Psalm 65

Praise / Thanksgiving (community)

            Be Satisfied with God

            4 How blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near to You

            To dwell in Your courts.

            We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,

            Your holy temple.

·         In all worship a deep sense of personal unworthiness becomes us. “Our sins reach to the heavens, iniquities prevail against us, and appear so numerous, so heinous, that, when they are set in order before us, we are full of confusion, and ready to fall into despair. They prevail so against us, that we cannot pretend to balance them with any righteousness of our own; so that when we appear before God, our own consciences accuse us, and we have no replication [a defendant’s answer in a suit] to make.” (Henry)

·         It is vain to expect all summer and no winter, all sunshine and no cloud, all pleasant and no terrible things. No vigorous character was ever formed under mere blandishments and indulgences. There is need for the severe as well as for the mild. “It is in no common, or ordinary manner that God has preserved his church, but with terrible majesty. It is well that this should be known, and the people of God taught to sustain their hopes in the most apparently desperate exigencies.” (Calvin)