Remembering Who We're Dealing With

A.  A PSALM OF DAVID.
1.  Whether David wrote this psalm or this was added later by a copyist, one thing is clear: this psalm was written by someone who lived in a time and place where they had a lot more first-hand experience with storms, a day when people were not so shielded from the elements. Think about what is a storm like for a shepherd.
B. 1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.
1. Before we ponder the meaning of these calls, let’s look at the context in which they are being delivered. (Go to C. below)
C. 3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters. 4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. 5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
1. The voice of the Lord is in the thunderstorm. In other words, God speaks in the storm. “The God of glory thunders... 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.”
2. The cedars of Lebanon were famous in Bible days as the largest and most spectacular trees in the region. And yet the storm of the Lord breaks them like twigs.
D. 6 He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
1. The thunder shakes the ground, even the Lebanon mountain range in the distance, including Sirion, the highest peak.
E. 7 The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. 8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
1. V.7: Lightning and v.8: thunder
2. The storm first appears over the Mediterranean Sea: “The voice of the LORD is over the waters.” Then it comes on shore and rips into the forested Lebanon range in northern Israel, where it breaks the cedars and shakes the whole mountain range. Then it crosses the Desert of Kadesh, which quakes under the power of the thunderous voice of God in the storm.
F. There are three more things we’re told about the storm in v.9 “The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’ ”
1. Even the deer are so scared that they’re acting like they’re in labor.
2. It strips the forests bare: shredding the leaves on the trees. In 1999 Hurricane Mitch hit Central America so hard that it left no leaves on the entire island of Guanaja, Honduras.
3. God’s people in the Temple, perhaps both for protection and worship.
a. They cry “Glory!” not so much as a fulfillment of duty, but a spontaneous reaction to the scare: Wow!
G. 10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
1. He both rules over the storm and stills it. Here He presides over either the resulting flood from the storm or over the tumultuous waters from which the storm came.
2. The word here for flood is only 13 times in the OT. Once here and 12 times in the story of Noah’s great storm & flood .
H. Now let’s go back and look at v.1-2. “Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.”
1. “O heavenly beings” — If even they are called to ascribe glory to God, then everyone is!
2. When as a pastor I am asked to write letters of recommendation, I have to think about what qualities/traits I should ascribe to the person.
3. Here the psalmist calls everyone to recognize God for who He is: glorious and mighty and holy and magnificent and colossal.
4. And this isn’t talking about what we say about God with our lips, like when we’re singing in church. It’s what we say in our hearts.
5. Part of ascribing glory to God is ascribing lowliness to ourselves. Part of ascribing strength to God is ascribing weakness to ourselves. Part of ascribing to God the glory due His name is ascribing to ourselves the inferiority, the baseness we are due. We see this in:
a. Job 42:6 “ I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
b. Job 40:3-4 Then Job answered the Lord and said: “Behold, I am of small account.”
I. 11 May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!
2. Storms
A. Storms come from God.
1. Psalm 147: 8 God is the One who covers the heavens with clouds and sends rain to the earth.
2. Ps. 47:18b He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow.
3. Ps. 148: 8 says that the clouds and the stormy wind obeys His command.
B. God reveals Himself in the storm. The Bible talks much about the Lord going forth as a storm:
1. Jer. 23:19 "Behold the storm of the Lord has gone forth in wrath, even a swirling tempest; it will swirl down on the head of the wicked."
2. Is. 28:2 "Behold, the Lord has a strong and mighty agent; as a storm of hail, a tempest of destruction, like a storm of mighty, overflowing waters, He has cast it down to the earth with His hand."
3. Psalm 104:3–4 “He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; 4 he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.”
1. Why did God invent storms?
1. To water the earth? Sure, but He didn’t have to make them scary.
2. The fearsomeness of the storm: it’s designed to scare the living daylights out of us, so we might know that He is powerful and fearsome and not to be trifled with.
2. The storm is not the only thing God has given us to reveal His fearsomeness, of course. He’s given us earthquakes and volcanoes and meteors which explode in the sky, and forest fires and raging waters, etc.
