Cindy and I were down visiting my family during the second week of August. My parents bought an old farmhouse fifteen or so years ago, and it seems that some part of it always needs repairing. This summer it was the north side of the roof.
While we were down there, the family retold some of our favorite stories. The one about my dad and I getting stuck out all night on the side of a mountain and how we made a makeshift tent to keep from freezing to death. The one about the hairy, muddy family Golden Retriever lying down and refusing to take another step halfway down a hike from a mountain peak, and how my brother carried that smelly, dirty dog in his arms the rest of the way down and then went straight to work.
If you listen to these stories my family tells long enough, you begin to hear a pattern. Usually someone’s on a trip or working on some project and things go frustratingly wrong, but then the family perseveres and somehow makes things work out. Usually we’re all laughing at our past hardships and frustrations. Time and time again, my family’s stories follow this pattern.
My point here is that once you’ve heard a few of my family’s stories, you have a pretty good idea of the sort of people we are. And, so, when hard times arise, you know how we’ll probably respond. I suspect that if I hear enough of each of your stories, I’ll get a good idea of the sort of people you are.
I believe that Scripture tells us something similar this morning. In Psalm 111, we hear that if we tell and listen to the stories about our God often enough and for long enough, we’ll learn what to expect from God in the future and how to live with this sort of God.. The last verse of Psalm 111 sings, The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom; good understanding have all who do [his commandments]. His song of praise continues for ever.
(Check out the whole sermon after the jump. . .)
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I greatly enjoy listening to your stories. I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m sure you’ll hear me say it again. Stories are important to me. I think they’re important to you too. Over a cup of coffee, one person told me that he misses the old days, when folks would come for a visit, and the grownups would sit for hours in the living room telling stories while the kids sat on the floor or stood in the doorway just so they could listen.
I remember when I was young, often on those long road trips with my family, I would beg my dad to tell us stories while he was driving: the stories of when he was growing up, stories about fishing trips gone awry, stories about the neighborhood bully finally getting what he deserved, stories about the things he lived through and loved when he was a kid.
When we tell stories, we are telling others the sort of people we are. Better than our Social Insurance Numbers or a driver’s license or a resume, a story tells the people who hear it, “This is the kind of person I am. This is what I’ve done in the past. This is what I’ve been through. This is how I’ve changed. This is the sort of thing that’s important enough for me to remember.” When we hear someone’s stories, it’s usually not hard for us to figure out the sort of person they’ll be in the future.
Cindy and I were down visiting my family during the second week of August. My parents bought an old farmhouse fifteen or so years ago, and it seems that some part of it always needs repairing. This summer it was the north side of the roof.
While we were down there, the family retold some of our favorite stories. The one about my dad and I getting stuck out all night on the side of a mountain and how we made a makeshift tent to keep from freezing to death.. The one about the hairy, muddy family Golden Retriever named Rossie lying down and refusing to take another step halfway down a hike from a mountain peak, and how my brother carried that smelly, dirty dog in his arms the rest of the way down and then went straight to work.
If you listen to these stories my family tells long enough, you begin to hear a pattern. Usually someone’s on a trip or working on some project and things go frustratingly wrong, but then the family perseveres and somehow makes things work out. Usually we’re all laughing at our past hardships and frustrations. Time and time again, my family’s stories follow this pattern.
My point here is that once you’ve heard a few of my family’s stories, you have a pretty good idea of the sort of people we are. And, so, when hard times arise, you know how we’ll probably respond. I suspect that if I hear enough of each of your stories, I’ll get a good idea of the sort of people you are.
I believe that Scripture tells us something similar this morning. In Psalm 111, we hear that if we tell and listen to the stories about our God often enough and for long enough, we’ll learn what to expect from God in the future and how to live with this sort of God.. The last verse of Psalm 111 sings, The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom; good understanding have all who do [his commandments]. His song of praise continues for ever.
