Turn then in the Word of God to Psalm 75. Psalm 75. The title of the sermon is this, The Wondrous Works of God. You see that there in verse one. But just what those wondrous works are, as the psalm develops and opens up the theme, might indeed cause us to wonder. Because as we see and as we read through that psalm, that it brings to our attention some very, very serious themes. God raising up one, setting down another, verse seven. Well now, here we are, the Lord's day after the general election. Here we have seen actually happening that he has raised up one and he has set down another. And it's God who is the judge, verse seven. There we are, whatever views and thoughts, and I'm sure there are many views and thoughts about the events, the election on Thursday and the result that we woke up to on the Friday morning. I'm sure we've had some probably quite animated conversations about it and probably have a few more yet before the day is done. But we see that actually in these things is a sovereignty at work that is a wondrous work. And it actually declares that the Lord's name is Neo. The God is at work. that God even, well, I'll speak as carefully as I can, but even where we might consider with the evidence at hand, that God's people may be facing more challenges in the future, more difficulties, more trials here in our nation, that nevertheless it all declares that his name is near, that he is with his people, that whatever providences we meet with, are not an evidence that surely God has gone. Surely God has left his people. He may be teaching his people things, and they may be difficult things, and he may be teaching our nation things, difficult things, but none of those are detracting from the fact that these are all parts of his wondrous name that is near. that is with his people, that is not an evidence of his absence, but actually can be deduced to be an evidence of his presence. And so we come to this psalm. This is a topic I'd looked at some months ago, but here with knowing which Lord's day I'm due to preach on here with you. perhaps has an appropriateness as we survey the days that lie ahead, as we listen carefully to the speeches of our new Prime Minister and other cabinet members in their various offices, Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries and Justice Secretaries and such kind. We are listening and we are looking carefully at what the Lord has done, how his wondrous works are declared to us now in this new government that show us as his people who are attentive, whose consciences are alerted, who have their ears attuned to understanding the ways of God, profundity in them, each perplexing path of life. So we sung, and I hope we meant it, because there are many perplexing paths of life. In the years that I have been a pastor, I just realize more and more my own ignorance. I realize more and more, what do I know about the ways of the Lord? How have I foreseen what has happened? I can tell you I haven't foreseen it. And yet, here we are, I stand in this pulpit, I pastor a church, and I bring great, great fountains of wisdom to bear. But all of us are at times speechless at the wondrous works of God, and that's what the word means. It's wondrous. It causes us to wonder. It gives us a sense of this is beyond us. This is something more than we can really comprehend. It's awesome, and it inspires in us respect. We notice it's a psalm of Asaph. I haven't time to overly speak at length on this, but many of the psalms in this section of Scripture are psalms of Asaph. And very often, he is searching his own soul, daring his own soul, showing us not how things went well for him, but alluding to his mistakes, his doubts and his fears, and how they were laid. or how he came back to his senses, how he understood Psalm 73, when I entered the sanctuary. What did he see? Well, he saw there the end of the wicked in Envidom. He had looked at the boastful and thought they had something going for them, lost his balance and his perspective, but then he regained it. He's open about it. Isn't this something of the wonder of God's word that it brings to our attention and shows to us what actually is often our own experience and how the psalmist confessed it and here it is to be sung about and many of the psalms in this section here take us not into comfortable territory not into some of the more explicitly praising God kind of psalms, but take us into areas of complexity and spiritual concern, as really, in a sense, this psalm does here. But my first heading is this, starting with Thanksgiving. Because although he is going to handle quite challenging material, though he is going to express in song worship quite deep works of God, Whatever is to follow, thanksgiving is always to be blended in with everything that we're about as God's people. Thanksgiving, and he repeats it, doesn't he? Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks. Unto thee do we give thanks. There's an emphasis there. It's almost as if knowing what's coming next, that it's to be God's people, to be reminded that whatever days we're in, whatever we're seeing happening in the nations that causes concern and perplexity, we're giving a thanks always to be there. Again in verse 9, actually, I will declare forever. I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. all that's gone between, and there in verses two to eight, the declaration is not, I am just going to go away and give up. I can't understand this, so I'm just going to stop my mouth. He says, I am going to sing the praises of the God of Jacob. I'm going to give thanks. And that is not something to be done in a perfunctory way. Not something to be done as by rote, because we sort of know we are under obligation to give thanks. It should actually be something that gets deeper and deeper and deeper. that the more awareness we have the goodness of God, His mercy, His ways, His ways towards us personally, our own discoveries of His goodness to us, it just makes it richer and deeper. That as we give thanks, there may be crowding into our minds sundry ways in which God has been our helper. comes into what we sing. We sing, yes, we sing, because that happened. Why, even in this last week, reflect. What prayers have been answered for you? What kindnesses did you meet with? What in the word of God perhaps came alive for you? Or a hymn, a verse, or even, we might even call, let's call it this, a random thought. Well, they're not, are they? but it seemed random. Something just occurred to you, but it was a proverbial light bulb moment. It made a difference to you. Well, bring it all into your thanksgiving. We live, don't we, in a supernatural world. We are given to be part of something far greater than ourselves. Life in the Spirit, and it includes all of this. These various providences, bring them into that thanksgiving. We're in giving thanks. We're saying something about the fact we're in a relationship, aren't we? That's what is part of the ebb and flow of a relationship, and a relationship in which one party acknowledges help received, help that was undeserved, unexpected. And in that relationship, in that whole way, person to person, we relate together, then it's appropriate to give thanks, to recognize you've done something for me. You did something. I wasn't compelled of you. You didn't have to do it, but you did it. It made such a difference and backflows. Thanksgiving. And in our own human relationships, well, we appreciate that. So it's a recognition that what's been done has been done, and that there is a reflection back in terms of the one who's received something unexpected, pleasant surprise, help that they needed at that time, thanksgiving. And so we speak. Not to say it is to withhold something in that relationship. It's to damage that relationship. It's to bring disrespect and a non-acknowledgement of what has happened. Well, we all know there, you drive on the road, don't you, there, and you flash your headlights, and people come through. I don't know, down here in Derbyshire, actually, they're pretty polite, and give you a wave or flash their headlights back. Well, it's always, I suppose, you feel better for the fact. But some don't. Stony-faced drivers driving through as if that was their right or their expectation. Well, there it is. Doesn't ruin my day, I'm sure, and I hope it doesn't ruin yours either. That's just something missing there, isn't there? Just the ebb and flow, the courtesy of what we do on the road and the highway code and all the rest of that. All and how much the more. Take it out as such trivial kind of transaction, such sort of rather more minor effects. into the matter of our standing before God and what he's conferred upon us. And if we recognise this correctly and evaluate it properly, what debtors we are to mercy, what kindness you and I, if we're believers tonight, have met with, what undeserved favour, and of course that's what grace means, undeserved favour, We had nothing to offer God, no talents, no gifts. We had no inherent righteousness, something impressive about the people we were. Morally, we were the opposite. We were stench in his nostrils. we were a people offensive to him. And justice, if that was the sole attribute of God and everything just followed the logic of justice, would see us all absolutely condemned and without hope. But of course, God is also mercy. There is the goodness of God, and we come under that heading to see how he pities his people, how he has mercy, how there is grace. And that met with us, where perhaps we had never known it was there to find. We never knew we needed it. And God in his kindness brought us to repentance and showed us the emptiness of our hearts, the offensiveness of our soul to God. And we were brought to see things differently, to realize that we've been embraced. And just as where we were without hope and without God in the world was dreadful, where we were not being a people was a place of hopelessness, what transformed it is now. we are the people of God, that we have received mercy, that we do now have a relationship with God. And it really should be, shouldn't it? A source of wonder to us every day. Yes, we have our Lord's Day services, we have the communion table to remember things. Oh, it would be good, wouldn't it, that we continue remembering those things