3. Sometimes God whispers. But in the storm He more than shouts, He thunders, He roars.
1. One of the reasons I love this psalm so much is that it reminds me of the story of Job .
A. Everything is going along smoothly in Job’s life and all of a sudden catastrophe crashes down on him — without explanation. And then after a long period of suffering and struggling with his woes, something even bigger than catastrophe crashes down on him: God appears to Job in a storm and challenges him .
B. And in the end, God has restored everything back to the way it was, except that Job is different from having experienced God in these ways: Job 42:3–6 “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know... I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
C. Last week in worship we sang the song Behold our God (Sovereign Grace Music). It is clearly based on Job 38-41:
1. Who has held the oceans in His hands? Who has numbered every grain of sand?
2. Kings and nations tremble at His voice All creation rises to rejoice
3. Who has given counsel to the Lord? Who can question any of His words?
4. Who can teach the One who knows all things? Who can fathom all His wondrous deeds?
5. Behold our God seated on His throne — Come, let us adore Him
6. Behold our King—nothing can compare — Come, let us adore Him
2. In the temple, all cry “Glory!”
A. Be impressed! This is one of your greatest duties in this world.
1. And one of the greatest sins you can commit is to be unimpressed by God, to scoff at Him, to take Him lightly, as if He is no threat, to laugh and mock Him as they did Jesus.
2. One day, of course, they will be terrified. “ At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. ” Lk.21:27
B. We talk often of the tenderness and graciousness of our God. But we must not forget His awesome holiness and thundering power.
C. Before He is anything else, He is God. He is the One. He is the Maker, the Sustainer, the Consumator or all things. All things are from Him and through Him and to Him. He’s a fearsome God. We need to be shaken up sometimes, and to cry “Glory!”
D. C.S. Lewis illustrates this in the Chronicles of Narnia:
1. “‘And now I am going to roar. You had better put your fingers in your ears.’ And they did. And Aslan stood up and when he opened his mouth to roar his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind.” (Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, chapter 15)
E. Perhaps the most pivotal in the development of my knowledge of God was The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, which highlights this same theme:
1. The God we have to deal with is a holy God. He is big. He is other. He is who He is.
2. He’s not a politician who’s desperate for our approval. God does not negotiate.
3. Before we get to the details about what He has done or why He does what He does, we need to recognize that He does what He wants, in heaven and on earth (Ps.135:5-6). No purpose of His can be thwarted (Job 42:2). He works all things after the counsel of His will (Eph.1:11).
3. Strength and peace
A. The psalm ends with v.11 “May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace! ”
1. Knowing God produces fear and trembling but it also produces strength and peace!
B. The same God who crashes through in the storm is the One who gives strength to His people and blesses His people with peace. The One who gives us strength and peace in the face of life’s storms is also the One who sends those storms in the first place.
1. The storm is not contradictory to our prosperity, it’s part of God’s way to make us prosper.
C. But we can’t know His strength or peace until we know that He sits enthroned over the flood.
1. What storm or flood do you need to know God rules over?
a. Your future? Your marriage? Your children? Your health?
b. Heather N.: she worships God this morning in the uncertainty of her cancer biopsies. But she can worship not knowing the results because she knows that Christ rules over cancer!
1. Communion meditation
A. In the Bible, storms often depict the wrath of God. There are many examples of this, but perhaps Noah’s ark is the supreme example.
B. But then Jesus comes on the scene. He’s out on the boat with His disciples when a strong storm arises. In a panic the disciples wake up Jesus and He stills the storm: “ Peace, be still.” Finally there’s something stronger than the storm. (After the storm, they’re even more afraid of the Master of the storm than they were of the storm.)
C. By doing this, Jesus is not only performing a great miracle and demonstrating His power over the creation, He is signaling the primary work He came to do: to still the wrath of God for those who believe in Him. Just as He rescued the disciples from the stormy waters, so He rescues all of His followers from the stormy waters of God’s wrath.
D. Remember the story of Jonah? Remember when the boat he was on was struck by a terrible storm because of the anger of God? Remember that he allowed himself to be thrown into the waters of God’s wrath, saving the rest of those who were on the boat from certain death? Well, in the same way, Jesus allowed Himself to be thrown into the wrath of God by dying on the cross, and thereby saving those who put their trust in Him.