My wife and I are reading through the Psalms in our evening reading and occasionally a nugget of the Psalms jumps out of the page. Don’t you love it when, after years of reading the “Old Book” passages become alive, reinforcing old teachings or simply warming your heart.
This is the book of Psalms, and it is rich.
I pray I can communicate a portion of the blessing we receive from this wonderful book.
Psalm 66:13 I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will perform my vows to you,
Psalm 66:14 that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
Psalm 66:15 I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
In our last post, we spoke of the reality of God testing the believer, and of God bringing us through some trouble or trial. The psalmist experienced his own personal trial, and spoke a vow before the Lord. The next few verses speak of him completing his vow.
Vows are serious. A vow is a verbal contract. A promise, usually a bilateral type of agreement that the offerer makes to get something out of the other party.
Now there are vows that are unilateral, that is, the offerer makes the vow without expecting any type of action on the part of the recipient, but that doesn’t happen often, and I can’t think of a time when it wasn’t God making the offer. He is like that, in that He makes a vow for our good, and that costs Him, for our sake. Doesn’t seen fair, but that isn’t the way God works. He is full of mercy, and grace. Fairness doesn’t factor into His dealings with us! (Righteousness does of course, but I fear I am getting a bit off track!)
Nevertheless, the psalmist made a vow. A promise to God for His intervention in a trial he was going through. Obviously, God pulled him though to an abundant place, and he was mow focused on performing the vow.
Did God need the sacrifice? Was God hungry, in that He needed the sacrificed meat? This idea speaks of our seeking to understand God in our terms. God did not require a sacrifice, but the psalmist needed to provide the sacrifice. He needed to complete the vow, FOR HIS OWN SAKE. .
For one to make a vow and to break it (not perform it) remains in a persons conscience. When all is quiet and there are no distractions, the truth is still there of a broken promise, of a vow incomplete, made to the One who is faithful.
For a psalm that speaks of all the earth to praise God, this particular last portion of the psalm becomes very personal, focused on the psalmist himself. Its as if the psalmist couldn’t help but to take his own counsel and to speak of the awesome deeds God had performed in his own life, and the resultant obedience that grows out of this awesome deed. I assume it was an awesome deed for the vow is quite extensive. Not only are there multiple types of sacrifice (bull and goat) but there seems to be multiple animals for each sacrifice.
Not only is the quantity high, but the quality is high also. These animals are fattened (vs 15), speaking of the health and worth of each sacrifice.
The psalmist offered burnt offerings, which were a voluntary sacrifice, a sacrifice that spoke of devotion to God. Although his vow may have been given in the heat of the moment, his devotion was long term, deep and according the the instructions provided by God.
Yet in all of this vow keeping, the psalmist does not forget that it is God that is the greater One in the relationship. In our next post, the psalmist will speak of some of the deeper, internal actions the psalmist went through, and the work of God related to his heart.
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Considering the Bible 