tomorrow when we get up and face our normal round of duties and whatever else it is that we perhaps have in our diaries or things we haven't got in our diaries, but which will happen. that we remember what we've learned in this more concentrated way, when there's preaching, and the coming to the Lord's table, and where we're together as Christians in fellowship. So much to be thankful for. We read Romans 6 there, and I'll have a few more comments to make on that as we proceed, but when you realize there the newness of life, which our union with Christ, not only in his death, but also in his resurrection, has brought to us. The sanctification doesn't just happen. That if you have made progress, and I trust you have, defeating sin, overcoming temptation, leaving behind old habits, and cultivating new ways of thinking, new interests, real hopes. Don't think that that's just happened. That too is a reason for thankfulness. The sanctification, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the power because Word and Spirit, Word lives for us, is all of it mercy. And you and I can bring all of that into our thanksgiving. The failure to do it, well, how the Lord lamented the people of old, their refusal to accept the kindnesses he had shown. How often it refers back, doesn't it, to Egypt, their deliverance, how God was with them in the wilderness and led them. The song of it didn't be there, really, in Doddridge's hymn, O God of Bethel. led them there, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, the manna, the quail, the water from the rock, sundry things. And some of the Psalms, at great length, rehearse those things, then lament. They didn't learn. They didn't listen. They weren't thankful. They didn't realize they weren't owed this by God, but out of generosity, He gave it. With that knowledge, they refer back to Him, and are thankful, appreciative, or let it not be us who are found withholding thanksgiving, thinking that our trials, our difficulties somehow absolve us from giving thanks, that we can come and almost spiritually be there with sort of arms folded with a kind of complaining and grumpy attitude. toward our God, or whatever He gives to us, good health, not so good health, whatever providences, frowning providences, difficulties, or He's still a great God. And there before us, friends, is eternity, isn't it? promising us beyond this veil of tears, causing us to moderate our expectations. Fallen world, this. Do not expect here that everything will just be so sweet, so happy ever after. That's heaven, and that's to come, and we remember that. My second heading is this. Yes, God's works. God's works. We've been talking about some Already, there are many, and we're going to, as I say, come to these particular judgments of God, which are His wondrous works in a moment. But let's just remember a few headlines that come under this category. Creation. Creation. This world in which we are. It teems with interest and wonder. We wonder how people, let's quote it again, who follow the science, aren't led to the Bible, and the God of the Bible, to explain what we see. Though the effect of the flood, and though the effect of the fall is there, and creatures die, beautiful animals dying in pain, and yet these are wondrous works, works of creation. I was talking over the dinner table there, different kinds, and different species, Oh, a manor of these creatures, great and small. Extraordinary. how the design of these creatures, which really could not have come about other than by design, and that of God. These are wondrous works. We stood up there last night on Chosen Hill, and there you are, the River Severn in the distance. You don't see that in Derbyshire. And there are things to appreciate, to look out upon, and wonder at. It is works of creation, works of providence. We've already hinted at that. Works of providence. There we are in a world that isn't random. It's not by chance that the happenings have a foreordaining about them. God is working together for the good in and amongst all things, all of providence. What you and I would call happier providences, Things that went right, remarkably went right. Getting seats on trains and such things as we managed to do, rather crowded yesterday and cancellations and the kind. But no, we got seats and we were comfortable. That was a kind providence. I don't know whether we go back tomorrow to Derbyshire, we'll be standing all the way because the trains are crowded again, cancelled, and that was too bad. I don't know. but we receive whatever comes as from God's good hand. Providences, frowning ones, smiling providences. But there are, you and I could probably talk for hours. We look back over life and we think, what God did there? What an intervention that that was. That in the proverbial sense, you and I were in the right place at the right time. that we met somebody that made a difference. They knew somebody and they passed us on. That made a difference. We were helped. Perhaps before we were converted, we were helped there. Well, how did that happen? How come that we met that person at that time? They gave us a really good book and we read it