The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Dr. James Boice once said that it would make a tremendous difference in people's lives if they would simply make a point of remembering God's goodness. But as sinful human beings, we so easily forget. Sometimes it's helpful for us to list all the beneficial things God has done to remind us of his faithfulness.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Psalm 105 records the amazing ways that God preserved and provided for his people, from the calling of Abraham to their entrance into the promised land. Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines the history of God's promises and provision from Psalm 105, and reminds us that everything begins with God.

Dr. James Boice: Today we're studying Psalm 105, and in coming to Psalm 105, we come to two psalms, 105 and 106, that form a striking pair. They're the very last psalms in this fourth book of the psalter, and they go together in this way: the first one that we're going to look at today deals with God's faithfulness to Israel during the time that elapsed between his first covenant with Abraham until his actually bringing the people into the promised land.

Then the second psalm, Psalm 106, that we'll look at next time, deals with the unfaithfulness of Israel during the same time period. Now that isn't the way I think I would order them if I were doing it. I would put Psalm 106 first that talks about our unfaithfulness and then end on a good strong note, namely the faithfulness of God. But in this case, as in all others, the compilers of the psalms show themselves to be more theologically astute and more realistic than I am.

They're theologically astute because this is a way of saying that everything begins with God. There wouldn't even be a question of our unfaithfulness if it weren't for his faithfulness; we start there. And it's realistic because the note ends on our need. Our need is to repent and get closer to God once again. So these two psalms are really important and they lead us to some significant thinking about our relationship to God.

Now the fact that they belong together is indicated in a striking way. In the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, that's the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made about a hundred years before the birth of Christ, the very last word of Psalm 104 is detached and put at the head of Psalm 105. If you look in your Bibles, you'll see that at the very end of Psalm 104, it says, "Praise the Lord."

So in the Septuagint, "Praise the Lord" doesn't end Psalm 104; it begins Psalm 105. You say why should that matter? Well, maybe it doesn't matter a whole lot, but if that is the way the material was originally to be divided, then you have two sets of paired psalms. Psalms 103 and 104 both begin and end the same way, and the way they begin and end is with the words, "Praise the Lord, O my soul."

Then Psalms 105 and 106 both begin and end the same way, and they begin and end with the words, "Praise the Lord," or which in the Hebrew is just the single word, Hallelujah. So if we look back at 103 and 104, we see that they go together. The first praises God as creator, the second as savior. You look at the second two and you find the same thing: God praised for his faithfulness and then a psalm on the unfaithfulness of Israel, as I've indicated.

There may be a third thing that indicates that these last two psalms go together, and that is their use in 1 Chronicles 16. In that chapter of 1 Chronicles, David has composed a psalm for the temple singers to sing as the ark is brought up to Jerusalem. And that psalm is actually composed of parts of other psalms that we have in the psalter.

The first 15 verses of the psalm we're looking at now are used, as well as the last two verses of Psalm 106. Then in addition, there's part of Psalm 96. Now, I don't know the relationship between those two portions of scripture. Is it the case that David composed the original psalm, and then it was broken up and added to, to become the three psalms that we know as 96, 105, and 106? Or is it the case, as Chronicles may have been written rather late, that the author of that history took parts of the psalms and put them together to indicate the kind of psalm that David would have composed on that occasion?

I really don't know, but it is a way of saying, since both portions of Psalm 105 and 106 are used, that they do belong together. We would be interested in knowing that part of John Newton's great hymn, "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," is based upon verses 39 to 41 of this psalm. Now we start at the beginning with this opening stanza, verses 1 through 6, and at the very first verse, we find something that is worth a sermon all by itself.

The verse tells us that we are to give God thanks; that's the first thing. Number two: call on his name. And number three: proclaim him to others. It's a wonderful way to begin a psalm, it's a wonderful way to live a life, and it's a wonderful way to conduct a Christian ministry. Some of you will know the name of Richard Baxter. He was one of the Puritans living in the 17th century, from 1615 to 1692.

