Psalm 66 is a call to praise God.  It is a song of praise for the awesome deeds of God.  The psalmist begins by telling the whole earth to shout with joy to God.  “Shout with joy to God, all the earth!  Sing the glory of His name; make His praise glorious!”  It’s not to be just any praise—we are told to make it glorious.  The picture of God here is glorious and transcendent.  Verses 3 and 4: “Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds!  So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you.  All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name.’”  So how do we best glorify and praise God’s name?  One of the first ways to glorify God is to say both to God and of God: “How awesome are you deeds” (vs. 3).  This testimony is not just praise to God; it is also a witness to others.  Look at verse 5: “Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man’s behalf!” 

          That is one of our main tasks as believers—to say to others, “Come and see what God has done.”  We should literally say this with our words, but we also have to make sure our actions back it up.  As a church we need to be able to say to others, “Come and see what God has done” and we can only say this if God is really doing something here in our church!  We should be able to say, “Come and see what God has done, is doing, and will do in our church.”  We need to have faith that God has done great things and will continue to do great things.  The psalmist knew God had done great things in the past.  In verse 6 the psalmist writes: “He turned the sea into dry land, they passed through the waters on foot—come, let us rejoice in Him.”

          The call to praise God continues in verse 8: “Praise our God, O peoples, let the sound of His praise be heard.”  Now the praise is specifically for what God has done in the past for His people.  We are told that God has preserved their lives and kept their feet from slipping.  And then we read this: “For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver.  You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs.  You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”  Here then God’s power is expressed and His presence is real in our experience of both suffering and abundance.  The psalmist says God tested the people; refined them like silver.  God allowed them to go to prison and laid hardships on them.  This is a hard teaching.  What is good about being tested?  But God can use difficulties in our lives for our own good.  Human character and behavior can be refined by difficulties and hardships.  As impurities can be drawn out of silver in the fire, flaws in our character can be revealed by testing.  God can and does use the tests we face to continue His spiritual work within us.  Hardships can serve to further strengthen us and better equip us to accomplish God’s purposes.  They can also equip us to help others who are going through difficult times.  So when you think about it, we all go through difficult times—it just matters how we handle them and how we view them.  We need to try to make the most of them. 

Often critics of the Christian faith and of God point to the continuation of radical suffering in the world as a reason to reject the idea of a sovereign God of love.  After all, the thinking goes, how can a loving God allow the kind of pain and suffering we all see displayed constantly in the evening news?  Not long ago CNN had what they called a “Compassion Forum” where the democratic candidates for president were both interviewed and questioned about moral and religious issues.  One question asked of Hilary Clinton was this: “Senator, we’ve heard about HIV aids, many people are concerned about Darfur and many other humanitarian issues…why do you think it is that a loving God allows innocent people to suffer?”  Hilary paused and the crowd started laughing and the questioner then said, “And we just have thirty seconds.”  Part of her response was this: “That is the subject of generations of commentary and debate.  And I don’t know…I can’t wait to ask Him…  Because I have just pondered it endlessly.  But I do want to just add that what that means to me is that in the face of suffering there is no doubt in my mind that God calls us to respond.  That is part of what we are expected to do.  For whatever reason it exists, its very existence is a call to action.”  Good point, Hilary.    

And according to this psalm, our testimony to the awesome deeds of God stands in the face of this contrary evidence of human suffering.  The kind of testimony we give is usually not a sort of rational explanation or proof—although sometimes those may be called for and effective.  What we testify to is our own experience of God alive and working in our lives in the midst of our pain and the graphic evidence of world evil and human suffering.  We sometimes think that God’s power can only be displayed when we live charmed, painless lives of abundant goodness.  Such a perspective inhibits us from talking honestly and openly about our failures, struggles and hurts that characterize our lives.  But this is not the path the psalmist takes or most other biblical writers for that matter.  Abraham and Moses, Paul and Peter—all are strongly aware that it is in their weakness that the power of God is made known.  Paul says it openly in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10: “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Our tendency to stress the “trouble-free” Christian life can have the unfortunate effect of alienating those whose experience of the world and life is far from trouble-free.  On the one hand, our professed view is considered naïve, uniformed, or outright deceptive and is discounted for any or all of these reasons.  On the other hand, those who are in the midst of suffering may feel themselves excluded from the purpose and care of God.  But our psalm (and the rest of the Bible) acknowledges human struggle and suffering as real, but they are no barrier to the experience of the power and love of God.  “We went through fire and water,” the psalmist says, “but you brought us to a place of abundance” (66:12).   

The end result of God’s testing that the psalmist speaks of is found in verse 12: “but you brought us to a place of abundance.”  There is always light at the end of the tunnel.  If God takes us through times of testing, He will bring us to times of blessing as well.  We will be stronger and wiser and more spiritually mature for having been through the tough times.  And then what do we do?  We must do what the psalmist does.  Listen to what he says: “Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what He has done for me” (vs. 16).  As I said earlier, this is our task as believers—to say to others, “Come and see what God has done—let me tell you what He has done for me.”  What God has done for His people in the past and what He has done in our church and in our own lives is worthy of being told.  It is also cause to praise and worship God. 

That is how the psalm began—with a call to praise God.  “Shout with joy to God, all the earth!  Sing the glory of His name; make His praise glorious.”  And the psalm ends the same way—with praise to God.  “Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld His love from me” (vs. 20).  So my friends, praise God for what He has done for you.  And then tell others what God has done for you.  Say to others, “Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what He has done for me.”  Amen.