Psalm 33 –
1 Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!
Praise befits the upright.
2 Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
4 For the word of the Lord is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.
5 He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;
he puts the deeps in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16 The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.
20 Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
21 For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.
Introduction
During our parenting in the early years, one of our daughters was not having the right attitude in a certain situation. Johanna told her to go to her room and spend some time by herself so she could find her happy heart. Our daughter responded in exasperation saying, “I can’t find. It is lost forever.” The reality of what that three-year old deeply felt in that moment is really a struggle for every Christian who wants to take the commands of the Bible seriously. We are commanded to have joy (verse one). If you are anything like me, you have a strong bent towards melancholy, gloominess, and even despondency. How am I supposed to create joy in my heart?
The point of this psalm, and the other 149 psalms in this book is to help you have proper, God-exalting feelings that have their roots in powerful, God-revealed truths, for walking the path of God-glorifying obedience. Your feelings (emotions, affections) are powerful motivators to obey God, if they are grounded in the rock-solid foundation of God’s truth that we find in the Bible. Emotions and affections are scattered throughout the book of Psalms and this whole book is here to help you know what good emotions you should have and identify what wrong emotions you shouldn’t have…and what your response should be with those good or bad emotions.
Psalm 33 is the first psalm of 150 psalms that explicitly mentions musical instruments and singing, and it highlights the importance of music in the life of his people. God cares about how you sing. He cares about how you sing and what is happening in your heart when you sing, right here, in this room each Sunday morning. He cares about how our musicians play their instruments on this stage. We know that because Psalm 33 gives commands on how you are to sing and how our musicians are to play. Psalm 33 is meant to cause us to stop and consider the place of music and singing as a means to stir your affections in fully-engaged, whole-hearted, joy-overflowing corporate worship. And I say corporate as a key word, because the original language of the first three verses is subtly plural, and the last three verses of this psalm are explicitly plural. We are to do this together. Here. So sing your guts out with one another. It is biblical.
Martin Luther wrote that music “is a mistress and governess of those human emotions which as masters govern human beings or more often overwhelm them…For whether you wish to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate or to appease those full of hate- and who could number all these masters of the human heart, namely, the emotions, inclinations and affections that impel human beings to evil or good? What more effective means than music could you find?”
I grew up being taught that emotions were something to be skeptical of, to keep at an arms distance, and something that didn’t have a central place in the Christian life. That is just totally untrue if you read the Bible with open eyes. You are commanded to experience joy, happiness, gladness, satisfaction and pleasure in God. And God in his kindness has given us the gift of music as a tool in which we can cultivate our emotions to grow in the rich soil of God’s Word.
God’s people joyfully respond in communal music and singing when they are in awe of His word and His works, the accomplishment of His plans, and His total awareness of all things, and presence in all places of the earth. Therefore, no matter what may come in this life, God’s people will be marked by souls that wait for Him, and hearts that are hopefully glad in Him because of his steadfast love. That is what I intend to try and unpack in the time we have remaining together this morning.
The Command To Joyfully Sing Together – Verses 1-3
“Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.”
The language of this passage is plural imperative. That phrase might make your eyes glaze over, but all it means is that in the original language that this psalm was written, it was implied that this command was for God’s people to do together. Kids, I can remember when I was a kid, having to diagram sentences in my grammar class. I hated it. You may hate it too, but just like taking a medicine that tastes bad when you are sick will help you get better, learning grammar is important because God wrote a book that uses grammar for us to learn more about who He is and what he commands of us. Grammar matters because God created it for us as a way to know Him and love Him.
So we are to shout for joy together. Does this mean we literally need to shout? This word means to give a ringing cry of heartfelt jubilation. It does not mean cacophonies of noise. It is a meaningful response that comes out of your throat because of a heart that is satisfied in God. So when you rise up in your pew to sing songs of worship, what happens? Vibrations happen in your throat as your vocal chords snap apart and come back together really fast. You exhale chopped up air that takes the form of sound waves. That physical act that takes place in your body is not in and of itself pleasing to God. What it ought to be is an outward expression of an inward disposition of joy in the Lord.
