Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on Psalm 66:1-12.
Anybody here look at Jesse Waters on Fox News? He has a segment where he goes out on the streets in a college community and asks people to identify important people like Vice President Harris or Nancy Pelosi. Or how many states make up the United States? Or, who won the Second World War? A lot them have no idea who these people or what their country did. I guess it’s supposed to be funny, but, I think that it is sad that these people have graduated from high school and are getting a college education, and yet don’t even know the names of the people who are governing them or what events allowed them the freedom of being dumb.
Who are the people who you expect everybody in the United States to at least recognize their name? President Biden. Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin. As the area of consideration becomes larger, there will be fewer and fewer people we might expect everybody to recognize. And if we expanded that to the whole world, there would be maybe a handful who we would expect everybody in the world to know about.
In today’s study the writer of Psalm 66 claims that there is someone who is known all over the world - God. Hopefully we will explore that claim and satisfy ourselves if the psalmist has his facts straight.
The psalm starts out with the writer sending the psalm to the “musician” and identifying the piece as a song or psalm. No further instruction are given in the introduction. We don’t know who wrote it or why he wrote it other than to praise God. If we wanted to classify this psalm it would be a Thanksgiving Hymn in response to all the things God has done for his people. The verses we are going to study deal mostly with how all Jews and the world should praise God.
Psalm 66:1 Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; 2 sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise. 3 Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds!Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you. 4 All the earth worships you; they sing praises to your name." Selah
Who is supposed to make this joyful noise? All the earth. Wait a minute. He isn’t limiting this happiness to the Jews. He is including everybody in the world. Do you think everybody in the world knows God? Or at least the God we worship? What people in the world know God? Well, we have the God of our Bible. That includes two groups of people - Jews and Christians. That covers a lot of people, but, not the whole world. Islam claims that they worship the same God or at least it is the same God that Abraham worshiped which would link them to our Bible God. That sure adds a lot more people. But, there are whole countries like India, China and Japan who worship beings not at all linked to our God.
Then there are those who believe in our God, but, in a totally different way than we or the Jews or even the Muslims do. Have you ever heard of the term “Deist”? Thomas Jefferson was a deist and a lot of other founders of our country. What does a deist believe? For them they have no argument with us in the first chapter of Genesis. God created everything. They are on board so far. But, for them, that is where it ends. After creating everything, God washed his hands of his creation. He got everything going and now we are on our own. The next time, the deist say, we will have any contact with God will be at the end of time. You see, a deist believes that God didn’t or never will reveal himself to humans until it’s too late. How does that sit with the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Quran? Did God reveal himself to humans in those books? Our Bible is a history of how God revealed himself to people. While we have a lot of problems with the Quran, it is a book about God allegedly revealing himself to Mohammed. That is why these religions are called “revealed” religions because God let people know him. That leaves us with the big question: How do we know God?
One thing we can be assured of, when the psalmist wrote this song, most of the earth didn’t know the revealed God. So what is he getting at when he directs all of the earth to make a joyful noise to God and praise him? As Christians we can see that while the whole world didn’t know God when this psalm was written, getting the whole earth to know God is a work in progress. In fact that is exactly what Jesus commanded us to do just before going to rejoin His father, “Go and make disciples of the whole world.” When this happens, then what the psalmists says will come true.
What shall we sing about? The glory of his name. In verse 3 that glory is equated to God’s power. It is a song about the power of God’s name. Remember we studied that for Jews a name was more than something to call when supper is ready. A name told us something about the person. Esau got his name because it meant "hairy" and he was a hairy little goomer when he was born. Jacob got his name, which means grasping, because he was hanging on to the heel of his brother at birth. So, God’s name tells us about God, the essence of who God is. It identifies God. To sing to his name is to recognize who that name represents.
When we are through doing our job of telling the world about God and his Son, then the world will join us in our praise of God. There will be a world chorus and all of us will be singing on key. Not a screechy or bad voice in the bunch. Even if we do hit a bad note or two, I think God will still give us a standing “O”.
How does the psalmist end these verses? Selah. The last time we talked about this word I said that it was put in the psalm as an instruction for the choir director. Nobody knows exactly what it means. Some experts think that the instruction is to hit the cymbals. That would get everybody’s attention. In those rousing Sousa marches, the stirring music always seems to climax with crashing cymbals. Maybe that is how the psalmist sees this first section ending - with a crash of cymbals. It sure would be dramatic, wouldn’t it? Like putting an exclamation mark after what was said.
Psalm 66:5 Come and see what God has done; he is awesome in his deeds among mortals. 6 He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There we rejoiced in him, 7 who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations--- let the rebellious not exalt themselves.
Actually, there were two major events involving the parting of the waters. Before we get to those, we have to understand that when people in the Bible speak about “seas” it wasn’t necessarily a large body of water. Almost any flowing water or river might be called a sea. The first major sea parting was when the Israelites were fleeing from Pharaoh’s army.
