Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

If Jesus retold the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector, who would be the characters today? The Pharisee could be a student at the classical Christian school or a successful business man or a very industrious housewife––the defining trait is someone who trusts in their own righteousness. The apostle Paul fit the description of parable’s Pharisee and he had quite a bit that he could put his trust in––his parents, his history, his education, his career success, his spiritual zeal. Paul summed up all of this as “my own righteousness” (Phil. 3:9).Then Paul had a radical conversion, but not the kind of conversion we often think of. Paul was saved from his own righteousness. In Philippians 3, Paul tells about the great discovery that he can and must abandon all his self-righteousness because he gained that which is so much more excellent and valuable in Christ Jesus––who saves him from his self-righteousness.

If there is one lesson that the psalmist would like for us to take away from this psalm, it is the desire that men would learn how to praise God for His goodness. It must follow from this that—either from the difficulty of the lesson or the sluggishness of the students—this is not an easy thing to accomplish. We consider some of the central aspects of this difficulty shortly.

God is always to be praised for His wondrous works, but we also need to remember to make sure to catalog our praises. God works wonderfully in creation, and He works wonderfully in the salvation of His people. He also works wonderfully, as we shall see here, in the salvation of ingrates.One level of praise is to extol God for His creative work in the heavens and earth. Another level of praise has to do with His work throughout the course of history—and because of the fact of sin, this is largely the work of redemption. And, as we shall see here, it frequently involves the salvation of stupid ingrates.

The world is fundamentally divided between the truth and all lies. Jesus is the Truth, and He speaks the truth of God, and those who are born of God love the truth and hear His voice. But those who are not born of God cannot hear the word of God because they are sons of the devil, who is a liar, and the father of lies. So when we come to considering the importance of telling the truth, repenting of our lies, and learning to hate all lies, we are talking about nothing less than fundamental loyalties, allegiances, and eternal destinies.

What we have here is a glorious retelling of God’s deliverance of Israel in the Exodus. In addition, we find that it is a retelling that is theologically sophisticated, on several levels.

The Trinity is the source and archetype of true Christian community: “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 1:3). We have been made alive together, and the resulting community is a glorious part of the riches of His grace (Eph. 2:5-6). But we want our fellowship to be shaped by the Bible and not whatever we (or our culture) assumes it to be.

In this psalm, among many other truths, we see that the Holy Spirit of God is the one who gives all forms of life. “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created” (v. 30).And in the Nicene Creed, which we recited today, we confessed that we believe “in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” He is the one who brooded over the face of the deep at the first creation, and He is the one who was poured out upon the first residents of the new creation at Pentecost. He is the giver of life, and the giver of new life. In this psalm we are invited to exult in the truths of creationand a detailed providence.

In this most encouraging psalm, we have a plain statement of what our condition is apart from the grace of God, coupled with a clear testimony of the giving of that grace regardless. One of the worst things a man can be is an ingrate, and in this psalm we are catechized in the glorious discipline of not forgetting His benefits.

We have in this psalm a prayer offered up in the midst of desperate affliction. The afflicted are those who feel most in need of answered prayer. They are those who feel like getting an answer is a true long shot. But affliction makes them eloquent anyhow, and it is the kind of eloquence that moves Jehovah. Moreover, the fact that the affliction could be the result of our own sin doesn’t really alter that. God loves the cry of the desolate.