and God used it to convert us. That was a wondrous work. And the more we think, the more we realize there were so, so many of them. There are more than we can recount. There they are. We can't put them in any sort of sense of order. There are just so many of them. I can think just in the last few months or so that I've been involved in somebody else's quite interesting providence. And I picked up the phone. Well, I thought I'd pick up the phone and talk to this man. Little did I know that he'd been praying for that particular thing to actually happen. And I was astonished and he was astonished. And these are wondrous works of God. And should we wonder at it? It is supernatural. We wonder at it. That's nature as ever. God wants to direct it, lead it. Laws of nature, no, they're God's laws. And there what we call nature is conforming to his laws. And sometimes he will move and maneuver things providentially to just bring some wonderful lesson to us. How often we have been wrested and been able just to gain a little strength and then immediately there's been a crisis to deal with it. Unexpected, we've come back, we've ended into something. I can think of it myself personally in that way. Moments of being able to unhurried reading of the word of God, extended times of prayer, And then, crisis. And it's all action. And there's a need to be able to stand and declare things and be as careful as possible and thumbing up, as it were, the thought and carefulness in it. And without that time of rest, I don't think that would have been so easy, comfortable, that wouldn't have happened so in the way that it did, comfortably, unless there'd been that period of rest. Often that's been the case. Oh, if you're having a time of, well, ease, shall we say, good, enjoy, make the maximum use of it spiritually. Because in my experience, that can often be a preparation for a very busy time, a very challenging time. What you gain, what you've taken in, will stand you in good stead to meet those challenges. Oh, and we've said, wondrous works, works of grace, aren't they? Those have profundity to them. Those have mystery written into them. I mentioned there we read Romans chapter six. The more I read that chapter, I realize I've hardly begun to understand it. Sanctification, that work, that mysterious work. And I say that, not there just speaking that off the top of my head, but commentators who study the work of sanctification, this is deep and profound. It's a wondrous work. As I've said, if you and I have been delivered from sin, if we have left behind some habit, some old temptation, we realize, no, I'm dead to that and that is dead to me. And praise God, that was a work of grace. That was a wondrous work. And that's, as I've averted already, just didn't happen. but it was part of all the happenings of Romans chapter six and who we are now called out of where we were. We die to our sin in Christ. We may be made alive to him. We're in union with him. That's something, isn't it? That there at the cross, you and I, if we're His people, were in Him. He was dying our death. We died in Him. We discover the fullness of what that means as we go on. And if we died in him, Paul makes that reasoning, they were also alive in him in his resurrection. Now friends being baptized, we'll see that what you're going to be doing if you're here this evening on live stream is actually picturing some of these things and their realities. And they are realities because there's real depth and real power in being in union with Christ. Paul's there telling us isn't he, to reckon ourselves indeed dead to sin and alive to God, saying to us that sin will not have dominion over you. He's not just wagging a finger at us if you like, making a statement, it won't, because now you're alive in Christ, are you not? You're now united with him in his resurrection, are you not? And if we come back with some other answer or think there is license there to sin, we have his God forbid to steer us away from that course of action. All of these things are wondrous works. They cause us amazement. They make us think that is deep, that is perplexing, that is beyond how I can fully understand it and dissect it and parse it, it's beyond. And it's wondrous, because the benefits of what we read in Romans 6, our union with Christ, where that takes us, the power of what he did upon the cross, how it meets with us in time and space, in our own personal struggles, is rich and deep. My third heading, wondrous judgments. Well, that's where this psalm has really been preparing us for and taking us to. But here is how God is going to act. The earth, its inhabitants, they're being dissolved in verse 3. He's judging uprightly in verse 2. These are deep things and a bit uncomfortable things. If we think that God just sort of kindly doing things here and wanting to interfere there and almost a little bit of an absentee, not really fully engaged, their countries just getting on with it by themselves and governments just kind of getting on with it by themselves, think again. As we've already said, it's not promotion in verse six, cometh neither from the East, nor from the West, nor from