Psalm 66

Introduction

“Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and our continuing series Tehillim Talks, our studies in the Psalms.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing Psalm 66, an absolutely beautiful hymn of praise and of testimony to God, the claiming his greatness and inviting, inviting the whole world to come and join in, the praise of his glorious name.

I suggest you go through this psalm and mark all the places where the people of the earth, the nations, the peoples, the Gentiles are being referred to and invited to come and participate with Israel in praising the Creator.”

Call to Praise

“So let’s just jump right into this psalm. To the Choir Master, a song, a psalm.

Shout for joy to God.

Now the words for joy are not there in the Hebrew, but they are certainly implied. Shout for joy to God, all the earth, not just the Jewish people, but all the earth.

Sing of the glory of his name. Give to him glorious praise.

Say to God, how awesome are your deeds, so great is your power that your enemies cringe before you, or they cower before you. All the earth shall bow down to you, and sing praises to[…]”

Glory (Kavod)

“Give to him glorious praise. Say to God, how awesome are your deeds, so great is your power that your enemies cringe before you, or they cower before you.

All the earth shall bow down to you, and sing praises to you.

There he is again, all the earth shall bow down to you. They shall sing praises to your name.

Now, twice we see here the word glory, excuse me, and glorious.

We need to understand this word, when we see the word glory. The word is kavod, and the word kavod means weight. If you weigh the weight of something you’re measuring, it’s kavod.

So you could put the word weight in here as well. Sing of the weight of his name. Give to him weighty praise.

Make it something of substance, something that’s real. We tend to think of spiritual things as being just kind of airy and iffy and intangible. But as we praise God, as we focus in on our genuine, real, loving, living, powerful God, it’s like suddenly he becomes more tangible in our lives and through our lives.

Praise vs. Flattery

“And we give weight to his name, weight to his glorious works. And so we want to praise God in a way that is not just lip service, it’s not just flattery. God does not like flattery, but he does accept our true, genuine praise.

Now, notice it says, excuse me, to give glory to his name. Give glory to his name. And again, near the end of this, in verse four, it says, they shall sing praises to your name.

But what’s interesting, God’s name, Yad Hei Vav Hei, appears nowhere in the Psalm. And if I can just take a moment to address my Messianic brothers and sisters, I know that in the Messianic community, there are some groups who insist on pronouncing God’s name, or trying to pronounce it. And so, they are always pronouncing His name, whether it’s Jehovah or Yahweh or Yahuwah or some other form.

And I don’t do that. I will say God, or I will say Adonai. In fact, we do find the word Adonai in the Psalm near the end.”

Why Not Pronounce the Name?

“Even the psalmist did not use God’s name in the Psalm. But why don’t I speak God’s name? Why don’t I pronounce it?

I believe, and this is just me, you have to make up your own mind on this. And I am certainly not going to condemn you if you pronounce God’s name. But I just want to suggest something to you for you to think about.

I think that the more we try to pronounce God’s name aloud and go about with his name on our lips, we actually diminish his glory. We diminish his glory. Let me give you an example.

I had a really great dad, a great father. And I called him dad. I called him father. I called him sir. I never called him by his name. Everybody knew him as JB.

His name was Jennings Bryan. And people just called him Jennings, or they called him JB. I never called him that ever in my life.

Why? When I hear kids calling their parents by their first names, it somehow diminishes their honor. And I think if God is truly our father, we need to be very careful about using his name.”

Yeshua’s Example

“Furthermore, there’s no example anywhere in the Gospels where Yeshua spoke God’s name aloud. There just isn’t an example there. You might say, well, David seems to have used his name, and Moses certainly used his name, but yeah, they may have.

But Moses and David are not my rabbi. Yeshua is my rabbi. I follow his example.

He did not pronounce God’s name. I don’t pronounce God’s name. And I have to remind myself, and I will remind you of this as well.

God’s name, Yad He Vav He, is a verb. It is a verb. And we’ve discussed that in other teachings.

So to truly pronounce God’s name, we must pronounce it with our actions, not with our lips. So pronounce God’s name, proclaim his name by all means, but proclaim it through your lives. But I do believe that the more we speak it with our mouths, the more we rob it of its glory.