I want to be wise. I’d guess with some confidence that you want to be wise too. Being wise means knowing how to live life well. I remember being in grade school sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning, and my pastor told us the Hebrew word for wisdom was chokmah. It was the first word in Hebrew I’d ever learned. He said that chokmah means skill. A good farmer has chokmah in farming, a good builder has chokmah at building. What we want when we say we want wisdom is skill in living; we want to know how to live well.
Psalm 111 is a bit like an elementary school reader for learning wisdom. When we read it out, it’s like we’re going over the ABCs of wisdom, the basic fundamentals. It’s lesson number one in a course on wisdom. In fact, in Hebrew Psalm 111 is an acrostic poem; each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from aleph to tav. This lesson about wisdom is so important that the psalmist is like a teacher willing to try anything to get us to remember it. It helps me to think of the psalmist as a teacher--the best kind of teacher, one who makes learning interesting and fun. I’ve had a few teachers like that: Miss Smiley in grade two who taught me multiplication, Mr Ottey in grade five who helped me love writing and reading, and Dr Mills at university who challenged me to think deeply and generously. Since we don’t speak Hebrew, the original psalmnist-teacher’s acrostic is a bit lost on us. But I hope we can hear how hard that teacher worked for us to learn this lesson.
The psalmist teaches us about wisdom in three steps. Step one is vv 1-5. We can think of it as the introduction. Our teacher this morning, the psalmist, walks into the room, and the first thing he does is to write in big letters on the chalkboard “Praise the LORD,” only he writes in Hebrew, so it would say in Hebrew script “Hallelujah!” (Hallelujah isn’t just a funny sounding church word--it’s Hebrew for Praise the LORD.) He wants to get us thinking. He wants to get us talking. For what do we praise God? How do we praise God? What comes into your mind when somebody tells you to praise the LORD?
We often use the word “praise” when we talk about the songs we sing together on Sunday mornings. In our songs, we often praise God for things like “salvation” or “grace” or “mercy.” Sometimes we name God’s character traits, like God’s power or holiness. But our teacher the psalmist has something a bit more personal in mind. The psalmist’s command for us to praise is maybe more like when Ron or Sam invite us to name the moments and situations where God came through for us in our Sunday morning prayer together. The psalmist wants us to tell our personal stories of God protecting us, healing us, giving us a second chance at life. We can hear him explain this in vv 1-4:
Psalm 111 tells us that God enjoys hearing stories too. The psalmist calls these Yahweh’s accomplishments or deeds. These are the stories of what God has done for us. In v 1, our teacher the psalmist shows us how to say thank you to God publicly when God’s people are gathered together. In the same way that we might tell stories about the guests of honor at a wedding or a retirement party, an anniversary celebration or a memorial service, so we should grab the microphone to let everyone else know the things we remember and treasure that God has done for us.
I’ve been to quite a few churches where an extended time of praise and sharing, complete with an open microphone, made up a good part of the morning service. One Sunday with an African American Baptist church in Ohio stands out in particular. The service started at, maybe, 10:30, but by 12:30 the pastor still hadn’t gotten up to give the sermon. The entire morning so far had been a back and forth between songs of praise and congregation members walking up front to tell how God had seen them through that week. I left there more encouraged than I have been by many other Sundays where the pastor’s sermon filled up most the morning.
If we take vv 2 and 4 seriously, our God has done these deeds, at least in part, so that we will meditate on them and retell them. Some translations may say study and remember. Why would God want keep God’s deeds fresh in our memory and in our conversation?
Is it just that God likes to be complimented? Do we have the kind of God who fishes for compliments, who manipulatively forces praise from us? Not at all. If our life with God thus far doesn’t have us fully convinced, we can look over at Ps 50, where God says, I shall take no young bull [for sacrifice] out of your house, nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills [. . .] If I were hungry [for sacrifice], I would not tell you; for the world is mine, and all it contains. God is in no way in need of our praise. God made all the world, the earth, the stars, the galaxies. God made our molecules and cells. Everything God has created sings God’s praise. Our weak voices and our meager thanksgiving are surely lost in the choir of God’s symphony of praise.
Yet still God acts in our lives. God shows up for us when we need him. And God wants us to remember and to retell to one another the stories of what God has done. Why?
