Those are past events. Those refer to the history of Israel. But when we talk about redemption, how can we read this without thinking of that spiritual redemption that has been achieved for us by Jesus Christ? Look: He provided redemption for His people. He ordained His covenant forever. Holy and awesome is His name. Jesus is the one who has become for us righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

You know, that word redemption is a rich word. It comes from the ancient world of commerce, just as propitiation comes from the ancient world of religion and justification from the ancient world of law. Redemption refers to buying something in the marketplace, and in the case of slaves, buying them out of the marketplace so they can be set free. And that refers to what Jesus has done for us. The Jews were redeemed from Egypt by being called out of Egypt and set free as a people unto God. And they were later redeemed in a second deliverance from Babylon where they were called back to their own land. But in a parallel way, we are set free from sin.

A great example of that is in the Old Testament in the story of Hosea. Hosea's wife left him and sank low in the social scale of the day. Eventually, she became a slave because of debt. She was sold on an auction block in the city of Samaria, and Hosea was told to go and purchase her, to buy her and then to set her free. And that, of course, is an exact picture of what Jesus Christ has done for us. You and I are sold under the power of sin, and the world bids for us the currency that it has at its disposal. We sell our souls for fame and wealth and power and all sorts of other things. And Jesus Christ comes and pays the price of our redemption by dying for us. He pays the price of His blood, and we become His. Now, we read something like this, and we say, yes, the Jewish people experienced a great national redemption. But we have experienced it too, spiritual redemption in Jesus Christ.

When we were looking at this section of the Psalm dealing with God's general works in nature, I pointed out that the adjectives begin by describing the works but very soon pass over and describe God Himself. We have exactly the same thing here in verses 5 through 9. Here the works of God are called faithful, just, trustworthy, steadfast, faithful again, and upright. But those words describe God Himself. And so it's natural that the section ends with the line "Holy and awesome is God's name."

Now, we want to move to a conclusion, and that's what we have in verse 10. The Psalm has been a practical Psalm because it's exhorting us to praise God for His general and specific works, those that are seen in nature and also in the salvation history of His people and in redemption. Since it's practical in doing that, we expect it to have a practical conclusion, and it does. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding." That's a very important verse because it's repeated again and again throughout the wisdom literature. There are several key passages in which it's found. It's found in the Book of Job in the 28th chapter, verse 28. It's found in virtually the same form twice in the Book of Proverbs, first chapter, verse 7, again in chapter 9, verse 10. You find it in Ecclesiastes. Derek Kidner says it's the key to what life is all about. It's really an Old Testament way of saying that from Him and to Him and through Him are all things. It's what Paul says in Romans. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Now, it's probably a safe bet to say that today people are not very much interested in wisdom. They're interested in making money, of course, and in having a good time. They're interested in knowing something sometime, at least some people are, that is in getting an education, particularly if it has a practical outcome and they can make more money because of their education. Almost everyone wants to be popular and well-liked, but when you talk about wisdom, there aren't very many people who are interested in that. It's just not cool to be wise. And yet we need wisdom, don't we? We need wisdom to live a profitable and worthwhile life. And lacking wisdom, many people make shipwreck of their lives.

Now, we ask the question, where does wisdom come from? How do you acquire it? This verse tells us a great deal about it. It tells us two things particularly. First of all, we must begin with reverence for God. That's what the Psalm is all about. We have to begin with reverence for God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And then secondly, we have to know God's Word, the Bible. It's those who follow His precepts, that is, the things that are written down in the Bible for our instruction, who have understanding. You know, when it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it uses the Hebrew word Reshith, which occurs at the very beginning of the Bible, very first word of the Bible is this word with a prefix added to it, Bereshith. It says Bereshith Bara Elohim. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It's this beginning, this starting point, that's mentioned here in our verse. It says that the starting point for all wisdom is in God. But that's where we go astray. You see, rather than starting there, we start with ourselves, or we start with our culture, or we start with practical events round about us, and we sort of push God to the extremity. We don't want to deal with Him up front, as it were. And so we fall into the kind of folly I'm talking about. Wisdom begins with acknowledging God, or as we could say, reverently bowing down before God. And it progresses by getting to know God well.

And then secondly, it comes from the Bible. Because if you say, how do you get to know God? Well, the answer is from the Bible. It's true that God has revealed a great deal of Himself in nature, but the unbeliever looks at it, ponders it, and is not led to God at all. But when we turn to the Bible, we find that it's from the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth, all of these things, that He's the one that stands behind it. And so if we find order in the universe, it's because God is a God of order. If we find beauty in the universe, it's because God is a God of beauty and so on for all His other attributes.

You know, when he was only 20 years old, Charles Haddon Spurgeon began his nearly half-a-century ministry in London, and he began it with a sermon on knowing God. He called it the chief delight and the chief end of human beings. Let me just quote what Spurgeon said, this young man, as he began his ministry. "The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls Father." He argued that thinking about this God not only blesses the soul, it blesses the mind and it expands it. Now, he was right. No people ever rise higher than their understanding or conception of God. If you have a low view of God, you're not going to rise any higher than that.

And if you do what our culture has been doing, what the United States of America seems hell-bent on doing, that is excluding God from national life, well, then you will lose all the benefits that would come from knowing a God who is gracious, loving, kind, holy, just, compassionate, and faithful. And that's exactly the kind of culture in which we live. From time to time, crimes sweep across our consciousness or impact our neighborhoods and everyone is startled. Here in center city a week ago, a young woman out jogging in the morning was murdered simply because she was carrying a Walkman with her and somebody wanted that, snuffed out her life for it. It's a frightening thing. This is the kind of culture we've created. We have a whole generation of people who have no regard for life at all. It means absolutely nothing to them. But should we be surprised?

Twenty or thirty years ago, we said we don't want God in our schools. Oh, we want to keep values. We don't want God. But of course, you don't have values without God because values imply an absolute. God is the only valid absolute. So you push God out, pretty soon the values are gone. And then we've been told you can't teach values because that's imposing your values on somebody else, and you have no right to do that. And so the values go, and then we're surprised when people kill other people. That's what happens when the people depart from God.

And here's the Psalmist who says with great wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and it's only those who follow His precepts who have good understanding. God calls upon a people to repent when they fall from Him. You know what He says in 2nd Chronicles: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land." We need all of that. We need the healing of our land, we need the forgiveness of our sin, and we need God to hear from heaven. We need to recover God, and it's what the Psalm is all about.

Let's pray. Our Father, we are thankful that although we depart from You, You are nevertheless there. Though we turn our back on You, You never turn Your back on us. Though we are unfaithful, You nevertheless remain faithful. And where Your people will repent and turn and recover and seek Your face, You are there to be found and to bless, even as the Psalm promises. Our Father, grant that we may do that, and as we reflect on this Psalm that we've studied today throughout the rest of the day and throughout this week, grant that You might have Your way with us and we might be found increasingly to be the people who not only claim to know You but actually do know You and show it by the way we live. For we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Announcer: You have been listening to The Bible Study Hour, a production of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades, even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. The Alliance ministry includes The Bible Study Hour featuring Dr. James Boice, Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, and Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible featuring Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse. For more information on the Alliance, including a full list of radio stations carrying our programs, or to make a contribution, please contact us by calling toll-free 1-800-488-1888. Again, that’s 1-800-488-1888. You can also write the Alliance at box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19103, or you can visit us online at www.alliancenet.org. Ask for your free resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding Reformed teachers and theologians, including Donald Barnhouse, James Boice, and Philip Ryken. Thank you again for your continued support.