His Love Endures Forever

Guest (Male): The evangelical church of today has largely abandoned true biblical worship. The theology of our hymns has been replaced by feel-good mantras meant to satisfy man more than to please God. Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. The state in which the modern-day church finds itself in its worship cannot be changed overnight, but there is a cure if man will look for it, in the place where true worship has always been found: the Psalms. Join Dr. Boice as he teaches through Psalm 136, which has been called the "Great Hallelujah," a Psalm that gives us the reason we're to worship the Lord.
Dr. James Boice: A disaster like the one that has overtaken the evangelical church in regard to its worship is not going to be cured overnight. But we should make a beginning, and one good place to begin is with a study of the Psalms. The Psalms were, after all, the chief worship vehicle of the people of God throughout history in the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament. In fact, it's only in relatively recent times that they have been somewhat eclipsed by the hymns, choruses, and praise songs that have become so popular in the church of our time. So, that's what we're going to be doing here in these Sunday mornings as we move on now toward the end of the Psalter. We've been studying the Psalms for years. We have come in our study today to Psalm 136, and all of these last Psalms in one way or another really have to do with worship. We began with Psalm 135, a Psalm that is marked at the beginning with those key words that we're going to find now many times as we get toward the end: "Praise the Lord." In Hebrew, it's two words: *Hallelu* and *Yah*. But we've combined it into one word in English: "Hallelujah." And this occurs often. There in Psalm 135, as we saw, even in the Psalm before it that ends the Songs of Ascent, but then again and again. And finally, as we get toward the last block of five Psalms beginning with Psalm 146, we find that those are the words that both begin and end each of the selections. Now, the Psalm that we're going to study today, Psalm 136, doesn't actually have the word "Hallelujah" in it. And yet, it is called the "Great Hallel" or the "Great Praise Song" by the Jewish people because, of course, that is what it is. It's called a praise song, indeed the Great Praise Song, because it constantly rehearses God's goodness in regard to his people and encourages them to acknowledge and praise him for his love and faithfulness. The words that take the place of "Hallelujah" in this Psalm are the words *Hodu l'Yahweh*, which in the New International Version is translated as "Give thanks to the Lord." You'll notice that they occur three times there at the beginning, at the start of each of the first three verses: "Give thanks to the Lord," "Give thanks to the God of gods," "Give thanks to the Lord of lords." And then it comes in again once at the very end, in verse 26, where we read "Give thanks to the God of heaven." So it's a way of showing that this is what the Psalm is really about. It's a Psalm of thanksgiving. The words are probably to be understood even in a more prominent position than that because they would rightly have to be understood even if not spoken beginning each verse. Because what the Psalm lists for us is the reasons why we should give thanks to God. Every verse virtually tells us one of the reasons. And I suppose that it might have been written that way if it weren't for the fact that the chorus, which is the words "his love endures forever," is repeated after each verse. So in order not to make it unduly repetitious, the words "give thanks" occur only at the beginning and the end, but they have to be understood. Now, the first verse of the Psalm sets the tone for everything that follows because it says "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good." If you ask the question "Why should I thank God? Why should I praise God?" the basic answer is "because he is good." We saw that that is actually the basic meaning of the word "God." "God" is a shortened form of the phrase "the good." And so God is the good God. He is supremely good, and that's why we should praise him. These first three verses are really an echo of a verse back in the Pentateuch, in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 10:17 says "The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome." There are three titles for God there: Jehovah (translated "the Lord"), "God of gods," and "Lord of lords." And those are the three names for God that occur in these three verses of the Psalm. Give thanks to the Lord, give thanks to the God of gods, and give thanks to the Lord of lords. Now, it tells us that God is mighty. And the next verses are going to elaborate that because it begins to show us that we see the might or the power of God in nature. And yet, not only do we see the power of God in nature, we see the goodness of God in his creation too. Which is a way of saying that all these mighty acts of God in creation, all the things that we see about us, are intended by God, not in an indifferent way where you and I are concerned, but they are actually concerned for our benefit. We remember when we go back to the book of Genesis that after each step in the creation, God looked at what he had made and said it is good. It's good because God is good and because everything that God does is good. How good is God? Well, he's superlatively good. Here's what Charles Haddon Spurgeon said writing about God's goodness: "He is good beyond all others. Indeed, he alone is good in the highest sense. He is the source of good, the good of all good, the sustainer of good, the perfecter of good, and the rewarder of good. And for this, he deserves the constant gratitude of his people." If you want to know what real goodness is and really enjoy it, you have to get to know God. Now, the first place this goodness of God is seen is in his creation, and this is the first thing the Psalm mentions in verses 4 through 9. And it's also what we confess first in the words of the Apostles' Creed. We say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth." So we confess that God has been good in making the world. Now, there is a tremendous difference there between the way Christians think about the world and the creation and the way the world thinks about it. The unregenerate world doesn't know God or acknowledge God, and therefore when it comes to dealing with God's creation, it does either one of two things. Either, on the one hand, it bows down to the creation itself and worships it. We have a form of that in the paganism of the past, but we have an equally insidious and pernicious form of that in self-worship in the present because we ourselves are part of the creation. On the one hand, the world does