The end of v 5 points us in the direction of an answer. The psalmist tells us, He continues to remember his covenant for ever. If we want to hear the powerful promise of this line, we need to put ourselves in the place of the original community for whom the psalmist sang this song. By the time the last forty or so psalms were gathered into what we know as the biblical book of Psalms, the Israelites had lost their king, their land, and their temple. The horrifyingly brutal armies of evil empires had conquered the holy city Jerusalem. Its temple and walls were torn down and burnt. All but the poorest of the poor were driven from their land to live as slaves and serfs in distant countries. To the Israelites it seemed every promise Yahweh their God gave them through Moses had been broken. Their reputation as Yahweh’s special people seemed to be a cruel joke.
Then, as one world empire conquered another, some of the Israelites were allowed to return to Jerusalem, to rebuild a temple, to rebuild their city walls. Suddenly, those old stories of deliverance from Egypt, of provision in the desert, began to sound true again. The Israelites realized that, yes, Yahweh their God is still gracious and compassionate. God does indeed continue to remember his covenant for ever.
See, if we tell and retell the stories of what God has done for in the past, we come to know how God will act in the future. Praising God, telling these stories, turns out to be step one in gaining wisdom to live life well in our relationship with God. Our stories about God tell us the kind of person God is.
After we’ve mastered step one of this lesson, about praising God through stories, our teacher the psalmist moves us to step two in vv 6 through the first of v 9. He says,
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This past week has been my first official week as your pastor here at Warman Mennonite Church. Cindy and I drove back into town Monday evening, and by Wednesday morning I was in the meetinghouse office, planning with Pastor Bernie and putting together this sermon for this morning. I’ve enjoyed this week so far. Already a number of you have welcomed me into your homes, poured me a cup of coffee, and shared some of your stories with me.
I greatly enjoy listening to your stories. I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m sure you’ll hear me say it again. Stories are important to me. I think they’re important to you too. Over a cup of coffee, one person told me that he misses the old days, when folks would come for a visit, and the grownups would sit for hours in the living room telling stories while the kids sat on the floor or stood in the doorway just so they could listen.
I remember when I was young, often on those long road trips with my family, I would beg my dad to tell us stories while he was driving: the stories of when he was growing up, stories about fishing trips gone awry, stories about the neighborhood bully finally getting what he deserved, stories about the things he lived through and loved when he was a kid.
When we tell stories, we are telling others the sort of people we are. Better than our Social Insurance Numbers or a driver’s license or a resume, a story tells the people who hear it, “This is the kind of person I am. This is what I’ve done in the past. This is what I’ve been through. This is how I’ve changed. This is the sort of thing that’s important enough for me to remember.” When we hear someone’s stories, it’s usually not hard for us to figure out the sort of person they’ll be in the future.
Cindy and I were down visiting my family during the second week of August. My parents bought an old farmhouse fifteen or so years ago, and it seems that some part of it always needs repairing. This summer it was the north side of the roof.
While we were down there, the family retold some of our favorite stories. The one about my dad and I getting stuck out all night on the side of a mountain and how we made a makeshift tent to keep from freezing to death.. The one about the hairy, muddy family Golden Retriever named Rossie lying down and refusing to take another step halfway down a hike from a mountain peak, and how my brother carried that smelly, dirty dog in his arms the rest of the way down and then went straight to work.
If you listen to these stories my family tells long enough, you begin to hear a pattern. Usually someone’s on a trip or working on some project and things go frustratingly wrong, but then the family perseveres and somehow makes things work out. Usually we’re all laughing at our past hardships and frustrations. Time and time again, my family’s stories follow this pattern.
My point here is that once you’ve heard a few of my family’s stories, you have a pretty good idea of the sort of people we are. And, so, when hard times arise, you know how we’ll probably respond. I suspect that if I hear enough of each of your stories, I’ll get a good idea of the sort of people you are.