For a long, long time, he pastored a church at Kidderminster. He wrote a book on the reformed pastor, and he gave instructions as to what he thought the ministry was all about. Now, remember the towns in England in those days were relatively small and a person could actually have an impact upon every citizen of the town, and that's what he set out to do. Not only did he preach on Sundays, but he set out to visit all the homes and catechize the people who had some association with his parish, which included virtually everyone in the town.

And he would go throughout the week from home to home and he would teach the catechism to people so they would not only hear the preaching on Sundays but also would learn the theology of the scriptures. He was so successful at that that he was able to report toward the end of his pastorate, on the Lord's day, there was no disorder to be seen in the streets, but you might hear a hundred families singing psalms and repeating sermons as you passed through them.

Well, you ask, what was the secret of a ministry like that? I suppose you could give a lot of different answers to that, and all of them would reflect different aspects of Baxter's ministry, but one part of it surely is to be found in the words that were inscribed on the back of the pulpit from which he preached all those many long years in Kidderminster. And those words were the words of our psalm; they were verse one. They read in the King James Version, "Give thanks unto the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people."

I wish there were a hundred churches in Philadelphia like that, that called upon the name of the Lord, gave thanks to him, and taught the people his mighty deeds. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had that? Certainly that ought to be the goal of every Christian and every minister and every church. Now there's even more to this opening stanza. We've had three great imperatives here in verse one, important ones: give thanks, call on his name, and make his deeds known.

But the next verses go on to elaborate what this should be; you have a whole list of imperatives. Verse 2 tells us to sing and to sing praise and tell of all his wonderful acts. Verse 3 advises glory in his name and rejoice. Verse 4 says, "Look to the Lord and seek his face always." Verse 5 says, "Remember." Now those earlier phrases are different ways of saying the same thing; in a sense, they are a repetition of what we have already seen in verse one.

But when we get to that fifth verse and it says, "Remember," ah, there's something additional. Remember how we need to do it and how prone we are to forget. You may recall that we've already seen several psalms for which this is the theme, psalms that say, "Look, it's easy for you to forget and you have forgotten, and what you need to do is remember the goodness of God to you." It would make a tremendous difference in the lives of most people, certainly most Christians, if they would just make it a point to remember God's goodness to them in salvation and in so many other ways.

Now as important as that first stanza is for getting into the psalm and recognizing it as a thanksgiving psalm, it's really not until we get to the second stanza, verses 7 through 11, that we find out what the theme of the psalm is really to be. What is the theme of the psalm? Well, it's God's covenant with his people, particularly his covenant with Abraham, which he confirmed with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob.

You can hardly miss the fact that covenant's important because it occurs there three times. Notice it's there in verse 8: "He remembers his covenant forever." Verse 9: "The covenant he made with Abraham." And then verse 10: "He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree to Israel as an everlasting covenant." So the covenant is mentioned three times because it was confirmed and initiated three times with Abraham and those two descendants.

Now what is a covenant? Well, a covenant is a promise. In this case, it's a promise of God to his people to do certain things. We don't know the word covenant so well or use it so often, so promise is really a good idea for us. Covenant, moreover, if we think about it and use it at all, sometimes suggests a bargain in which I agree to do something and you agree to do something. And in the case of the covenants that God establishes, they're what is called in theology a unilateral covenant.

It means it's from God entirely; God sets the terms, God makes the promises. And for that reason, promise is a bit better, probably, than covenant for us to use. On the other hand, when we think about promises, we don't keep our promises. Promises are things that are made lightly and are easily broken, and God's promises are not like that. God's promises are firm; you can count on them. Maybe what we ought to be talking about is an oath on the part of God or a solemn commitment on the part of God, something like that.

That's what's involved and that's what's being referred to here. Now the specific covenant is the one that was initially given to Abraham, as I said. God had promised to bless Abraham and the time came—it's told about in Genesis, when in the 15th chapter, God said, "I'm going to enact a covenant with you." And there was a certain form that they went about doing that. Apparently covenants in that day were enacted in that way, very solemnly.

