thoughts and ruminations while in exile (1 Pet. 2:11)

1 Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;make known his deeds among the peoples! 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him;tell of all his wondrous 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 wondrous works that he has done,his miracles, and the judgments he uttered, 6 O offspring of Abraham, his servant,children of Jacob, his chosen ones!
7 He is the LORD our God;his judgments are in all the earth. 8 He remembers his covenant forever,the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, 9 the covenant that he made with Abraham,his sworn promise to Isaac, 10 which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,to Israel as an everlasting covenant, 11 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaanas your portion for an inheritance (Ps. 105:1-11).


I chose to read this Psalm on Thanksgiving because it is about giving thanks to God for His goodness and faithfulness to His people. All throughout the Bible we see that as God’s people, we are to praise Him because He intervenes on our behalf (see Ps. 113; Is. 59:15-20; Phil. 2:6-8 as a few examples). And that’s what this Psalm is about. Ten times in the first five verses God calls us to remember what He has done for us. In remembering what He has done for us, we are remembering why God has been faithful. This is because we serve a God who is a God of promise. Another way to say this is to say that God is a covenant-keeping God. Verses 7-9 say, “He is the LORD our God . . . He remembers his covenant forever . . . the covenant that he made with Abraham.” Later on in verse 42 the text says, “For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham, his servant.”

Now, why am I talking about Abraham on Thanksgiving? It’s because the central promise of the Bible is the promise made to Abraham. God told Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” This promise was reiterated in Genesis 17 where God says, “I will be God to you and to your offspring.” And God formed the Jewish people. Psalm 105 is all about God’s faithfulness to his people in all of their difficulties throughout the years. And as they reflected upon his faithfulness they praised God and told each other, as we see in verse 1 to, “make known his deeds among the peoples.” But as we move into the NT Paul helps us understand God’s relationship with the Jewish people. Without downplaying the significance of being Jewish (Rom. 3:1), he tells us that, “no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly . . . But a Jew is one inwardly and . . . is a matter of the heart” (Rom. 2:28-29). Paul tells us that God’s promise to Abraham comes to fulfillment in Christ: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).

In Galatians 3:29 Paul tells us, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” And in Romans 4 Paul teaches that the children of Abraham share “the faith of Abraham, the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16).

So when Psalm 105 calls on the “offspring of Abraham” to remember God’s covenant promises, He’s referring to us, the church. We know that God has been faithful to His covenant, because we see what He did for us in Christ. Abraham wanted more than an earthly inheritance; “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). And it is in Christ that we have received all our blessings. As we think about all of the reasons we are thankful this Thanksgiving Day, we do so knowing that they have been purchased for us by Christ. This is what Paul means when he says, But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal. 6:14). He doesn’t mean that we can’t boast or be happy or thankful for anything else but what Christ did for us on the cross; rather, he means that all other boasting must be subservient to the boasting we do in the cross.

The blessing of being with family, sharing good food; the blessing of children and grandchildren—all the joys we have in this life are purchased for us by Christ. May this truth be on the forefront of our minds this Thanksgiving Day.

To read more about God being a God of Promise, I recommend reading God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, by Michael Horton.