I believe that Scripture tells us something similar this morning. In Psalm 111, we hear that if we tell and listen to the stories about our God often enough and for long enough, we’ll learn what to expect from God in the future and how to live with this sort of God.. The last verse of Psalm 111 sings, The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom; good understanding have all who do [his commandments]. His song of praise continues for ever.
I want to be wise. I’d guess with some confidence that you want to be wise too. Being wise means knowing how to live life well. I remember being in grade school sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning, and my pastor told us the Hebrew word for wisdom was chokmah. It was the first word in Hebrew I’d ever learned. He said that chokmah means skill. A good farmer has chokmah in farming, a good builder has chokmah at building. What we want when we say we want wisdom is skill in living; we want to know how to live well.
Psalm 111 is a bit like an elementary school reader for learning wisdom. When we read it out, it’s like we’re going over the ABCs of wisdom, the basic fundamentals. It’s lesson number one in a course on wisdom. In fact, in Hebrew Psalm 111 is an acrostic poem; each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from aleph to tav. This lesson about wisdom is so important that the psalmist is like a teacher willing to try anything to get us to remember it. It helps me to think of the psalmist as a teacher--the best kind of teacher, one who makes learning interesting and fun. I’ve had a few teachers like that: Miss Smiley in grade two who taught me multiplication, Mr Ottey in grade five who helped me love writing and reading, and Dr Mills at university who challenged me to think deeply and generously. Since we don’t speak Hebrew, the original psalmnist-teacher’s acrostic is a bit lost on us. But I hope we can hear how hard that teacher worked for us to learn this lesson.
The psalmist teaches us about wisdom in three steps. Step one is vv 1-5. We can think of it as the introduction. Our teacher this morning, the psalmist, walks into the room, and the first thing he does is to write in big letters on the chalkboard “Praise the LORD,” only he writes in Hebrew, so it would say in Hebrew script “Hallelujah!” (Hallelujah isn’t just a funny sounding church word--it’s Hebrew for Praise the LORD.) He wants to get us thinking. He wants to get us talking. For what do we praise God? How do we praise God? What comes into your mind when somebody tells you to praise the LORD?
We often use the word “praise” when we talk about the songs we sing together on Sunday mornings. In our songs, we often praise God for things like “salvation” or “grace” or “mercy.” Sometimes we name God’s character traits, like God’s power or holiness. But our teacher the psalmist has something a bit more personal in mind. The psalmist’s command for us to praise is maybe more like when Ron or Sam invite us to name the moments and situations where God came through for us in our Sunday morning prayer together. The psalmist wants us to tell our personal stories of God protecting us, healing us, giving us a second chance at life. We can hear him explain this in vv 1-4:
I will give thanks to Yahweh with all my heart, In the gathering of the upright and in the congregation.Most of us like to receive a compliment. It feels good when somebody tell us we are kind. But it feels even better when the same person follows with the story of a time they noticed our kindness. We smile at a compliment, but our hearts are warmed when someone says to us “I really appreciated it when you did such and such.” I hope we can share many of these kind of stories on the appreciation Sunday coming up on September 16.
Mighty are Yahweh’s accomplishments-- All who find delight in them meditate on them.
Splendid and celebrated are his deeds, And his righteousness remains firm forever.
He did his deeds so that we would retell them. Gracious and compassionate is Yahweh.
Psalm 111 tells us that God enjoys hearing stories too. The psalmist calls these Yahweh’s accomplishments or deeds. These are the stories of what God has done for us. In v 1, our teacher the psalmist shows us how to say thank you to God publicly when God’s people are gathered together. In the same way that we might tell stories about the guests of honor at a wedding or a retirement party, an anniversary celebration or a memorial service, so we should grab the microphone to let everyone else know the things we remember and treasure that God has done for us.
I’ve been to quite a few churches where an extended time of praise and sharing, complete with an open microphone, made up a good part of the morning service. One Sunday with an African American Baptist church in Ohio stands out in particular. The service started at, maybe, 10:30, but by 12:30 the pastor still hadn’t gotten up to give the sermon. The entire morning so far had been a back and forth between songs of praise and congregation members walking up front to tell how God had seen them through that week. I left there more encouraged than I have been by many other Sundays where the pastor’s sermon filled up most the morning.
