Psalms 105

The Explanation

Imagine a campfire at night. The flames crackle, and an old man begins to sing. Around him sit children, wrapped in blankets. And the song he sings is this psalm.

"Give thanks to Yahweh!" he sings. "Sing to him! Tell of all his marvelous works." Then he starts telling, and the story begins long, long ago.

There was a man named Abraham. God promised him something enormous: a whole land, the land of Canaan, for him and his children and his children's children. But look at Abraham's family. They were "but a few men in number, yes, very few," the psalm says. Just a handful of people, wandering from country to country, sleeping in tents, strangers everywhere they came. Nobody's land. No house of their own.

And yet God watched over them. When a king thought, "I'll just take what I want from them," God said, "Don't touch my anointed ones!" And the king backed off.

Then the song gets darker. A famine came. No bread, no grain, empty fields. And one of Abraham's great-grandsons, a boy named Joseph, was sold as a slave. Iron rings around his ankles. Iron around his neck. Do you hear how heavy that sounds? Clank. Clank. Joseph in a prison, far from home.

But God had said something about Joseph, and God's word came true. The king of Egypt himself opened the door and set him free. And then, imagine it, that same slave became the second most important man in all Egypt. Everyone had to listen to him, even the king's princes.

So Joseph's whole family came to live in Egypt, and there they grew from a handful into a huge people. Too huge, the Egyptians thought. They began to hate them and make them slaves.

Then God sent Moses and Aaron. And the psalm sings out the wonders: darkness so thick you could not see your own hand. Water turning to blood, and the fish dying. Frogs, frogs everywhere, even hopping in the king's own bedroom. Flies. Hail with lightning crashing through it. Locusts eating every single green leaf until nothing was left.

At last the king let them go. And they walked out of Egypt with silver and gold in their hands, singing. Not one of them was weak or sick. In the desert God spread a cloud over them like a great umbrella, and at night a fire to give light. When they were hungry, quails came. Bread came down from the sky. And when they were thirsty, God split open a rock and water gushed out, a whole river running through dry sand.

Why did God do all this? The psalm tells us: "For he remembered his holy word."

What Does This Mean?

God does not forget. That is the heart of this song. Hundreds of years passed between Abraham's promise and that river out of the rock. Kings came and died. Joseph sat in chains and probably thought God had lost him. But God remembered every word he had said.

Sometimes it looked as if the promise had gone completely wrong. Slavery. Famine. Chains. And exactly through those dark parts God was keeping his promise. That is not an easy thing to understand. But it is true.

The Common Thread

God kept promising, and he kept remembering. And the biggest promise came much later, when he sent Jesus. Just like Joseph, Jesus was handed over and treated as if he were nothing. Just like the water from the rock, Jesus gives what we cannot live without. God did not forget us either.

For You

The old man by the fire kept telling, so that nobody would forget. You can do that too. Ask your mother or father or grandmother tonight: "Has God ever helped you?" Then listen carefully, and remember it. And when something good happens to you this week, say it out loud: "Thank you, God." Out loud, not just in your head.

Talk About It

Joseph sat in prison with iron around his neck. Do you think he still believed God's promise?

What is one thing you want to thank God for right now?

Praying Together

Lord God, you never forget what you promise. Thank you for the cloud, the bread, the water from the rock. Thank you for Jesus. Help me to remember you too. Amen.