that. Or, on the other hand, it takes advantage of creation, treats it as of no value at all, something simply to be exploited for the benefit of mankind. Some people today are very concerned with that, and so we have this whole movement to oppose it in the name of ecology. Now, in contrast to those two errors, the Psalm shows us the right way to go. It invites us to look at the world the way God looks at it and recognize that it's good, and it's beneficial, and it's for our benefit. Everything God makes is good. There are a few consequences of this for the way Christians ought to look at nature, and it's worth thinking about them. Number one, we should be thankful for it, because that's what Psalm 136 is doing. In some expressions of Christian thought, the only things that have any value at all are the things that are invisible. Now we don't want to minimize that, because it is the invisible things that last; even heaven and earth is going to pass away according to the teaching of our Lord. It's the invisible things that remain. But that doesn't mean that heaven and earth doesn't have value now. And so, we are to be thankful for it while we have it. The second thing is that we should delight in nature. That's related to being thankful for it, but it goes a step beyond it, and it seems to be a step that many Christians haven't taken. Sometimes when we think about the creation, we think of it chiefly as an argument for the existence of God. Must be a God because we have creation; requires a being of infinite power and wisdom to have made it, and therefore when you look at creation, you ought to believe in God. Well, that is true, of course. But you can do that without actually delighting in what God has made. We should delight in creation even more than nature worshippers because we see beyond the creation to the God that made it and we really delight in God. And then thirdly, we should treat nature responsibly. If God has made it and has a purpose for it, as he does for all things, it doesn't mean that we can't use nature in a responsible way. You can still cut down a tree and use the wood of the tree to make a house, but it does mean that you don't cut down the tree just for the fun of cutting down the tree. A Christian approach to nature should involve some kind of careful examination of the things that God has made, their purpose, and so Christians should do that. Well, God is good in nature. Now, the second section of the Psalm is even more important, verses 10 through 24, because here the Psalmist is thanking God for his specific acts toward Israel. You just run through the verses, you'll see that he is thanking God for his deliverance of the people from bondage in Egypt (verses 10 through 15); for leading them through the desert to the borders of the promised land (verse 17); for his defeat of Israel's enemies, specifically Sihon, the king of the Amorites and Og, the king of Bashan, who opposed them (verses 18 through 20); and number four, his final settling of the people in their land (verses 21 through 24). Now, our equivalent for that is thanking God for the way he has delivered us from sin and led us into our own land, which is the company of his people within the church. I said earlier that this Psalm follows parallel lines to what we confess together in the words of the Apostles' Creed. We begin by acknowledging God as the Creator of heaven and earth, but pretty soon we get to the second article and we begin to talk about his work of salvation for us in Jesus Christ. And so, we recite together: "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." All the ministry of Jesus Christ, the great heart of the confession. And then the third article goes on from that point to talk about how the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that salvation to us, speaking of the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Now, as I say, that is our equivalent to this middle section of the Psalm. The basic core of Christian teaching, this gospel needs to be at the heart of our worship. We need to be thankful for it, and we need to confess it together. Now, the sad thing, of course, is that in much worship today, this very heart of Christianity, the gospel itself, has been pushed aside. And what has happened is that instead of confessing what God has done for us in Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, which is the gospel—the atonement made for our sins in order that we might be justified before a righteous God—instead of doing that, our worship has shifted around to man-centered interests. And so, we think when we come to our services in our day not so much about God and what God has done, but rather what has happened to us. Now, what happens to us is important; it matters to God, it certainly matters to us, but it isn't the gospel. And so, when we come to worship God, we need to worship God for what he has done and not for the sake of our own experiences. I've noticed this change in evangelical worship services in recent years, expressed chiefly in the way all the great traditional elements of worship have been pushed aside. I've mentioned it on other occasions. For example, prayer. It's inconceivable to me that something that is called a worship service can be carried on without any significant prayer, but sadly, that's exactly what's happening. I pointed out that there's always a little prayer at the beginning for some reason, and there is a prayer for the offering, which I well understand; it requires the supernatural power of God to get these cheap people to give their money so the work of the church can go forward. But there are no great pastoral prayers. Whatever happened to them? Remember how we used to talk about prayer on the basis of an "ACTS" acrostic: A for adoration, C for confession, T for thanksgiving, and S for supplication? All of that has just gone out. I have been in dozens and dozens of services where there's no prayer like that at all. Sometimes there's something we have to ask God for: Mrs. Jones is sick, she's going to have an operation; there's no prayer really to deal with it, and so I find it gets tacked onto the offering prayer because it's the only place that Mrs. Jones can be prayed for. Whatever are we doing in our churches if we're not praying? How about the reading of the word of God? The reading of any substantial portion of the Bible is vanishing. In the Puritan age, the ministers read a chapter of the Old Testament and a chapter of the New Testament at every service. That's where Matthew Henry got that great six-volume commentary that we find so valuable today; it wasn't the product of his sermons, it was the product of his Bible readings. That's the kind of thing that took place in Puritan services all the time. Today, we don't read the Bible; people don't know the Bible. Sometimes a few