“Great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them.”
– Psalm 111:2
I want you to think about those two words in Psalm 111:2 when we think about the works of God. So think about what God has done in history, His works in the past, what God is doing now in our lives, in the world around us, His works in the present and what God will do in the future; his works according to His promises that we know He will do. When you think about the works of the Lord, past, present, and future, we study them and we delight in them.
Psalm 111:2 Reminds Us to Praise God
We praise God for His works in the past, the way He is working right now, and for what He will do in the future. Great are the works of the Lord. May we delight in Him.
Think about that. Look back in history. Just think in the Bible, just different stories in the Bible. I think about sitting around with my family when we’re having family worship and one of our kids tells a story from scripture.
Now I think about, well, my youngest, his favorite story has always been Daniel and the lion’s den to the point where we were like, “Ah, you got to come up with a different story to tell because you tell that story all the time.” But there’s kind of a beauty in that because he loves the story. He loves what God did in Daniel’s life, how He brought him out of the lion’s den. And he always gets to the end of the story and he’s like, “He didn’t even have a scratch on him.”
My son uses that line every time. It’s like he delights in this story. He’s studied it and so he tells it like this is actually a really good thing and this is what we should be doing in our lives and our families and our churches, to talk about God’s works from the past, to study them and to find delight in them, in the details, because we’re studying them. We don’t just casually pass over them or casually acknowledge them.
Psalm 111:2 Reminds Us to Study What Has God Done
No, we study them. We study what God did in this or that part of history and not just in His word, but what He’s done for 2000 years since His word was written. God’s done a lot of works in the last 2000 years. So it’s good to study what God has done in history, how God has worked, to study what God did in the Reformation through Martin Luther, through John Calvin, through Wycliffe, through Tyndale, through all these people who God used to make His word accessible in the language of people; how God used the printing press to get His word out to so many people, to study those works and delight in them.
God, You did this and that in this person’s life and it just leads to worship and not just the past, in the present. I like to study what God is doing in our lives, in the lives of people around us, in our churches, in the world around us, like to study the works of God and delight in what He is doing and even with anticipation, to study what we know is coming. I think about preaching through Revelation recently and it’s so awesome reading through that book, what God is going to do in the future. It’s mind blowing, it’s breathtaking and the more you study, the more delight there is. This is what we do. This is what we do.
This Verse Reminds Us to Delight in God
We study the works of God and we find delight in them. So we pray, oh God, we praise You for Your works. We praise You for all of Your works in the past. We praise you for all of the ways You’re working right now in the present. It’s awesome what You have promised to do in the future, what You will do in the future. We say with the Psalmist, great are the works of the Lord and we want to study them and we find delight in them.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For God’s Help
So God, we pray You’d help us. Help us to learn more and more and more about You through Your works. And as we read Your word, as we read stories, help us to study Your word. As we hear accounts of what You have spoken through Your servants, we pray that You’d help us to study your word and find delight in it.
And God, as we look at Your works around us, as we discern how You are moving, what You are doing according to Your word, by Your spirit, we pray that You would make us students of Your works. Yeah. God, may it be so that we are students of Your works, who delight in them. Let us delight in what You have done, and in what You are doing and in what You will do.
All glory be to Your name. Great are Your works, oh God. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Ah, in the name of the One who You have worked our salvation through. Ah, in the name of the One who died on a cross for our sins and rose from the dead. We delight in studying that work. Ah, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