The more we diminish his name. And again, in this Psalm, God’s name does not appear, even though the entire Psalm is a psalm of praise to his name. So sing to the glory of his name, give to him glorious praise, say to God how awesome are your deeds, the word for awesome here means the same word as fearful.

God’s Power and the Nations

“But it means to be in awe of him. How awesome are your deeds, so great is your power, that your enemies cringe before you. We should not have to cringe before God, but God’s enemies need to cringe before him.

All the earth shall bow down to you and sing praises to you. They shall sing praises to your name.

Now, in verse five, it says, go and see what God has done, or it could be translated, come and see what God has done. The word there is halakh, which means to make progress towards seeing what God has done.

And I think this is interesting because it doesn’t just say, see what God has done, but it says to move, make some motion, move from where you’re at to someplace else, whether it’s coming or going, but you have to move to see what God has done. And we’ll see this same phrase, or almost identical phrase later on in the psalm, where it’s inviting the world again to come and to hear, not to see, but to hear.”

Movement Toward God

“And there’s a powerful principle here, I believe, that if we truly want to see God, truly want to hear him, we need to be moving closer, moving closer to aligning our lives with his will.

There is a time to sit and be very still and know that he is God. There’s a time to be still like Elijah in the cave, and when the wind and the fire and the earthquake and all that passed by, then there was the cold demamah daqqah, the voice of the very thin whisper, and then he moved.

So there is a time just to sit quietly and wait, but that’s the waiting and expectation. But there’s another kind of sitting that’s just in complacency and boredom and inactivity. And if that’s where you’re at, then it might be time to start moving.”

Move into Obedience

“Move into more prayer, to more reading of God’s word, to more study with other individuals, and to more obedience. But to move from a place of complacency and inactivity into a place of where you are doing the things God’s given you to do.

And when you do that, you’ll be proclaiming His name, because God’s name is a verb.

So go or come and see what God has done. He is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. And again, it doesn’t say towards Israel here.

It says towards the children of man. And the word there for man, I believe, is enosh. Scratch that.

I think that’s coming up later. He turned the sea into dry land. Okay, of course, that’s referring to the crossing of the Red Sea.

They passed through the river on foot. This, of course, is referring to the crossing of the Jordan River 40 years later. And it’s interesting that these two events which were 40 years apart are brought here together in the same sentence.”

Exodus-Shaped Acts

“This is not the only place. You’ll find this also over in Psalm 114, verse 5. What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back.

And here it’s referring to the crossing of the Red Sea and the dry land appearing and the Jordan moving backwards. So there’s dry land that they crossed over into Canaan.

This reminds me of a phrase I came across in Christopher Ash’s commentary on the Psalms, his three volume commentary. He has some wonderful insights there. But he said this.

He says, the mighty acts of God are Exodus shaped. The mighty acts of God are Exodus shaped. Because when you read this verse, you see Israel’s come out of Egypt.

They’ve crossed the Red Sea. They’ve gone through the wilderness. Now they’re crossing the Jordan River.

All of this is Exodus talk, leaving one place to go into their promised land. And he says all the mighty acts of God are Exodus shaped. What does he mean by that?”

Exodus in Our Lives

“It means that the pattern we see in scripture with Israel moving from slavery into freedom, from death into life, and wrestling with the things of God, learning about God, studying his word, receiving his Torah, and then going into a place of battle, and of conquering, and of victory, and to the land of fruitfulness.

It’s like all of God’s mighty acts in our own lives personally follow that same pattern. And I have experienced that pattern in a number of ways in my life.

Whether it was a part of my life that was in slavery, it was separated from God. And I had to go through this time of leaving, and of experiencing redemption in that area of my life, crossing the Red Sea and putting the past behind me, learning to grow up into this newness of life in a particular area, and then going into a place of victory and fruitfulness.

You know, we talk about how God saves our souls, but it seems like he saves our souls sometimes a piece at a time, an area at a time.”

Olam (Forever)

“His acts are amazing and incredible and often complicated, but I must agree with Christopher Ash that all the mighty acts of God are Exodus shaped. They tend to follow that Exodus pattern. And it says, there did we rejoice in him.

Thus he rules by his might forever. Now, this is an interesting place where we can discuss the impossibility of trying to translate Hebrew, especially some of the Psalms and Proverbs and other parts, trying to translate them into another language. Let’s take this phrase, for example.

