1 O give thanks to the Lord; call on his name; make known his deeds among the peoples. 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wonderful works. 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 4 Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually. 5 Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles and the judgments he has uttered, 6 O offspring of his servant Abraham, children of Jacob, his chosen ones. 23 Then Israel came to Egypt; Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham. 24 And the Lord made his people very fruitful and made them stronger than their foes, 25 whose hearts he then turned to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants. 26 He sent his servant Moses and Aaron, whom he had chosen. Praise the Lord! (Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c NRSV)
Dear Friend, I pray this finds you well and enjoying God's blessings. Do you enjoy praising God? I believe God enjoys hearing our praises and our gratitude. As this psalm begins if we have been blessed by something good from God we should not hesitate or restrain our giving thanks to God. We're more than ready to share when good news comes our way, and the good news of God's love and mercy cannot be beat for the best news out there! If we know God as a worker of good among us, we should alert all people to that reality. Keep an open mind, an open heart and spirit as we read what this psalm is trying to share. Prayer Update: The Rev. Michael Dobbs underwent a successful gall bladder removal and is recovering at Doctor's Regional in Corpus Christi. Also, The Rev. Scott Bradford got a new update on his battle against prostate cancer. After retiring and moving to Colorado a VA doctor ordered an MRI and the battle continues. Our prayer is that Rev. Bradford be able to fight without surgery. Prayers for our brother and that God grant him a victory over this terrible illness. Please lift up these two servants of God in prayer for the victories they need. May God bless you in your struggles too! And prayers for this old man as I prepare for my early Friday morning cataract surgery in San Antonio.
The psalm opens like someone who simply cannot keep good news to themselves — "O give thanks to the Lord, call on His name, make known His deeds among the peoples!" There's an urgency to it, an almost breathless quality, as if the psalmist has just remembered something so important that sitting quietly is no longer an option. Sing to Him. Sing praises. Tell of His wonderful works. Glory in His holy name. Seek His presence continually. It's a list of commands that builds on itself like someone adding instruments to a song until the whole thing is gloriously loud and full and impossible to ignore.
And here's what's worth noticing right at the start: the psalmist isn't asking anyone to manufacture a feeling they don't have. He's doing something much more practical than that. He's calling the people to remember. "Remember the wonderful works He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He has uttered." Memory, in the biblical world, is not a passive exercise in nostalgia — it is an active, deliberate, almost disciplined practice of refusing to let what God has done get buried under what is currently hard. The psalm is essentially saying: before you look at your circumstances, look at your history with God. Before you assess what's in front of you, remember what He's already done behind you.
Then the psalm takes us somewhere unexpected — to Egypt, and to Moses and Aaron, and to the moment when God sent them as His servants to a people who had been in slavery so long that some of them had probably stopped believing they would ever be anything else. Israel had gone down to Egypt in the time of Joseph — that's the thread connecting our devotional series — and what began as a rescue from famine had become, over the generations, a captivity. The very land that saved them had become the land that enslaved them. And God, who had not forgotten a single one of His promises, chose two very ordinary men — a man with a speech impediment and his brother — and sent them to tell the most powerful ruler in the world that it was time to let the people go.
Now, if you were designing a liberation movement from scratch, Moses and Aaron might not be your first draft. Moses had a complicated history with Egypt, a self-described inability to speak well, and a tendency toward self-doubt that would try the patience of a less patient God. Aaron was essentially drafted because Moses kept asking for help. And yet these are the men God chose, and the choosing itself is the point — because when two men like that walk into Pharaoh's palace and eventually walk out with two million people behind them, nobody is confused about whose power made it happen. God has a long history of choosing the unlikely precisely because the unlikely make the best advertisement for what He alone can do.
The psalm closes this section with a word that connects everything — "Praise the Lord!" which in Hebrew is Hallelujah, the word that has been erupting from the throats of God's people in every language ever since. It's the word that belongs at the end of every chapter of the story where God has done what only He could do — freed the captive, used the unlikely, kept the forgotten promise, turned the Egypt that enslaved into the Egypt that was left behind on the way to something better. Hallelujah is what comes out of your mouth when you realize the story was never actually in danger of going wrong, even when it looked like it was.
And here's the Pentecost thread running quietly through all of it — the same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation, who strengthened Moses and Aaron for an impossible assignment, who parted the Red Sea and led the people through the wilderness, is the Spirit who was poured out in wind and fire in Jerusalem and who now dwells in every person who belongs to Christ. The God who remembered Israel in Egypt has not developed a shorter memory since then. The God who chose Moses for what looked like an impossible task is still choosing ordinary, unlikely, self-doubting people for tasks that look just as impossible from the outside — and still showing up to do through them what they could never do without Him.
So give thanks. Call on His name. Make known His deeds to the people around you who need to hear them. Tell the story. Sing the song. And remember — before you look at what's in front of you today — what He has already done behind you. The track record is impeccable. The promises are intact. And Hallelujah is always the right response.
PRAYER: Lord, make us a people who remember Your faithfulness so vividly and so gratefully that our praise spills over into the lives of everyone around us. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Write down one specific thing God has done in your life that deserves a Hallelujah, and tell someone about it today — out loud, on purpose, as your act of making His deeds known.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Let's win the world for Jesus as we share His love with all people.
Your in Christ Jesus,
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr. paypal.me/eradiovalverde