the South. As though it just happens. As though it's just some sort of unspoken, unwritten law that that's how it happens. Not, he says, it comes from him. God is the judge, verse seven. He putteth down one and setteth up another. And we hear that with the general election, the new government with a landslide majority, however it came by that, but it has it, and there it is, and the prime minister, I think I heard him right, is thinking he has a mandate for change. Well, we tremble a little at what that might mean, but we accept that God is here at work, and this is declaring his wondrous name is near, but it's sobering. Oh, it is so, so sobering what he is saying to us here. In that promotion, in that bringing people forward who once were not so visible, he is telling us that this is according to his plan and the people involved may not realise anything of it. Cyrus know that there it was all written about him in Isaiah's prophecy that when then the Medes and the Persians should assume the control over the old Babylonian Empire that therefore it was his role now to send back the Jewish exiles exactly as had been prophesied. I understood something of it. But I don't think he began out in life with that knowledge. And he found himself fulfilling that role. Found himself there at the right place at the right time, fulfilling the Word of God. It wasn't as if he was a godly man. He was a pagan worshipper. There was the God of the Jews. Keep them happy. There are these other gods. Let's have a policy of everybody getting on OK together with all our different gods. Sort of the way that he had adopted. He wasn't a believer. And yet God raised him up. And then time came when the Persian Empire should be swept away and the Greek Empire should come. And then the Greek Empire be swept away and the Roman Empire be established. And then the Roman Empire, it's time done. Then the various groups and hordes that came and set Rome and all the rest of the history of that time. Extraordinary happenings. Aye, and wondrous works too. It is for God to raise up people. Habakkuk was told in Habakkuk 1 and verses five to six, that he's raising up the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, ruthless and hasty people that come and are cruel and take over nations. Jacob reeled at that. He staggered at that. And God had to just take him a bit further in his purposes in that. Extraordinary. And we look around us, don't we? We look at the nations of the earth. We could name them, couldn't we? There's some of them, I'm sure. We wonder at them, God's raised them up. And for what purpose? To humble us? To show us our own bankruptcy here in the West? To reveal to us what it means, the troubles that will come when a nation which has known better in the past forsakes God, doesn't think it's worthwhile even retaining the knowledge of God? The dangers of that are more apparent now than perhaps they were when we went to bed on Thursday evening. We wonder, but this is God at work. He can bring to the fore the most unlikely people, those you think, surely not, and yet God is saying, surely yes. I have purposes in this. My name is near. I'm near my people, and I will watch over them, and I will protect them, and I will preserve them for sure. But there are bigger lessons that the nation may have to learn, and indeed the church, through these events. But we notice that in all of it, however this happens, there is a warning, and it's right there in verses four and five, and it comes out again in verse 10, that these people, though in their deed they are fulfilling God's purposes, are warned. They are told that their occupying that place is provisional, and it is a gift of God, not of their doing. It didn't come from the North or the South or the East. It didn't just happen in that way. They'd be wise to remember that. We see it there. I said unto the fools, deal not foolishly, and to the wicked, lift not up the horn. Oh. Beware, you rulers. We're in the territory of Psalm 2, aren't we there? Beware, you rulers, you kings, be advised. The best wisdom is to kiss the sun. Lest he be angry with you, you be destroyed in the way. His anger is kindled but a little. Yes, they're accountable. Yes, whatever reasons God has brought them for all of the complexity of his dealings with our nation and his dealings with the church, they're accountable. They are wise not to lift up the horn on high, not to kind of have a boastful strength, not to take of their human endeavor and parade that. Oh, no, no, no. Do not do that. Do not speak with a stiff neck. How many politicians, past and present, may learn profitably from that? Speaking with a stiff neck, how many leaders and scientists, others, many others, who might well profitably learn that and will need to learn it before the judgment, when their folly, their stiff necks, their uncircumcised hearts, their stubbornness, will truly be judged. God is the judge, that is what he says. And while that works in the here and the now in ways that at times are strange, be sure what we find then in verse eight will come to pass. In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, the wine is red, it is