Now, the word forever here is the word olam, a very common word in Hebrew. And it’s a word that we don’t have an exact English equivalent for. Greek has an equivalent, and the translators wrestle with that Greek word as much as they translate with this word, they wrestle with this word olam.”

Layers of Meaning in Olam

“Olam, in its essence, really means to be hidden, to be something that’s kind of concealed from view. But it’s translated generally as age, world or even universe.

In many of the blessings, we have the phrase melaka olam, king of the universe, king of the world, king of the age, king of eternity.

Because it can also be translated forever. So how do we translate it here? That’s the big question.

Well, there are two major ways, but also a third. We can say he rules the world, the olam, by his might. And that is how the Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew scriptures, renders this.

He rules the world by his might. But can just as easily and accurately be translated by his might, he rules forever. But there’s even a third way this could be translated.”

Olam Continued

“Did you notice back here? It says, thus he rules by his might forever. His eyes keep watch on the nations.

Here’s a third way we could render this. By his might, he rules forever. His eyes keep watch over the nations.

So here are three possibilities. There may be a fourth, but these are the three major ones. And again, any one of these three is absolutely valid just by translating to Hebrew.

So some people get really annoyed with this. Which one is it? I need to know which one it is.

I’m gonna know what the Bible’s saying. Well, remember back in Psalm 62, 11, where the author says, one thing God has spoken, two things have I heard? Let’s understand something.

In the spiritual realm, things are not so discrete and limited and measurable as they are here in the physical realm. So let me ask you this. Does God rule the world by his might?”

Multiple Truths

“Yes, we can check that off. By his might, does he rule forever? Yeah, that’s true.

Does he, by his might, rule and forever keep his eyes? On the nations? That’s also true.

So why pick one? Why can’t we just embrace all three? They’re all three true.

And when you begin to look at the scriptures this way, you begin to appreciate the beauty and the brilliance of what God has done. You know, if you have a small property and you want to build a big building, you can’t build out, but you can build up.

If you’ve ever been to a major city like New York City or Chicago, the buildings aren’t big this way, but they are huge this way.

And this is what God has done in his word. He takes a small piece of real estate, just three or four words in Hebrew, but he builds all these layers. God rules the world by his might.”

Three Floors of Truth

“By his might, he rules forever. By his might, he rules. And forever, he has his eyes.

He keeps watch over the nations. All three of those, those three floors, can be placed directly on the foundation of the few, the handful of words it takes to express this.

So, allow yourself to stretch a little bit and embrace other possibilities of what is being said to a verse.

And if these possibilities are not in direct conflict with each other, then embrace them all. Embrace them all, because there are levels and layers of truth that God is expressing through this amazing poetry that is not of this world.

The Bible is an extraterrestrial book. It is written in the tongue of angels. It’s an expression of God’s own mind.

So don’t try to limit it to the kinds of writings mere men produce. This is something God is writing. I expect it to say more than what it appears to say. Well let’s move on.”

Testing and Refining

“Verse 8, bless our God, oh peoples. Again, there’s referring to the nations, the Amim, the peoples of the world. And make the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.

For you, oh God, have tested us. Now he’s referring to the experience of the Israelites in the world. You, oh God, have tested us.

You have refined us as silver is refined. You brought us into the net. You laid a crushing burden on our backs.

The word there for backs is actually the word for loins, but that just does not translate well into English. But what it means is, is when you’re carrying a heavy burden on your back, it’s in your legs, it’s in your loins, it’s a foundation, your core, that’s really suffering under this.

You let men write over our heads. We went through fire and through water. Wherever you find fire and water close together in the scriptures, that’s God’s presence.

Yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.”

All Pain Is Birth Pain

“May I suggest you never come out to a place of abundance without experiencing the pain, the birth pains that are described above? All pain is birth pain. You can take that one to the bank.

All pain is birth pain. So whatever pain you’re going through right now, I promise you, it is the struggle to bring about something new in your life and into the world.

You might say, what if someone’s suffering in pain because they’re dying?

Well, that is the great birth, isn’t it? Because even Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15, about we plant this physical body like a seed in the ground. We bury it, it dies, we bury it, but what comes out?

You know, an oak tree or something new, we get the spiritual body, which is so far superior to what we put into the ground.

So even the pain of going through the process of dying is about to give birth to something so great and so wonderful. And then we come to the final verses here, verses 13 through 15.”