And after all the preparation had been made, we're told that a sleep came upon Abraham and, almost in a trance, he saw images that were suggestive of the presence of God passing by. And he heard God speak and God made the covenant with him in these words: "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years." That's talking about the time in Egypt. "But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward, they will come out with great possessions. In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

Now that's the covenant that was made with Abraham and was repeated to Isaac in the next generation and to Jacob a generation after that. Now as I said, it's a unilateral covenant. It's one in which God alone sets the terms. God says, "You are going to be my people and this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take care of you as a people, and though you will be slaves in Egypt for 400 years, the time will come when I will take you out of Egypt and bring you into your own land and thus fulfill my promise."

Now that's what the psalm is going to explain; it's going to show how God did that. We mustn't think, however, when we talk about a unilateral covenant, that is something that's established by God alone, God alone setting the terms, that there's nothing for us to do. It's true that we can't set the terms, we can't bargain with God, but when God speaks, what remains for us to do is ratify the covenant.

In other words, we say, "Yes, you will be our God and we will follow you and we will walk in these terms that you've set." Now that is suggested here in that stanza, because the people at the very beginning in verse 7 of stanza 2 say, "He is the Lord our God." Does that ring a bell? It should. It's the way it begins in the Ten Commandments. You know what God says in the very first verse of the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, verse 2? God says, "I am the Lord your God. I brought you out of Egypt," and so forth.

And so here the people, responding to that, God is the one who did it. He said, "I'm going to do it," and he did it. "And I am the Lord your God." Now they say, "Yes, you are our God." And that's exactly the way you and I have to respond as well. Jesus Christ says, "I died on the cross for you; I'm calling you to faith." You have to say, "Yes, you will be my God." You can't earn your salvation, you can't do it, there's nothing in you to manipulate God to be gracious to you or save you, but he's done it in Jesus Christ; your part is to respond and say, "Yes, I will follow."

Now we begin with verse 12 with a survey of this history of Israel, which I mentioned earlier. It's a selective review of Israel's history; we've already seen something like it in Psalm 78, and we're going to see it again in Psalm 106. But the emphasis here, unlike the other two psalms I mentioned, but what we should anticipate in terms of what I said about the covenant, is God's utter sovereignty in choosing and preserving Israel.

Now notice that third stanza. It says that God's choice was apart from any impressive numbers on the part of the people. It's true they grew at one point to be a large nation, but at the time that God set his electing hand upon them, they were the smallest of all people. As a matter of fact, he started with Abraham, and Abraham didn't even have any children. It was only after many, many years that he began to have some children, and after that, even when you get to the generation of his grandson, they still only had 12 sons, the ones that went down to Egypt.

And yet God said, "I chose you anyway." You see, that's what it's saying: they were few in number. And when they went to the land, they were strangers in it, few indeed, and yet God blessed them. There may also be the suggestion here that God's choice is apart from any moral qualities in the people. The reason I say that is because of that verse 15. It's in quotation marks and rightly, saying, "Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."

Where does that come from? Well, it comes from the Old Testament; it's part of the story of Abraham that we find in Genesis 20. And the background is this: it was not a good moment in the life of Abraham. He had been with Abimelech, one of the kings of the age, and he was afraid that Abimelech would kill him for the sake of his wife, Sarah. So he lied about his wife, saying she was his sister.

Abimelech almost took Sarah to himself; God intervened to explain that she was already married to Abraham. And Abimelech, who was a righteous man in the circumstances, not only returned her but blessed Abraham. And it was in the context of that that God told Abimelech, "Do not touch my anointed one; do my prophets no harm." So it's out of that situation in Abraham's life that the quotation comes.

It might be a way of saying, when God chose, he chose not only freely apart from numbers but even apart from any moral qualifications on behalf of Abraham because Abraham was nevertheless a sinner. Was he a prophet? Yes, God said he was a prophet, but in this case at least, a lying prophet. And yet God chose him and blessed him. It's a good thing God is like that because none of us would ever experience salvation if he didn't take us exactly the way we are and in spite of the fact that we sin constantly in thought, word, and deed.