little verses find their way into a sermon; sometimes at the very beginning of the minister's sermon as a pretext for what he's going to say. But I've been in services where there's no reading of the Bible at all. How about the exposition of the word? We have very little serious teaching of the Bible today. Instead, preachers are trying to be personable, to tell funny stories, to smile, above all to stay away from anything that might cause people to be unhappy with the church and leave it. People tell preachers to speak to felt needs, not real needs necessarily, and this generally means only telling people what they want to hear. That's all utterly man-centered, you see. And therefore it's not worship at all. How about the confession of sin? Who confesses sin today anywhere, not to mention in the church in the context of a worship service? It's not happening, and the reason it's not happening is that there's so little awareness of God. In order to be aware of sin, you have to have some sense of God's holiness. And if we're not talking about God, we're not talking about the holiness of God; if we're not talking about the holiness of God, we're not dealing with sin. Instead of coming to church to confess our sins and transgressions and ask forgiveness, we come to church to be told that we're really all right, that we're good people, and that we don't actually need forgiveness. Or how about our hymns? One of the saddest features of contemporary worship is that the great hymns of the church are on the way out. I'm not so much concerned here with the music style, kind of music—though there is a relationship between the style of the music and the content—but I'm concerned mostly with the content of the hymns. The great thing about the old hymns is that they rehearsed the Bible's theology in profound and perceptive ways and expressed it in memorable language so it stuck in the minds of people. That's not happening with our contemporary music. Today's songs are mostly focused on ourselves, our experiences, and not God. They reflect our shallow or our nonexistent theology and do almost nothing to elevate our thoughts about God. Worst of all are those that merely repeat a trite idea over and over again, sometimes the same word over and over again. Songs like that are not worship; they're really a mantra. They have more in common with New Age people than they do with the redeemed and worshipping people of God. Well, the Psalm is meant to correct us from some of those errors. One striking feature of Psalm 136 is the way in which it works around at the end to the place at which it started out. Perhaps you've noticed that. It begins with a call to thank God, it ends the same way. And in verse 25, backing up just a verse, it moves back to thoughts of the general benevolence of God to all people, not just Israel. All people benefit from creation, which is what the Psalm started out with in verses 4 through 9. Here we're reminded that God gives food to every creature, not just to Israel. Now you find that elsewhere in the Bible. Jesus talked about it. He says God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous; he provides for all people. Paul was saying the same sort of thing in Lystra in Acts 14, where he reminded the Gentiles there that God has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their season; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy. In each case, the goodness of God is given as a reason why people everywhere should acknowledge God and thank him. And yet you see that the division is just at that point. The people of God are to do that because they know God. But those who don't know God do what Paul describes in the first chapter of Romans: Although they knew God—that is, that there is a God—they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. Isn't it a tragedy when the people of God who do know God and have been redeemed by God the Son also, like the Gentiles and unbelievers, fail to thank him properly? Well, I said I was going to come back to the last phrase: "his love endures forever." That's the believing worshipper's response to all the things we've seen. God is good? Yes, and so we say his love endures forever. He's the mighty Creator of all that we enjoy? Yes, therefore we say his love endures forever. He has redeemed us from our sin, brought us into the company of the people of God? And we say yes, his love endures forever. The word that's used for "love" in that refrain is the powerful Hebrew term *hesed*, which means "covenant love," the favor God shows to those with whom he's entered into a special relationship. Here it's translated sometimes "steadfast love" or "enduring love." And the reason for it is that God is a God of his word; among the reasons that we acknowledge he is good is the fact that he is faithful, and he is faithful in his love. Let me give you a final story. One night in February in the year 358, the great church father Athanasius held an all-night service at his church in Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius had been leading the fight for the eternal Sonship and the deity of Jesus Christ, knowing that the gospel, indeed the very survival of Christianity, depended upon it. But he had many enemies. At times it seemed like everyone was his enemy—the government of the day, the other church authorities. He even devised a little phrase for describing what he felt himself to be doing. He spoke of *Athanasius contra mundum*, Athanasius against the world. One man. But he was right. And we owe to some extent the survival of true theology to what he did. At any rate, these many enemies, quite a few who were opposing him for political even more than theological reasons, marshaled the power of the Roman government against him. And on this particular night, the church was suddenly surrounded by shouting soldiers with drawn swords. The people were frightened, naturally, but with calm presence of mind, Athanasius stood up and announced the singing of Psalm 136, the Psalm. This vast congregation responded, joining in thundering forth 26 times over: "his love endures forever." As the soldiers burst through the doors and came into the church with their swords drawn, they were intimidated at first by the singing; they were staggered by it. And Athanasius kept his place and dismissed the congregation and they faded away, and then finally he himself actually slipped away in the dark and escaped and was received into the house of his friends and went on to carry on the battle. A lot of people in Alexandria died that night, but the people of Athanasius's congregation never forgot that although man is evil, God is good. God is good. His mercy and his love endure forever. All of us want that kind of love. Why do we seek it everywhere else but in God?
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