Psalm 66

Psalm Category: Community song of gratitude

Central Thought: As it was with the psalmist, a personal testimony is an expression of God’s greatness as seen in our individual lives.

Most Christians at some point have heard or shared a personal testimony. It can be a great encouragement to other believers and a powerful witness to unbelievers, when delivered from the heart and meant to give glory to Christ. At times, however, the personal testimony can become a stylized genre of its own, authenticated by a touch of drama, resembling a competitive exhibition with a bit of spiritual posturing. In spite of this, Psalm 66 reminds us that a God-centered personal testimony that worshipfully presents the work of His sovereign grace, and calls others to faith, is a powerful witness that we can all take into the world.

Psalm 66 begins with a worldwide call to worship and a panoramic view of God’s glory and power in the earth (vv. 1-5). The focus of the psalm then tightens to celebrate the particular and gracious care of God for His people (vv. 6-12). Finally, the psalm zooms in on a single worshiper whose prayers have been answered (vv. 13-20). This progression—from the universal, to the particular, to the individual—reminds us that, in the great sweep of redemptive history, the individual is not just a face in a crowd, and certainly no mere pawn in a game. Among the mighty works of God in the world (v. 5), which include such a great event as the Exodus (v. 6), we find His quiet and gracious work in the life of the individual believer. This is what makes every believer a living illustration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and every individual testimony a significant act of bearing witness.

The psalmist begins his testimony with a display of God’s grandeur and a call to joyful worship (vv. 1-5). By the end of the psalm we will know more about God than about the psalmist, which is a paradigm worth pondering for personal testimony. The subject quickly changes to focus on the awesome, gracious deeds of God toward His people in the past, specifically the miraculous crossings of the Red Sea and the Jordan River (v. 6), which decisively proved His power and will to save. Before telling his personal experience of God’s grace in his life, the psalmist is careful to lay a firm context by showing the long precedence and corporate dimension of God’s saving grace.

Next, the psalmist recounts some of the corporate trials that God’s people had to endure (vv. 10-12). Thus, before relating his own experience of hardship and deliverance, the psalmist puts himself in the broader context of God’s plan for His people, to bring eternal glory out of momentary suffering (see Rom. 8). The psalmist does not gloss over the harder realities of the experience of salvation, but neither does he maximize his own struggles as unique or distinct from the experience of his forefathers. He does, however, clearly see the hand of God in these trials, which makes the adversity as meaningful as the deliverance. The trials of faith are pictured as a refining process (v. 10) that leads to rich fulfillment (v. 12).

Finally, in verses 13-20, the pronouns change from the third person to the first person as the psalmist adds his personal testimony to the corporate, historic evidences of God’s mercy and might. Thus, his own testimony is seen in its right context. The hardship and deliverance he has experienced in his own life (v. 16) and the joyous answer to prayer that God provided (v. 19) are but instances of God acting in character and showing Himself changelessly merciful to His precious people.

The psalmist has shown us that his personal testimony—as glorious and joyous as it is—is like a droplet in a mighty river of divine grace that courses through history and through countless individual lives. This personal testimony is one that presents to us the majesty of the Savior and the true breadth of His grace, but shows us that He takes into account the individual, who is not lost in the crowd after all, and whose testimony has its own unique place in bearing witness to the truth and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

—C.J. Williams