If we take vv 2 and 4 seriously, our God has done these deeds, at least in part, so that we will meditate on them and retell them. Some translations may say study and remember. Why would God want keep God’s deeds fresh in our memory and in our conversation?
Is it just that God likes to be complimented? Do we have the kind of God who fishes for compliments, who manipulatively forces praise from us? Not at all. If our life with God thus far doesn’t have us fully convinced, we can look over at Ps 50, where God says, I shall take no young bull [for sacrifice] out of your house, nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills [. . .] If I were hungry [for sacrifice], I would not tell you; for the world is mine, and all it contains. God is in no way in need of our praise. God made all the world, the earth, the stars, the galaxies. God made our molecules and cells. Everything God has created sings God’s praise. Our weak voices and our meager thanksgiving are surely lost in the choir of God’s symphony of praise.
Yet still God acts in our lives. God shows up for us when we need him. And God wants us to remember and to retell to one another the stories of what God has done. Why?
The end of v 5 points us in the direction of an answer. The psalmist tells us, He continues to remember his covenant for ever. If we want to hear the powerful promise of this line, we need to put ourselves in the place of the original community for whom the psalmist sang this song. By the time the last forty or so psalms were gathered into what we know as the biblical book of Psalms, the Israelites had lost their king, their land, and their temple. The horrifyingly brutal armies of evil empires had conquered the holy city Jerusalem. Its temple and walls were torn down and burnt. All but the poorest of the poor were driven from their land to live as slaves and serfs in distant countries. To the Israelites it seemed every promise Yahweh their God gave them through Moses had been broken. Their reputation as Yahweh’s special people seemed to be a cruel joke.
Then, as one world empire conquered another, some of the Israelites were allowed to return to Jerusalem, to rebuild a temple, to rebuild their city walls. Suddenly, those old stories of deliverance from Egypt, of provision in the desert, began to sound true again. The Israelites realized that, yes, Yahweh their God is still gracious and compassionate. God does indeed continue to remember his covenant for ever.
See, if we tell and retell the stories of what God has done for in the past, we come to know how God will act in the future. Praising God, telling these stories, turns out to be step one in gaining wisdom to live life well in our relationship with God. Our stories about God tell us the kind of person God is.
After we’ve mastered step one of this lesson, about praising God through stories, our teacher the psalmist moves us to step two in vv 6 through the first of v 9. He says,
He announced the strength of his accomplishments to his people by giving them an inheritance of nations.
The accomplishments he’s achieved are faithfulness and justice. His instructions are reliable,
firm for ever and ever, things done in faithfulness and uprightness.
Redemption he sent to his people. He commanded his covenant for ever.
After instructing his students to tell others what God has done in praise, the psalmist begins to do just this himself. He tells again the stories of what God has done for God’s people. In this short psalm the stories are brief, more allusions than anecdotes. But we could look back to Pss 106 and 107 to hear these same stories told more fully with vivid detail.
The psalmist picks out those stories that mean the most for his congregation. For a community who were exiles and refugees he conjures up the story of God giving the Israelites a homeland. For a community whose center of religious life had been desecrated and burnt, he reminds them that God had given them the Torah, the books of the Law, as the heart of their religion before they even had a temple. For a community still dominated by a world empire, he tells again the Exodus story of liberation.
When Yahweh met Moses for the first time in a burning bush, he told Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite” (Ex 3.7-8). This is Yahweh’s promise to Moses, a covenant Yahweh would ratify with all the people by giving the Torah at Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 23.20ff).
These events were ancient history for the psalmist and the people of his congregation. But the stories, the stories of what God had done way back then, mirrored what God was doing for them in their day.
