By awesome deeds, you answer us with righteousness, oh God, of our salvation. The hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas sees.
– Psalm 65:5
What a great verse. And I want to hone in on two phrases. First in the beginning of verse five, “By awesome deeds. You answer us. You answer us with righteousness.” Earlier in this Psalm, David says, “Praise is due to you, oh God, you who hear prayer.”
Psalm 65:5 reminds us that God listens to our prayers.
So the picture in Psalm 65, and this is in a sense so basic, but it’s such a needed reminder for us continually, that God, the Creator of the world, the Sovereign Ruler of all, hears you and me when we talk to him, and he answers us according to his righteousness, according to his perfect knowledge, his perfect wisdom, his perfect power, his perfect love. This should drive us to pray all the time that we would leave behind prayerlessness, the God of the universe will hear us and answer us with perfect righteousness.
So let’s pray to him as the other phrase that I want to focus on in the second part of this verse, “As the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.” He’s our hope. He’s our only hope.
I just want you to think about your life today from different angles. One, just very basically your only hope today for life and growth in godliness, for victory over sin, for strength, for sustenance, for joy. Your only hope for all these things is God. He’s the author of all these things. And without him, we don’t have any of these things. He’s our only hope for everything we want, everything we need on a daily basis. We live every moment with God as our only hope.
Psalm 65:5 reminds us that God is our only hope in every situation.
Now, we may not always realize that, in fact, we often forget that and take those things for granted. But the reality is God is our only hope for all of those things. And then think about challenges or trials, difficulties that you’re walking through. Maybe health struggles, maybe relational struggles, maybe emotional or mental struggles, struggles at work or school, struggles in life, family, church, whatever it might be. Regardless, our only hope is God. To get us through, to give us what we need to get through on a moment-by-moment basis. Today, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, He’s our hope.
Now put this together with the first part of verse five. The God who is our only hope is ready at every moment to hear us and to answer us according to his perfect righteousness.
So let’s pray. Oh God, we praise you for hearing our prayers and for answering us with righteousness and by awesome deeds. We praise you for working your power and your love on our behalf in response to our praying. Oh God, teach us to pray with confidence, with faith continually to you as our hope. We praise you of God as our hope. We praise you Jesus, for making eternal everlasting hope possible in you. So we say we place all our hope in you. We need you today.
God, we hope in you. We trust in you for life, for strength, for peace, for comfort, for help, for all the grace we need amidst struggles we’re walking through in our lives, our families, you’re our only hope, our churches, you’re our only hope, you’re our future, your only hope, our country, you’re our only hope, the nations, you’re their only hope. Lord, we confess that together. We pray that you would help us to point people to you as the One who’s worthy of our hope.
Prayer for the Kanarese People
God, we pray that the Kanarese people of India and spread out in different places all the way to New Zealand would be reached with the good news of the hope that’s found in Jesus.
And God, we pray that the hope that’s found in Jesus would spread through our lives today. Help us to encourage others with the hope that we can find in you, that all the ends of the earth and the farthest seas might know you as their living everlasting. Hope we pray all this according to your Word in Psalm 65:5. And we praise you for hearing us as we prayed. And we praise you for hearing us all day long. Help us to pray all day long in light of this verse. In Jesus name, 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.