Now we move on to the time in Egypt, and here the focus is on Joseph and we're given details that we don't find in Genesis. What Genesis emphasizes is Joseph's character and his spirit of service; in this psalm, what's emphasized is his cruel treatment. Now the interesting verse is verse 18: "They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in iron." This verse has a fascinating history.

The Hebrew text says exactly what you find here: his neck was put in iron. In other words, what we learn here is that he was chained by his feet and by his neck when he was first put into the prison; that's something we're not told in Genesis. But what happened in the history of the transmission of this text is that when the Old Testament Hebrew text was translated into Greek, that is the Greek Septuagint, instead of using the word neck, for some reason they used the Greek word psyche, which means soul.

So the Septuagint version at this point now said his soul was put in irons. And then when Jerome came to produce his Latin version, that is from the Hebrew and the Greek, for some reason Jerome inverted the subject and the object in the sentence. So now instead of saying his soul was put in irons, it said iron entered into his soul. This was the version that was known to Miles Coverdale, who produced a version, a metric version of the psalms that was used by the English for the book of common worship.

So it then entered in that form into the English Book of Common Worship, and because it was used again and again in the Anglican Church, the Anglicans almost got that as a proverb and it somewhat circulates that way in the English language: "iron entered into his soul, iron entered into his soul." Now as I say, it's a mistranslation, it's a compounded error, but if ever there was a fortuitous mistranslation, it's that one because it does indeed describe what must have happened to Joseph during those years of his imprisonment.

You know, you go back to the story of Genesis and you find there that in the early days of his imprisonment, he must have been rather hopeful, and with good cause because God had told him that one day princes and others would bow to him. And here he was in prison; God certainly had more for him than this. He was going to deliver him. And so when he had that experience of interpreting the dream of the butler and the baker and was able to tell one of them that he was going to be restored to the Pharaoh's favor, he said as he left the prison, "Now, remember me when you come into the presence of Pharaoh. I've done nothing wrong, tell him about me and get me out of this dungeon."

And certainly the man who was delighted at being set free would have said to Joseph something like this: he would have said, "Oh, yes, of course I'll do that! You're a wonderful man and you sure have a great skill with dreams." And he went off and got back into the Pharaoh's service and, like so many people we know, he forgot the benefit that he had had. And you read at the very end of the 40th chapter of Genesis, "but he forgot him."

And then the next verse, first verse of chapter 41, says, "after two full years had passed." Think of Joseph lying in that prison for two full years, thinking at the first that surely he'd remember, I mean he got back into the service of the Pharaoh, there must have been all sorts of details to deal with but the time would come, it won't be long now. But a week went by and a month went by and two months went by, and it must have sunk in upon Joseph that this man who had been his friend had forgotten him.

And I suppose it was at that point that the iron entered into his soul. You see, it's that way often with the things that we suffer. They come into our lives and at the beginning we're able to take them. After all, life isn't all silver linings and dark clouds, things are difficult at times, but we can hang in there. But it doesn't go away. And so we have the same thing, and after a while it begins to enter into us and it kind of forms our characters. The monotony of the struggle wears us down and pretty soon the rust of the manacle is in our soul.

But you see, it was only at the end of those two full years when Joseph had ceased to put his hope in man, that God, who had not forgotten him, lifted him out and exalted him to the highest position in the kingdom. Joseph at the end, you know, looked back and he understood it because he told his brothers, "What you did, you did intending to harm me," but he said, "It's alright because God intended it for good to the saving of many lives, as you now see."

And at the very end of the book of Genesis, his last words are these: "I am about to die, but God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." You see, his own experience was the experience of the faithfulness of God to his covenant. There he was in prison for two years, but God did not forget him and God lifted him up. And now he turns to the people whom he's leaving behind and he says, "You're going to be here for 400 years in accordance with the word that's been given to Abraham. But I know that my God who brought me up out of the prison is going to lift you up out of the prison house of Egypt and take you into your own land."