In v 6, the psalmist recalls God’s power in giving the Israelites a homeland. It was not through military strategy or more advanced weapons that Jericho’s wall crumbled. No new technology made the sun stand still in the sky while Joshua defended Gibeon from five Canaanite kings. No, the psalmist says, these events show the Israelites the strength of God’s accomplishments. The first part of v 7 says that giving a home to the refugee Israelites was the work of God’s hands, a work that is faithful--or “true” as some translations have it. The Hebrew word for faithfulness or truth stresses reliability. The psalmist is saying that the God who brought us home in the past is reliable to bring us home again.
The second half of v 7 and all of v 8 remind the congregation of God giving the Torah. The Torah or Law as we sometimes call it was the heart of the Israelites’ relationship with Yahweh. God gave it to them as a gracious gift when he moved into their midst in the Tabernacle. Again, the psalmist reminds the people that the God who gave them the Torah is reliable, firm for ever, full of faithfulness.
Finally, in v 9, the psalmist tells the Israelites’ greatest story, the story of the Exodus. God sent redemption to his people. Immediately the psalmist returns to the refrain from v 5, He has commanded his covenant for ever.
These stories summon forth more stories about what God has done for us. The Israelites of the psalmist’s congregation could add the stories of the prophets, of Elijah and Elisha and Jeremiah. They could describe the great leaders God raised up for the people, like Gideon and Samuel. They could even tell the more recent stories of emperors surprisingly allowing them to return to their homeland under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.
We today could tell our own stories. Our greatest story, like the Israelites’ Exodus, is Jesus--his life and teaching and death and resurrection. We could tell the stories of how God showed up for the apostles. We could retell the tales of our more recent forebearers--the early Anabaptists who gave their lives for their faith, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers emigrating from Russia or elsewhere. Our stories could become even more personal. J’s life spared after his accident. Pastor B’s leadership for these past months.
What we hear in these stories is God coming through for us again. God consistently showing God’s character as gracious and compassionate, as the one who redeems us and gives us a new and good life. This is the pattern of God’s faithfulness. We need to tell these stories to each other so we remember who our God is.
The final step in our lesson comes in the end of v 9 and v 10. Our teacher the psalmist states the lesson plainly here:
“Fear” is not perhaps the best translation for us. Fearing God may bringing up images of us cowering in front of him or trying to avoid him like an abusive spouse or violent parent. Our God is not like that. Our God is compassionate and gracious.
Fear is the word the Israelites used for what we feel when we look out from a high mountain peak, what we feel when we stand at the base of a waterfall. It’s reverence, an awareness that here is something powerful, something that, yes, could do us harm or great good, something that we must treat with care and respect. The Israelites often talked about peasants feeling this kind of fear when they stood before great emperors or even heavenly messengers.
We should feel this kind of fear or “reverence” when we witness God’s mighty deeds. We should feel this kind of fear when God shows up in the midst of our day-to-day lives. When God protects us, heals us, forgives us. We feel this fear when we tell and retell these stories about what God has done for us.
And this is why fearing God is how we begin to be wise. To be wise, to have the skill to live well, we must remember who our God is. What can we depend on God for? How will God act? We learn the answers to these questions, his faithful character, when we retell these stories. This is how we become wise.
We need to tell one another where and when God acts in our lives, just as much as we need to tell the old, old stories about Jesus and even those about the Israelites and Moses and the Prophets. To be wise, we must tell those stories on Sunday morning when we’re gathered together and throughout the week. Did you just realize that God somehow intervened in your life? Pick up the phone and tell a friend. Send an email. Visit me and tell me the story in my office. Call it out during Sunday morning worship. Telling and retelling these stories keeps us mindful of who our God is.
The psalmist picks out those stories that mean the most for his congregation. For a community who were exiles and refugees he conjures up the story of God giving the Israelites a homeland. For a community whose center of religious life had been desecrated and burnt, he reminds them that God had given them the Torah, the books of the Law, as the heart of their religion before they even had a temple. For a community still dominated by a world empire, he tells again the Exodus story of liberation.
When Yahweh met Moses for the first time in a burning bush, he told Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite” (Ex 3.7-8). This is Yahweh’s promise to Moses, a covenant Yahweh would ratify with all the people by giving the Torah at Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 23.20ff).