The Israelites had come to the red Sea and the Egyptians were close behind. Moses wasn’t sure how God was going to handle this new situation. A worried Moses went to the Lord in prayer and cried, “What are we going to do now, Lord?” God answers Moses' question with a question, “What do you want now, Moses? I told you I was handling everything. Just get up there and tell the people to keep marching forward.” Can’t you see Moses. “Ah, excuse me Lord, there is this matter of the Red Sea. It’s - ah - pretty deep. Don’t you think we - ah - might drown if we started marching forward?” God said, “Now, wait a minute. I wasn’t finished. You go and stand on that hill over there. Do you see the hill I'm talking about? When I give the signal, lift up your hand. When you do this, you are really going to see something that's going to blow your! See that sea out there. Well, it’s going to part right smack down the middle and it will be like a road, all dry and every thing. All the people have to do is pick up their stuff and walk across. Now, just to make sure that the Egyptians don’t get too close, I’ll move my pillar of clouds and fire to the back of the line and scare the Sphinx out of those Egyptians. When the Egyptians follow my people - and they will - I’ll have my final victory over them and they will never bother my people again.”
But, while the riverbed was stable enough for the feet of the Israelites, the chariot wheels dug into the bed exposing the wet ground under it. It wasn’t long before the chariots became mired in the mud the wheels churned up. With the chariots unable to move, the army was stopped right in the middle of the crossing. They were so busy trying to get their chariots free that they didn’t notice the churning walls on each side start to calm down. Then they felt water rising around their feet. The rising water was increasing faster and faster as the walls of water on each side of the corridor collapsed filling the riverbed highway with water. As the Israelites looked on, the waters washed over that large army, the yells of the men and neighing of the horses were muted and replaced by the quiet rippling of the flowing water. Soon it was as if that great army had never existed.
But God wasn’t finished with opening rivers for the Israelites. After providing manna when they were hungry and water from rocks when they were thirsty, after renewing his covenant with them at Mt. Sinai, after forty years and with the promised land on the horizon, there was still left one more obstacle. They had to cross the Jordan. They had sent twelve spies across in boats and they had safely returned. But, how were two million men, women and children going to cross the Jordan? If there were six people to a boat, they would need over 330,000 boats to get everybody across. Not even the invasion of Normandy required that meany boats. So, how were they going to get to that land of milk and honey?
It was about harvest time - about May. The snow melting on Mt. Hermon ran down and flowed in the Jordan swelling the river. There were still a few places where the water was shallow enough to cross, but, the crossings were narrow. Israelites trying to cross would be sitting ducks for the Canaanite archers. The journey to the Promised Land started with the parting of the Red Sea. Now, the journey ends when the entrance into the Promised Land will happen by parting the Jordan. What comes around goes around. Kind of wraps everything up in a neat package. Another thing is that all the people crossing the Jordan, except Joshua and Caleb, weren’t even born when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. These Israelites were children and grandchildren who had been told about what had happened when the Red Sea was crossed.
Joshua gets detailed instructions from God. When the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea God was there to lead them with a pillar of smoke and fire. This time the Ark will represent God’s presence and will lead them into Canaan.
Priests, carrying the Ark, dip their toes into the Jordan and it immediately stops flowing. The minute the priests stepped into the water, the water rolled up on each side and a dry strip of land extended to the other side. Just like what happened at the Red Sea. They carried the Ark to the center of the river and stood there while 40,000 soldiers marched across. Can you imagine the effect this had on the Canaanites? Their spies watching from the hills must have been scared to death by now. The Israelite God stopped a fast flowing swollen river and then parted it enough for a whole army to cross. The rest of the camp followed - women and children .
After everybody crossed, Joshua told twelve men to pick up stones and carry them to place where the priest had stood with the Ark in the middle of the Jordan and place them there. Scripture tells us that they are still there to mark the place where the Ark had rested. He then told the twelve to pick up twelve more rocks and take them to the other side. Make a memorial there. This was going to be a teaching display for future generations. We have memorials today. The Arizona in Pearl Harbor. The Alamo. Maybe this would end up a tourist sight where parents would take their children on trips to see where God led his people through the parted Jordan river.
Another cymbal crash and we move on to the next part of the psalm.
Psalm 66:8 Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, 9 who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. 10 For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. 11 You brought us unto the net; you laid burdens on our backs; 12 you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
And what did we get for going through trials? It brings us to a better place. Our own promised land. A spacious place at the table in the presence of God himself.
Who is Joe Biden? Who is Nancy Pelosi? Jessie Waters can’t find people who know these important people. But, how will the world answer when they ask who is God? That’s where we come in. The world will never know unless we tell them.
Prayer: Give us the courage to make you known first to the group of people we see every day and then to the whole world. Amen.
outstanding Jim, as usual.
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