And so God did. Well this is what's described next: it has to do with the Exodus. It might be an interesting exercise when you look at this psalm sometime to go through it and underline all of the pronouns, "He," that refer to God. It's certainly striking that way. This began in the second stanza: "He is the Lord our God. He remembers, He confirmed." Verses 7, 8, and 10.

But then it occurs again in stanza 3: "He allowed no one to oppress them." Verse 14. And then it gets to be dominant in the fourth stanza. First in the story of Joseph: "He called down famine, He sent a man before them." And then in the story of the Exodus: "He made them too numerous, He sent Moses, He sent darkness, He turned their waters into blood, He spoke and there came swarms of flies, He turned their rain into hail, He struck down their vines, He spoke and the locusts came, He struck down all the firstborn of the land."

It's hard to imagine a way in which the psalmist could more clearly teach the sovereignty of God in human affairs. You and I look at our lives and we say, "Well, so-and-so did this to me," and, "look what's happening out here in the stock market or politics or the city and the negative effect it's having on my life." And we blame it here and we push the blame there. But the psalmist says God's in charge of all that.

And one who sees as the Bible sees, looks to God and says, "God, I don't know what you're accomplishing in all of this, but I leave it in your hands and I look to you for blessing." Now we have a description of the plagues here which are described in Exodus. This psalm changes the order of them somewhat and it leaves out two. It begins with the ninth plague, which is the plague of the great darkness, and then it reverts to the original sequence, except that it inverts the order of the third and fourth plagues.

The gnats and the flies here, flies and gnats, but that's just put together in one verse and it omits the fifth and sixth plagues entirely. Now, I don't know why it does that, but it's being selective and it's making the point that God is sovereign and powerful in delivering his people and fulfilling his covenant. I said when we were studying the book of Exodus and these plagues that the clue to understanding what they're all about is to recognize that they're all directed against the gods and the goddesses of Egypt.

It's a way of showing that the Jewish God is the true God; Jehovah is God alone. There were about 80 major deities in Egypt at this time, and they were grouped more or less around the three great forces in Egyptian life: the Nile—Egyptians have a saying, Egypt the gift of the Nile, because the Nile provides water in a land that has none and it overflows annually, at least it used to, to provide some of the richest topsoil in the world.

And then there's the land itself, enriched by the Nile; that's the second of these major factors in Egyptian life. And the third is the sky, with the sun and its relentless heat and light which cause things of course to grow. So all of these gods and goddesses in a polytheistic society were grouped around these various forces of nature. And so when the plagues came, they were directed against them.

The first two were directed against the gods and the goddesses of the Nile, and then the next four against the gods and the goddesses of the land, and finally the last against the gods and goddesses of the sky. Now look how it works. Following the order of this psalm, the first plague is the plague of darkness, actually the ninth in Exodus. A terrible darkness covered the land for three days. Egypt is called a land almost of eternal sun. Ra, the sun god, was the most important of all the gods in the Egyptian pantheon, and suddenly he's blotted out for three days; Ra is gone.

This shows the superiority of Jehovah over Ra. Second plague: the Nile is turned to blood, actually the first in Exodus. Osiris, well-known god, was one of the gods of the Nile. Another was Khnum, the guardian of the Nile sources. Hapi was the spirit of the Nile; in upper Egypt there were gods named Hapamon and Taweret, they were associated with the Nile. Suddenly the Nile is turned to blood; where's the power of these gods to preserve the water?

Obviously they have no power at all. Next the land is overrun with frogs. We know that the Egyptians worshiped frogs because they've discovered amulets with figures of frogs. These frogs now are sacred, as many other animals in Egypt were. They couldn't kill the frogs, so when they began to multiply, they swarmed over the land, they got into the beds and the homes and the ovens, they were everywhere; they couldn't do anything about it.

Where was the power of Hekt? Obviously Jehovah was more powerful. The plague of flies and gnats, it was exactly the same thing. The insects were identified with gods; they couldn't control them. There was thunder, hail, and lightning. This is the first of the plagues that's directed against the gods and goddesses of the sky. I said in Egypt there's hardly ever any rain. In Cairo, Cairo only gets two inches of rain a year, and there are places in upper Egypt that get no rain at all.