These events were ancient history for the psalmist and the people of his congregation. But the stories, the stories of what God had done way back then, mirrored what God was doing for them in their day.
In v 6, the psalmist recalls God’s power in giving the Israelites a homeland. It was not through military strategy or more advanced weapons that Jericho’s wall crumbled. No new technology made the sun stand still in the sky while Joshua defended Gibeon from five Canaanite kings. No, the psalmist says, these events show the Israelites the strength of God’s accomplishments. The first part of v 7 says that giving a home to the refugee Israelites was the work of God’s hands, a work that is faithful--or “true” as some translations have it. The Hebrew word for faithfulness or truth stresses reliability. The psalmist is saying that the God who brought us home in the past is reliable to bring us home again.
The second half of v 7 and all of v 8 remind the congregation of God giving the Torah. The Torah or Law as we sometimes call it was the heart of the Israelites’ relationship with Yahweh. God gave it to them as a gracious gift when he moved into their midst in the Tabernacle. Again, the psalmist reminds the people that the God who gave them the Torah is reliable, firm for ever, full of faithfulness.
Finally, in v 9, the psalmist tells the Israelites’ greatest story, the story of the Exodus. God sent redemption to his people. Immediately the psalmist returns to the refrain from v 5, He has commanded his covenant for ever.
These stories summon forth more stories about what God has done for us. The Israelites of the psalmist’s congregation could add the stories of the prophets, of Elijah and Elisha and Jeremiah. They could describe the great leaders God raised up for the people, like Gideon and Samuel. They could even tell the more recent stories of emperors surprisingly allowing them to return to their homeland under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.
We today could tell our own stories. Our greatest story, like the Israelites’ Exodus, is Jesus--his life and teaching and death and resurrection. We could tell the stories of how God showed up for the apostles. We could retell the tales of our more recent forebearers--the early Anabaptists who gave their lives for their faith, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers emigrating from Russia or elsewhere. Our stories could become even more personal. J’s life spared after his accident. Pastor B’s leadership for these past months.
What we hear in these stories is God coming through for us again. God consistently showing God’s character as gracious and compassionate, as the one who redeems us and gives us a new and good life. This is the pattern of God’s faithfulness. We need to tell these stories to each other so we remember who our God is.
The final step in our lesson comes in the end of v 9 and v 10. Our teacher the psalmist states the lesson plainly here:
Holy and to be feared is his name. The beginning of wisdom is fear of Yahweh;If we want to learn to be wise, to have skill in living well, we must fear our God.
everyone who does [his commandments] has good understanding. His song of praise remains for ever.
“Fear” is not perhaps the best translation for us. Fearing God may bringing up images of us cowering in front of him or trying to avoid him like an abusive spouse or violent parent. Our God is not like that. Our God is compassionate and gracious.
Fear is the word the Israelites used for what we feel when we look out from a high mountain peak, what we feel when we stand at the base of a waterfall. It’s reverence, an awareness that here is something powerful, something that, yes, could do us harm or great good, something that we must treat with care and respect. The Israelites often talked about peasants feeling this kind of fear when they stood before great emperors or even heavenly messengers.
We should feel this kind of fear or “reverence” when we witness God’s mighty deeds. We should feel this kind of fear when God shows up in the midst of our day-to-day lives. When God protects us, heals us, forgives us. We feel this fear when we tell and retell these stories about what God has done for us.
And this is why fearing God is how we begin to be wise. To be wise, to have the skill to live well, we must remember who our God is. What can we depend on God for? How will God act? We learn the answers to these questions, his faithful character, when we retell these stories. This is how we become wise.
We need to tell one another where and when God acts in our lives, just as much as we need to tell the old, old stories about Jesus and even those about the Israelites and Moses and the Prophets. To be wise, we must tell those stories on Sunday morning when we’re gathered together and throughout the week. Did you just realize that God somehow intervened in your life? Pick up the phone and tell a friend. Send an email. Visit me and tell me the story in my office. Call it out during Sunday morning worship. Telling and retelling these stories keeps us mindful of who our God is.
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