Speaker 1: 0:03

The Sermon series is entitled The Songs of Summer, where we're taking a look at the book of Psalms that were written for singing and for prayer and how they help us to see God's wisdom for everyday life. And that is what wisdom is in the Bible It's applying the law of God to the everyday situations in life. And I greatly appreciate the candor of the Psalms, where the writers express not only the joys and the good times but the struggles, the doubts, the difficulties and how they work through the Word of God to try to resolve those situations and how instructive they are for us. A couple of weeks ago, when we introduced this series, we mentioned that there are several different categories or types of Psalms. Two weeks ago we looked at a Psalm of confidence, for instance. There's also Psalms of lament or thanksgiving, so on and so forth, and oftentimes I should say most of the time Psalms are never just one type or one category of Psalm. You'll get a Psalm that's mixed with lament and thanksgiving and so on and so forth, but this morning's Psalm is a Psalm of pure praise. It is the only type of language, if you will, that's expressed in the Psalm Psalms of praise. In the Psalms are usually these expressions of exuberant praise. They oftentimes detail the reasons that God is to be praised and they invite other people to join them in the expression of that praise. And so this morning we're going to be looking at Psalm 29, which is a Psalm of praise. And it is interesting as you go through this Psalm, because the language that it uses portrays these extraordinary storms that are taking place and how the writer praises God in the midst of those extraordinary storms. In fact, it's using the language of thunders and flashes of flames, thunder and lightning and that type of thing. And it reminded me of when we moved to Tampa last July that I was amazed at the lightning here, and I was talking to somebody in the congregation who mentioned to me well, you know, that's why Tampa Bay Lightning is named Tampa Bay Lightning, right, because we get a lot of lightning here. Well, i did not know that And this may be old news to you, but I got online and I looked up the story of how the Tampa Bay Lightning got its name, and Phil Esposito was trying to bring a hockey franchise to Tampa Bay And so he started this contest for people to give names for which he should name the team, and he was getting things like the Tampa Bay Oceanics or the Tampa Bay Pelicans or the Tampa Bay Gators, and he was none too pleased with the responses that he was getting because he didn't think they were very fitting for a hockey team. So he was at one of his friends' house Benny Lazara, excuse me, who was an attorney and one of his business associates, and he had a barbecue in his backyard And, lo and behold, the storms comes up very rapidly and there's all this extraordinary lightning. And Lazara tells Esposito that Tampa Bay is like the number one place in the United States for lightning strikes. And Lazara's 84, 85-year-old mother comes walking out of the house and says to him you should name the team the Tampa Bay Lightning. And that is how the lightning got its name.

Speaker 1: 3:44

But this morning we're going to be looking at a Psalm that portrays God's power and creation in a variety of ways that should lead us to the praise of him. So let's read Psalm 29. A Psalm of David, excuse me. Ascribed to the Lord, o heavenly beings. Ascribed to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribed to the Lord, the glory do his name. Worship the Lord and the splendor of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory. Thunders The Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Syrian like a wild ox, like a young ox, excuse me. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare. In his temple, all cry glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Peace, and it's rather a remarkable combination, isn't it, that this writer is talking about these ferocious storms, and I believe that they include both literal, physical storms and even the trials that we often refer to as the storms of our lives. And in the midst of it, he has led to praise God. And so that is our first point this morning, that in life's storm, we are to praise the Lord as the King over all. That's how the Psalm concludes, right? It's building up to this climax in verse 10. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord sits enthroned as King forever. And you think of the flood as being the most cataclysmic natural disaster that's occurred, that covered the earth. And God sits as King, sovereign over it even. And it speaks of how God is King forever. His kingship never ends.

Speaker 1: 6:26

So what is God King, or Lord over, if you will? Well, the Psalm brings out these details for us. It tells us how the Lord's is King over heavenly beings. I'm just going to list these quickly and then tie them up towards the end. And for instance, the Lord is King over heavenly beings, as verse 1 says, ascribed to the Lord. Oh, heavenly beings.