The water comes only from the Nile, but suddenly the sky's filled with clouds and there was thunder and lightning, we're told, that ran along the ground and the damage was so great that crops were destroyed. Where was Shu, the god of the atmosphere, or Horus and Month, the bird gods, or Nut, the sky goddess? They were all shown to be absolutely impotent. There was the plague of the locusts that destroyed all of the crops in the fields.

Nefri was the goddess of grain; where was she? Anubis was the guardian of the fields. Min was the deity of harvest; where were those gods? And then finally, there was the death of the firstborn. You see, the Pharaoh himself was a god in Egypt, and his son among the firstborn of the Egyptians who were slain on that fatal night was destined to be the next god. And yet the son perishes, and where is Pharaoh the god with power even to save his own son?

He has absolutely none at all. After this final judgment, it's no surprise according to verse 38 that Egypt was glad when they left and that the people were even sent away with gifts of gold and silver by the Egyptians. Now, I think it's worth pointing out that never in all of history, except perhaps through the ministry of Jesus Christ, was God's word to a people more plain, pointed, personal, or powerful.

This is a way of speaking which even the hardness of the Egyptians was unable to avoid. And yet you see in spite of it, when you get to the end, Pharaoh is unconverted and finally perishes along with his troops in the waters of the Red Sea. So I make just an incidental point here: don't be discouraged if in your witnessing, your testifying to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, you run into unbelief as well. It's natural to human beings to resist God; that's what it is to be a sinner.

And so don't be discouraged. God accomplishes what he wills and his word will be powerful in you to do what he wants for other people. Well we come to the very end, verses 37 to 45. These verses follow Israel through the years of her desert wandering until God actually brought the people into Canaan, thereby fulfilling the promises made to Abraham. Now you can hardly miss that.

Remember earlier in the second stanza the word covenant was repeated several times? Well it comes in again here at the end, not as the word itself, but it does say verse 32 that God remembered his holy promise given to his servant Abraham. So the point that we get to here at the end of the psalm is that nothing was lacking of all God's promises to the people. And so people of God should, to go back to verse one, give thanks and call upon his name and make known his deeds among the people.

That was true for Israel; shouldn't that be true for us who have received salvation through a mighty acts of God in the life of Jesus Christ? His death on our behalf, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven, his sending the Holy Spirit, shouldn't we praise him too? Well there's one more thought. It comes at the very end; I close with this; it's an important one. It's said in verse 45 that God gave Israel the lands of the nations, not merely that they might know his goodness or talk about him to other people or call upon his name, but notice, that they might keep his precepts and obey his laws.

In other words, that they might obey his commandments. God did all this in order that they might live for him. That's the way the Ten Commandments reads, isn't it? "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Remember to honor your father and your mother," and so forth down through all of the laws.

Derek Kidner, whom I sometimes mention as one of the great commentators on the psalms, says in a little paragraph words that I think are really wonderfully sharp at this point. He says, "The final verse shows why grace abounded." He's tying this now to the New Testament. "Not that sin might also abound, but," to quote the New Testament equivalent of verse 45, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit." Romans 8, verse 4.

You see, that's the ultimate point of God's covenant after all: not merely that we might be his people, but that being his people we might live holy lives, being holy as he is. Peter knew it; Peter wrote about it in his letter, his first letter. He said, "Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it's written 'Be holy because I am holy,' says the Lord." Thank the Lord? Yes. Call upon his name? By all means. Make known his deeds among the people? Certainly. But also live a holy life if the Lord, the holy God, really is your God. Let's pray.

Our Father, we are thankful for this psalm, again, for all of its teaching about the covenant and your will and your ways. We're thankful for the practical applications that come through so clearly in the psalm. Our Father, do bless us as we go. May these truths from your word remain with us and guide us ever increasingly and step by step in your way. For Jesus' sake, amen.

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