Psalm 33 - An Altogether Praiseworthy God
Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are in Psalm 33 today, which is a great portion of scripture. This is one of the only Psalms that I can remember so far that doesn't have a little inscription on it.
And as I mentioned last episode, this particular Psalm is one that I actually preached a message on back in April. It was Palm Sunday of 2022, and I really, really enjoyed that time in God's Word.
So I've actually linked that sermon into the show notes. And so if you want an even fuller look at the passage, it is there for you in kind of sermon form, but wanted to give a little bit more abbreviated form here.
And if you want to dive deeper, you are always welcome to. Psalm 33 starts off like this. It says, Rejoice in Yahweh, you righteous ones.
Praise from the upright is beautiful. He says, Praise Yahweh with the liar. Make music to him with a ten-stringed harp.
Sing a new song to him. Play skillfully on the strings with a joyful shout. For the word of Yahweh is right, and all his work is trustworthy.
He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of Yahweh's unfailing love. The heavens were made by the word of Yahweh, and all the stars by the breath of his mouth.
He gathers the water of the sea into a heap. He puts the depths in storehouses. Let the whole earth fear Yahweh.
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke and it came into being. He commanded and it came into existence.
Yahweh frustrates the council of the nations. He thwarts the plans of the peoples. The council of Yahweh stands forever.
The plans of his heart from generation to generation. Happy is the nation whose God is Yahweh. The people he has chosen to be his own possession.
Yahweh looks down from heaven. He observes everyone. He gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth from his dwelling place.
He forms the hearts of them all. He considers all their works. A king is not saved by a large army.
A warrior will not be rescued by great strength. The horse is a false hope for safety. It provides no escape by its great power.
But look, Yahweh keeps his eye on those who fear him. Those who depend on his faithful love. To rescue them from death and to keep them alive and famine.
We wait for Yahweh. He is our help and shield. For our hearts rejoice in him.
Because we trust in his holy name. May your faithful love rest on us, Yahweh. For we put our hope in you.
What a great portion of scripture. We're going to dive right in, look at some of the things. And then again, if you want a more detailed look today, you can feel free to do so through the link that I've provided.
It says, Rejoice in Yahweh, you righteous ones. Praise from the upright is beautiful. Here, God doesn't say praise from the beautiful is upright.
He says it doesn't matter what you look like. And he doesn't say beautiful praise from the upright is beautiful. Even if all you have is a lousy voice, a voice that can't really sing well, God wants to hear you praise him.
God wants to hear you sing to him. He cares, and it is the praising of him and the praising from a heart that is genuinely towards him.
You're not just doing it to be seen by people, but a genuine heart of praise towards God, he says, is beautiful to him. Then verse number two, he says, praise Yahweh with the liar. Make music to him with a ten-stringed harp.
Sing a new song to him, play skillfully on the strings with a joyful shout. Many of us hear those verses and we immediately kind of tune out. We go, well, there's no real way for me to obey that.
Like I don't play a ten-stringed harp. I don't even know what kind of instrument a liar is. It says, sing a new song to him.
I only like the old songs. At the end of verse number three, play skillfully on the strings. Well, I can't do that.
So I'm just going to write all of it off. There's nothing that I can learn from this. And as I mentioned in the sermon, the point here is not just do these things.
If you can do those things, use them to praise God. And that's wonderful. But here where he's saying, praise the Lord with this, use what you have to praise God.
You go, all I have is my time to pray. That's all I've got. I've got nothing else in this world.
Use it. If you go, all I have is maybe this money. I don't have a ton of time to devote to a ton of things for God.
Use your money in service of God. If you go, all I can do is I have this ability. I can weld.
I can make food. I can make some cookies. Whatever God has given you, use it in His service.
Use it to praise Him. Use it to bring glory to God through His church. Use it to draw people's attention to the same God that you have.
So if you have a liar, do that. If you have a ten-stringed harp, use that. He says, sing a new song to Him.
God is consistently working in new ways, like He's doing things for you that He's never done for you before. He has never brought you through the trial that you're walking through right now. He has never brought you through that exact trial before.
God has never blessed you in the specific way that He is right now, with your family, with your relationships, with your church, with your job, with the money that you're making.
You have never been in this exact position in your life before, like you are right now. So praise God for what He's doing right now. Thank Him for what He's doing.
Let's sing a new song to Him. React in a new way because of God's new blessings. This is why, as a church at Tabernacle, why we would sing new songs.
This kind of six-week period, we're learning the song, Oh Church Arise. I might tag that one into this particular episode as well.
But we're learning the song, Oh Church Arise, because we're looking at Tabernacle DNA and how God has some essential building blocks for our church.
So I wanted a song that would communicate, as we are looking at this new season that God's bringing us into, let's sing a new song to him that declares, yes, God, we are following you as a church.
As we look at the importance of your church and what we build on, which is Jesus and God's Word and loving others, we are going to sing a song that communicates that. And so that's why we are doing that for you. God is ministering to you in new ways.
He is providing you with things He has never provided you before. He is bringing you through trials and keeping you alive and in relationship with Him like He has never done before. So respond to Him in worship and praise Him.
Post about it on Facebook. Do something. If there is some background noise, there is someone with a very, very, very loud car stereo.
And so if you can hear that, I apologize. I'm trying to get a little bit closer to the mic. That way you can only hear my voice on that.
So it says play skillfully on the strings with a joyful shout. God is worthy of our best. So with play skillfully, it doesn't just say play on the strings with a joyful shout.
It says play skillfully. And so whatever we do, we want to do it to the best of our abilities in love and service of God. I can do a number of things for God, but it won't be my best or I can do things in a haphazard or a lazy way.