Speaker 1: 6:52

When you think of Scripture, when a heavenly being appears to a human, the reaction is usually one of great fear on the part of the human, falling down in fear before the heavenly angelic being. And oftentimes there's a voice of reassurance from this heavenly being to say be not afraid. Well, and you think of what our response is to a heavenly being, how even those heavenly beings are to give worship and praise to God. You might remember CJ Sermon last week from Isaiah, chapter 6, where he talked about how the seraphim praise God in heaven, even the beings greater than us worship God and therefore we certainly should as well.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Throughout this Psalm, the name Lord and usually in the English translations it appears in all capital letters L-O-R-D, and that is translating the name of Yahweh in the Old Testament, which is a name by which God revealed Himself as the self-existent one. The God who is you didn't have a beginning, doesn't have an end. He's completely sufficient in himself. He is the covenant keeping faithful God. And it is this God. His name appears 18 times in the Psalm that is being referenced here, as the Lord even over the heavenly beings. In addition, the Psalm mentions how the Lord is king over all of creation.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Now, this is specified a lot in verses 3 through 9. I won't bother to repeat all of those verses, but in these verses the voice of the Lord is given great prominence. It appears seven times within the passage And again it is a picture for us of the majesty and the power of God. Scripture mentions that it was by speaking that God brought forth the world and all that exists within it. It is by the power of His word that the Lord upholds and sustains all things, caring for His creation.

Speaker 1: 9:08

You think of when Jesus was on the sea with his friends and a furious storm arose and Jesus is calmly asleep in the bottom of the boat and they get him up and they say Jesus, are you not concerned about us? And Jesus comes above board and he says quiet, be still. And the storm immediately stops and the seas at glass like glass, demonstrating the power of Jesus. Or you might think of when Jesus stood outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus, who had been in the tomb for four days, and Jesus, by speaking, said Lazarus come out and he was raised from the dead and brought back to life. So extraordinary, so great, so majestic is the power of God that merely by speaking and again, this is a human understanding, a human expression so that we can understand what takes place God accomplishes His will, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem to us, and God's extraordinary power is seen through the storm. And the Psalm mentions how God's power is over the sea in verse 3.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Waters, many waters, is a reference to the Mediterranean Sea. To the west, it refers to God's, the Lord, being King even over the mountains. Verses 5 and 6 describe how The cedars are a reference to the grandest of the forest trees, and they're especially impressive in Lebanon. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to see the sequoias or the redwoods in California and just how absolutely massive they are, that even streets run through the trunks of them and you stand at the base of them and you feel so small and dwarfed into comparison and God is Lord over them. Even extraordinarily bigger than them, syrion in verse 6, is the Phoenician name for Mount Hermon. It is the highest mountain in Palestine, at roughly some 9,000 feet above elevation. I don't know what the biggest mountain is that you've seen. The biggest mountain that we've seen is Grand Teton in the Teton National Park. It's about 13,000, almost 800 feet in elevation. The Swiss Alps are bigger. The Himalayas are even bigger And again the point is that we are dwarfed in comparison to them, but God is over them. He is so majestic and so supreme.

Speaker 1: 11:45

We see also how the Lord is king over the desert in verses 7 and 8,. The wilderness References Kadesh here, where there are two Kadeshes We're not sure if it's the one in the north, and if it is, it's a reference of how the Lord is even the God over the Canaanite gods, who believed that the gods dwelt in the mountains. But even there, god is greater than them. Or whether it's a reference to Kadesh, barnea in the south, where? so? whether it's from the north to the south, covering all the land, god is the king and the ruler overall, and verse 9 even mentions the animals. How the Lord is the king over all of His creation. We'll come back to this in just a minute. But we see also how the Lord is the king over humanity in verses 10 and 11. We read verse 10, how He's enthroned over the flood, sits enthroned as the king forever. In verse 11, may the Lord give strength to His people. May the Lord bless His people with peace. So the Lord is our king as well. He rules over us, he is the sovereign. We can rely upon Him and His majesty and His direction for our lives.

Speaker 1: 13:02

There's a passage of Scripture that I really enjoy. It's Isaiah, chapter 40. And in this chapter, the prophet Isaiah asks a number of different rhetorical questions to the people to demonstrate how great our God is And, beginning in verse 12, he starts these questions mentioning how our God is without compare, that there's nothing in heaven above or on the earth below that compares to our God. We see different expressions given to God. Here He's described in human terms so that we can understand Him. God does not have a body, even though it mentions the hollow of His hand and the breath of His hand and those kind of things. But they are ways that God humbles Himself, if you will, to show us how glorious He is and so that we can understand Him.