Vows Fulfilled

“I will come into your house with burnt offerings. I will perform my vows to you, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.

You know, it’s okay to make a promise to God that, Lord, if you will deliver me from this, then I will.

And then you fill in the blank. Have you ever had an experience where you should have died? I did.

I should have died back when I was about 19 years old. I was in a horrible motorcycle accident. It happened just a split second.

And the second it was over, there was a car completely on top of my motorcycle. He had just come off the expressway. His brakes had given out and he was on top of my motorcycle.

And I was sitting on the pavement and I could lean against his bumper, which is just a half inch away from my back. I did not have a scratch, a scar, a bruise, a broken bone. I didn’t have anything.

I went in and called someone to come pick me up. And during that time, the police showed up. He looked under, he saw the bike.

Personal Testimony

“He looked under, he saw the bike and his face went white.

And he said that the ambulance already come and take him away. And I said, no, I’m here. He looked me up and down like, okay.

Can you go to the hospital? I said, I’m fine. I’m fine.

Don’t have a scratch or bruise. And to this day, I don’t know how I got off of that bike. I was sitting on the bike with both feet on the pavement, waiting for the light to turn green.

Boom. Next second, I’m sitting on the pavement. He’s on top of my bike.

At that moment, I realized, okay, Lord, I should be dead right now. So from here on out, my life belongs to you. And I’ve kept that promise.

So maybe this is something similar that the author of the Psalm is doing. I’m paying my vows. It could be he was in a tough spot, say, God, if you get me out of this, I will do such and such.”

Offerings of Devotion

“I’ll commit such and such to you. And that’s okay to do as long as you keep your vow. God doesn’t take pleasure in fools.

And a fool is someone who vows something to God and then withholds it. So here he says, I’ll pay my vows. And he says in verse 15, I will offer to you burnt offerings and fattened animals with the smoke of the incense of rams.

Most translations don’t get that correct. That’s katorit. It’s the word that means incense.

And he’s saying that these rams I give you are coming from someone who has a whole heart, a full heart to give to you, not begrudgingly, but out of love and devotion.

And it’s that love and devotion that mixes with the smoke of the sacrifice and is a sweet savor in God’s nostrils. And he says, this is like incense.”

Come and Hear

“I will make an offering of bulls and goats, 16 to 20, go, come, here it is again. But this time, instead of come and see, it’s come and hear.

Now it would seem that if you’re telling someone to hear, it would be come. Like come so you can hear what I say to you. But it can also be go and hear, and I’ll walk with you. And I’ll talk to you as we go.

So again, we can translate it either way, both are fine. Come and hear all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.

I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was under my tongue. If I had seen iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

If I had seen, now that word seen there, seen iniquity, it means to regard it. If I had really studied on it, and was aware of iniquity in my heart, and just kept it there, that’s not right.”

Guarding Against Iniquity

“But it means to regard it, to protect it, to kind of hover over that iniquity.

And so I challenge you, if there’s some iniquity in your heart that you’re kind of protecting, trying to keep secret and press down, and not rid yourself of, because it’s some secret pleasure, it’s some guilty delight that you like to return to every once in a while, then the Lord won’t listen, because you’re not listening to him.

He’s asked you to do something, that is to get rid of that thing in your life, whatever it might be.

And you know, if we do his will, he will rush to do ours. If I had regarded or seen iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

But truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his chesed, his steadfast love from me.

What a wonderful psalm.”

Closing

“We really aren’t doing it justice at all. But I hope you will take time to go over the psalm again and again, because the more you go over it and pray it and just make it a part of the way you think and see the world and approach God, the more you’ll derive from it.

And I have to tell you, I’m really excited to get to Psalm 67.

Ever since I started this series in the Psalms, I kept thinking, I can’t wait to get Psalm 67. So I’m excited to get to the next one. I’m going to get to it as quickly as I can and get it up as soon as I can.

Psalm 67 is unique. And Psalm 66 just makes this beautiful approach and brings us right into the essence of Psalm 67. Because you notice all the times Psalm 66 refers to the nations and the peoples and everything else.

Psalm 67 does the same. And it’s a beautiful, wonderful Psalm that’s called the Menorah Psalm. So study it and see if you can figure out why it is called the Menorah Psalm.

So until next time, I wish you shalom and may God bless.”