full of mixture, and he poureth out of the same. But the dregs thereof for the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them. So those who did not learn, who was wicked, who lifted up the horn, who spoke with stiff neck, didn't change, didn't repent, then whatever their purpose is now, it's provisional and it's temporary, but in the end, they too will be judged. They too will have served out to them the cup, not here a blessing, but the cup of God's wrath. Isn't it interesting to see how it's described, not only here, but elsewhere too, as wine. It's intoxicating. And the judgment of God is sometimes seen in that. that people are just so absurd. So, so absurd. They're so, so foolish. Well, we talk, don't we, at the moment there about some of the absurdities. I wrote to our prospective candidates in our constituency, Derbyshire Dales. And I had a series of questions, and some of the candidates actually, to their credit, answered. And some of them answered pretty well. Some didn't answer at all. But their first question, pure and simple, without any kind of adornment, is, what is a woman? There we are. That's your start of a 10. Well, what is a woman? Just answer that question for me, and we'll proceed from that. Well, that's bamboozled not a few, hasn't it? That's completely outboxed. A lot of folk there stumbling around. Marvel. It's absurd. It's such foolishness. And when you read here that when a people comes under the judgment of God, when they have pushed away the law of God and even the biology of God from Genesis, Then they have opened themselves up to just having their minds scrambled, to entertaining absurdities, to having vain thoughts, foolish thoughts, and such emptiness of character as it leaves them. But actually, this is also a wondrous work of God. He's not asleep. His name is Neo. And people at their peril desert him, walk away from him. Churches at their peril forsake him and walk away from him. How many churches we can name now that maybe once were really quite evangelical, but now are not. They have now fallen foul of these things. They've become lovers of absurdity. They're entertaining foolish ideas. And that seems, in some cases, to be irretrievable. So my final heading with these heavy thoughts that Asaph has brought us into and still declared wondrous works of God. They show his name is near. They show that he's judged. They show what happens, how he works in nations and surprising things he does, but he will deal with the wicked. that we declare forever, we are in might to bring always the praises of the God of Jacob. That we don't step back, this is too deep, this is difficult territory. You mean God does these things? He's not the author of evil either, but that he permits these nations to grow strong and then just brings them to collapse, intoxicates them in their own turn. Yes, that's in the Word of God. And we shouldn't run away from it. We shouldn't think that this is, we don't want to read that part, bit of scripture and perhaps we'll just skim over these, this section of Psalms all together. No, it's the whole counsel of God. It's the God that we worship. It's the God that we adore. And he is in the fullness of his being and his attributes. Yes, a God of justice. That's good news, actually. If there wasn't a God of justice, there'd be no fairness, there would be no bringing to pass of what, in our own kind of imperfect way, we think is proper showing of justice. We're smart when there are injustices. When we know people have been wronged and it hasn't been put right. Surely, so we should. But how much the more God. and we worship such a God, and we declare His praises, and we actually look forward that the wicked will have their horns, all their strength, and all their gifts, and all their attributes, which they thought stood them in such good stead, cut off. They're the righteous, those who proclaim the wondrous works of God, works in creation, works in providence, works of grace, works of judgment, shall be exalted. We have a future, friends. We have a future in this nation as the church, the confessing church, the church upholding truth in the midst of, well, the uncertainties that the change of government has brought us. but we will sing praises to the God of Jacob. Next Lord's Day, God sparing us, we will come into his house, we will sing praises to the God of Jacob. So these are the wondrous works of God, how manifold that they are. And we're required to embrace them all, to try to hold on to all of these things, and have them as part of our thinking, understanding of God, part of our worship of God. These things are to be sung back to him. And that is our resolve, that was Asaph's resolve. Whatever strange the world in which he lived, that was his resort, as it was Habakkuk's. The Chaldeans, all of that troubled, yet at the end, in Habakkuk 3, there is his worship. And while it may be that not much happening, no vines, the olive oil has failed, there's no herds in the stalls, but we're gonna sing the praises of God. So we proceed. Let's proceed with hope and expectation. The Lord is near. His name is near. And that is ample reason for thanksgiving.