Speaker 1: 13:55

And so Isaiah asks in chapter 40, verse 12, who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand? Now I want you to think about that image for a minute. God is so great that even the very depths of the ocean fit within the palm of His hand. Again, this is human expressions to understand how big and great God is. God doesn't literally have a hand, but if He did, it would be so big that all of the oceans would fit in it. The earth is covered with roughly two-thirds of water. It's as deep as six miles deep in some places. If you were to look online at how many gallons of water it is, you wouldn't even be able to say the number. It is just so vast and so extraordinary. So for comparison, i got myself a tablespoon, i filled it up with water and I dumped it in my hand. About a tablespoon of water can fit in my hand, and yet God holds the depths of the ocean in the palm of His hand. So great and so extraordinary is He.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Isaiah then next asks the question who has, with the breadth of His hand, marked off the heavens? Now, a hand breadth was used in ancient times as a common standard of measurement, and Isaiah's point in the Psalm is that God is so great that He can measure the vastness of our universe merely by the stretch of His hand. Now again for comparison, i thought it would be fun. I measured the distance between my little finger and my thumb and I got roughly 11 inches. Wouldn't cover a whole lot of the universe, but for God, the entire universe is measured in the span of His hand. Now, calculating the distance of the universe is something that blows our minds incredibly. We know that the nearest star other than the sun is four and a half light years away, and light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. And the nearest star then, when you calculated all out, is 26 trillion miles away. That is the number 26, with 12 zeros after it, and that's our nearest star. And Yet scripture says that God can measure the vastness of the universe and the span of his hand.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Isaiah goes on and he asks another question Who has held the dust of the earth and the balance? Excuse me, who has held the dust of the earth in a basket or weighed the mountains and the balance? We've already referenced some of the the greatest mountain ranges that exist in our world, and yet all of them are so small And, comparison to God, it's like he can put them on a scale and weigh them. This is the majesty of our God. This is the Lord who reigns in rules over all of creation and nothing is Outside of his dominion or his rule. And that is why the psalmist is left praising and adoring his God, even in the midst of some ferocious storms. And That leads us to our next point. Since God is the Lord over all, he is to be praised. We should praise him. We'll look at a few ways in which that should take place, one of which is, of course, by worship, and Verses one, two and nine.

Speaker 1: 17:49

The Psalm opens and the Psalm closes with the theme of worship. Ascribe to the Lord, oh heavenly beings. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Excuse me. Ascribe to the Lord the glory. Do his name. Worship the Lord and the splendor of his holiness. Verse 9 The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest, bears bear and in his temple all cry glory. And The emphasis, of course, of the Psalm is that since this God is the true God and since this God rules over, all worship is to be given to him alone and to know other, whether it's the Canaanite gods who believe that their gods dwelt in the mountains, or Any idol that we create from our heart. You know, isaiah 40 goes on and and talks about the absolute foolishness of people who go out and cut down a tree and with that tree they they Create some wood for a fire, they build some furniture with it, or they carve out on idle and they bow down and they worship it. It's just ludicrous, and So it is that if we give our worship to any other than God himself, we are Equally foolish.

Speaker 1: 19:15

I don't know if you've ever met anybody famous, whether it's a celebrity or an athlete or perhaps a famous politician or anything like that. I've only had one celebrity encounter in my life and I was roughly 10 years old and it was the end of our baseball season and we were having our end of the year baseball banquet at this big banquet hall near Pittsburgh, and they often had various artists come and perform in the evening. My sister was a great pianist and she often played the piano at this place, opening for some different acts, and they would be there at night. And so I'm waiting for the drawing for the door prizes to occur and I really have to use the bathroom, but I didn't want to leave for fear that my number would be called while it was out of the room and they kept getting delayed, one thing after another, and so there was this point where it looked like there was going to be a wall in the action, and so I took off running through the banquet hall and I flew down two flights of stairs and I went busting into this room that I thought was the men's room. It wasn't, it was actually a beauty salon. And I came barging into the room and this woman and a chair turns around and I am face to face with Phyllis Diller, and from watching TV I knew who she was and, yes, she was actually in a chair to get to look like that, and I was gobstruck. I was just bumbling over all of myself and I said I know you. And she laughed and said how adorable I was, and then her handlers quickly ushered me out of the room and showed me where the restrooms were.