And that's not giving God my best. Whatever I do, I want to do it to the glory of God, as 1 Corinthians 10 would encourage us. So we can see all of that from verses one through three.
In verses four and five, he says, the word of the Lord is right and all his work is trustworthy. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of Yahweh's unfailing love.
That God is completely trustworthy. Whatever he says in his word, we can believe.
And he follows that up in verses six through nine with one way in which when David wrote these words, this was not, this was an exclusive claim, surely, from Israel about their God, but it was not something totally unique.
Lots of other places had gods. Nowadays, verses six through nine are kind of a duke it out, like fight this out with our world culture. Our world says everything came into being just because there was a big bang, and that's why everything's here.
There was no God. There's no order. There is no divine hand that began creation.
And David here says, no, the heavens, the skies, space was made by the word of Yahweh and all the stars by the breath of his mouth. We believe that God created this world and created our universe. And we declare it, that God's word is trustworthy.
And so when God says, I made this, we can believe him. And we can, I could talk very, very long about all the ways in which we can believe God's word and how God has left, if you will, identifying markers of his creation.
But time would fail me to do so right now. So going down, he says God made the world. He put everything together just as he described in Genesis.
And he is powerful. And so this is why he can be praised. Because his word is true, that he can be trusted.
It's because he is the incredible creator. It's because he is the one that is sovereign over all nations. That we don't have to worry about that kind of national scale of things because we know that God is in control.
It's not that God has one plan and Putin has another plan. And it's not that God has one plan and Netanyahu has another plan. God is working all of these pieces together so that justice would be done, so that evil would be destroyed.
He's working it so that people would call on the name of God in times of trouble. And so we can trust in that. He's the one that frustrates the councils of the nations.
He's the one that thwarts the plans of the peoples. And then verse number 12. I want to mention just because I mentioned some of those circumstances in our world today.
Verse 12 is often co-opted to mean something that it doesn't mean in context. It says, Happy is the nation whose God is Yahweh. And then it clarifies the people he has chosen to be his own possession.
So here, Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord. Nominally, Russia proclaims itself to be a Christian nation, specifically an Orthodox Christian nation. Nominally, England purports itself to be a Christian nation.
So it says, Happy is the nation, not every nation, not a nation. Happy is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people he has chosen to be his own possession.
Here, God is saying, Israel is happy, not because of Israel itself, but because it is God's, because it is God's own special possession. Now, as we look at the New Testament, who is God's own special possession?
Where you can look at 1 Peter chapter 2, where it says that we are a chosen nation, a holy priesthood, a people for his own special possession.
So Peter takes this line from Psalm 32 and verse 12 and says, this is speaking about now the church that we are happy, that we are blessed, that we have been placed into a state of fortune by God, because we are his people.
So this here is not talking about America in the sense that because it says the word God in our Declaration of Independence or because it espouses freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights, it is not that we can then say because these people were
Christians, then our nation, our God is the Lord. I think I've mentioned this before. A nation can't get saved. The capital, we're not far from DC here.
DC the capital or the buildings, cannot express faith in Christ. They as buildings, as institutions, can't be righteous. They can't accept Jesus into their life and receive the Holy Spirit.
Only individuals can.
And there is an element both here and in Proverbs where as a nation, as individuals in the nation and as growing amounts of individuals in that nation, as they accept the Lord, there are benefits that come as they allow the righteousness of Christ to
be worked out in their lives so that the laws that are passed and what they view as right and wrong lines up with the Word of God, that there are benefits that come from that. When we follow God's blueprint for our life, there is benefit.
But just because it says the word God in the Declaration of Independence or says the word Creator in the Declaration of Independence doesn't make us a Christian nation.
The people that God has claimed for His own, those are the ones who have this happiness. That is the nation, and that nation is not made up of those that are Americans.
It's made up of everyone that has the Holy Spirit, that's a part of God's Holy Church. So don't expect blessing because you're an American. Expect the blessing of God because you are His chosen possession.
Expect the blessing of God on your life.
Don't expect that nations that have turned their backs on God, don't expect nations that are ruled by, as we would read in Ephesians 6 and in the Book of Daniel, the principalities and powers, the spiritual rulers of darkness in this world, that is
who runs the nations. Then we can see as we kind of zoom in from the big picture of the nations and how God is sovereign and how He works out everything, then He looks at people.
The Lord looks down from heaven, He observes everyone, He gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth from His dwelling place, He forms the hearts of them all, He considers all their works.
Here God sees you, He notices you, He not only sees the big picture and the nations, He sees you individually and He cares about you.
Then verses 16 through 19, it talks about the fact you can't rely on an army, you can't rely on your guns, you can't rely on a number of things to save you, you can rely on God to save you.
And so that's then verses 20 through 22, We wait for Yahweh, He is our help and shield, for our hearts rejoice in Him, because we trust in His holy name. And then here's the prayer that they pray, that I encourage you to pray today.
May your faithful love, may your chesed, may your covenant faithfulness rest on us, Yahweh, for we put our hope in you. What is your hope in today? Is your hope in your nation?
Is your hope in your ability? Is your hope in your firearms? Is it in a really good security camera system?
Is it in the amount of money that you have saved up? Is it in maybe a spouse? Can I encourage you, put your trust in the Lord.
He's the one that's worthy to be praised. He's the one that is worthy of all of your adoration. He's worth you posting about him on social media.
He's worth everything good that we could ever say or pray or praise about him. So let's turn to him. Thank you for tuning in today and would encourage you, if you have some time, listen to the sermon.
And I know it will be an encouragement to you because I attempted to as much as the Lord gave me grace to. Just point to scripture and say, here's what the Bible says. So thanks for tuning in and looking forward to tomorrow and Psalm 34.