Speaker 1: 21:07

We can become so worked up and we can become fanboys or fangirls when we are in the presence of somebody famous and all of it pales in comparison to the majesty of God, who is worthy of our devotion and our praise and our worship. In addition to worshiping the Lord, whether it is corporately, together or privately, or whether we are on a walk admiring creation and thanking God for his blessings to us, we also worship the Lord by submitting to him. The full passage here shows us how God rules over everything, every aspect of our lives and our world, and therefore, since he is God, we should follow him With in faith and what he has made known about himself to us and what life is to be like, and also through our loving acts of obedience. You might remember when Jesus was baptized and the skies opened up and the dove descended on Jesus in the form of the Holy Spirit, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and then the scripture said that we hear the voice of God from heaven declaring this is my son, whom I love. Listen to him, and when we live through life, we often think that we know better than God or that our plans are better than God, or that we have a way that's better than what God's is, and it's folly. We should submit to the Lord and trust him as a means of worshiping and praising him, having confidence in his ability and his power to rule and protect. And the Psalm also concludes by showing us that one of the ways that we praise God is by being strengthened by him, in verse 11. May the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace. And when we rest in the Lord and we trust in his wisdom, we trust in his power for our lives, we are expressing praise to him, acknowledging him for the God that he is. And we also praise the Lord by living in peace, as verse 11 says. May the Lord bless his people with peace. God strengthens, god blesses his people. He gives peace to his people.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Oftentimes, when I read a Psalm like this that speaks of God's power and creation, i'm reminded of the hymn How Great Thou Art. It's like the second most popular hymn in the country behind Amazing Grace, and the song starts off Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made. I see the stars, i hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed. The background of that song is that there was a Swedish parliamentarian and also pastor by the name of Karl Boberg who was walking home after services one Sunday and a storm suddenly sprang up and furious and thunder and lightning And he got absolutely drenched and he finally made it home and just as quickly as the storm came, it immediately disappeared. The skies were bright, the clouds disappeared, there was a rainbow over the body of water out in front of his home that had become as calm as glass and in the back he could hear the birds singing behind his home. And you can see that imagery coming out in the first verse of that song and even the second verse when he says went through the woods and the forest glades, i wonder. And I hear the birds sing sweetly in the tree And the chorus. Of course we all know about how he is praising the greatness and the majesty of God.

Speaker 1: 25:25

And then later, years later, missionary to Russia, in the Ukraine, added the third verse. It was actually he had come upon a church where there weren't supposed to be any Christians. But he found this gathering and he heard somebody praying in that gathering and he wrote down the thoughts of it very quickly, as these people were vocalizing their repentance and their faith in Christ, he quickly wrote down what became the third verse of how great that art, and when I think that God, his son, not sparing, sent him to die, i scarce can take it in that, on that cross, my burden gladly bearing. He goes on and talks about how, through Christ, we who are so separated from this God of majesty, who are due his punishment for our sins, we are reconciled to him. We have peace with him through Christ, and that is why we are not consumed in the presence of such a holy and great God that we can take refuge in Jesus Christ and him alone. And so, when we think about this Psalm and what it teaches us about living in life's storms, the first thing that we are encouraged to do is to place our trust in him for our salvation through Christ that he offers to us, and that we are to order our lives before him in such a way that we are reflecting his greatness and his glory to us.

Speaker 1: 27:07

You know this, isaiah's, for instance, language that speaks of the absolute peace and joy that we are to have in the greatness of God.

Speaker 1: 27:17

You know, the Isaiah asks the rhetorical question who has measured the depths of the ocean in the hollow of his hand?

Speaker 1: 27:25

Reminds us of Jesus' words that we are in the Father's hand and nobody can snatch us from him, that we are related to the Father through Christ, by his saving power, and therefore we can have strength and peace in life.

Speaker 1: 27:46

And the God who measures the universe by the breadth of his hand is the same very God who reveals himself in Scripture by saying is my arm too short? And the answer, of course, is no. And the arm of God being a reference to his power and his glory to meet the challenges that we face in life, that he will enable us to bear them. And the God who weighs the universe in his scale and who has found us wanting as a result of our sin, has provided us peace through the sacrifice of Christ, who left the external glory of heaven, humbled himself and took upon human flesh and satisfied the demands of the law on our behalf and bore the penalty of our sins so that we might know our Lord. Indeed, we have many reasons to be in the midst of this and many reasons to praise and worship our God. We have many reasons that we should listen to him. Let us do so together. Let us pray.