I am a baseball fan and unfortunately I am a lifelong Minnesota Twins fan. A team that has been marked by being just good enough to get your hopes up only to crush them into pieces once you allow some good feelings to start to gain momentum in your heart. Several years ago, two of my sons and I were at a Minnesota Twins game. They were playing the Baltimore Orioles. We were sitting in the left field home run deck, and everything about that game was the stereotypical reason why people describe baseball as terribly boring. It was a low scoring, low hitting game and we were down by a score of 2-1 going into the ninth inning. A Twins batter draws a walk and up to the plate walks Byron Buxton. He then hits a towering shot into left field, about five rows below where we were sitting. A walk off home run. What do you think our response was? Shouts of happiness was the appropriate response!
Now, as much as my emotions enjoyed that moment watching my favorite player, with my favorite team, in my favorite sport, with my two sons jumping up and down by my side; that moment cannot compare to the deep, satisfying delight that I have each Sunday praising God next to each of you in this room. Praise befits the upright. It is a suitable, appropriate and beautiful response to all that the LORD has done. Who is this LORD? He is Jehovah. The personal name for the one true God. The self-existing, eternal One.
Praise is an expression of adoration and thanksgiving in response to the works and attributes of God. Is that what is really happening in your heart when that chopped up air comes out of your mouth? Or is it just detached, cold, numb noise coming from your vocal chords wondering what is for lunch after the service? For the people of God, those who are the righteous, the response is shouts of joy, giving of thanks, and singing and playing music of praise to Him. The physical, spiritual, visible and invisible realities all meet here in this room, in the gathering of the righteous which culminates in a sound that is an offering of praise to our great God. When church starts and the call to worship is given, lean in. Prime the pump of your heart with the tool of your mind to think about what is to happen. Pray and ask God to do the work in your heart that is commanded in these verses.
Verse three says we are to sing to him a new song. How wonderful it is that throughout generations God’s people have created new songs that point us to the same God and the same truths. What a joy it is to discover new melodies that proclaim unchanging truths. I remember coming to Grace Church for the first time in 2010, and hearing the song “All I Have is Christ” for the first time and feeling a deep thankfulness for the gospel anew. That song is forever linked to my first Sunday in this place.
Lastly in this section, we see the reference to skillful musicians. I am so thankful for the excellent musicians and vocalists we have up here week after week. It was not always like this. For years we had a very shallow bench of skilled musicians at Grace Church. I would say it reached a low point when Pastor Dave called me one week and said they did not have anyone available to lead worship for the upcoming Sunday, and asked if I could lend my pathetic guitar skills in a moment of desperation. Thankfully, the situation changed, and one of the actual musicians was available. We prayed for years for God to bring skillful musicians to our church, and what a wonderful answer to prayer that is visible every Sunday when I look up here and see our musicians helping us praise God in music.
The Awesome Descriptions of Who God Is – Verses 4-19
AW Tozer famously said that what comes to your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. It is not your looks, your intellect, your bank account status, your physical ability, whether you have abs and big biceps, how fast you can run, how high you can jump, what school you went to, who your friends are, where you live, what work you do, what kind of house you live in, who you are married to, whether you are single, married, or divorced. None of that is the most important thing about you. What specific, concrete, Bible-based truths come into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about who you are. Imagine struggling to climb the face of a sheer cliff, barely being able to hold on for dear life. The truths about the LORD in verses 4-19 would be like giant crags in the cliff that you stick your hands into, and sink your feet into, to keep you from falling to your death. These verses contain life-giving, joy-producing, awe-inspiring descriptions of the self-existing One, our LORD, Jehovah, that will help you set your mind on who God is, to serve your heart in taking joy in Him.
The Lord’s Works and Words
“For the word of the LORD is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness (v. 4).” The word of the LORD is upright. The LORD is completely and totally right. There is not a shred of minuscule falseness in Him. Not a drop of crookedness. Not an iota of deceit. Not one molecule of a lie within his nature. He is purely upright. Look around the world. Everything is broken as a result of sin. Our world is crooked and jacked up, but the LORD is upright. This word, upright, is also the word used to describe the LORD’s people in verse one where we saw that praise befits the upright. For those who are in a covenant relationship with the LORD, His uprightness is bestowed on them. The LORD makes them upright. The LORD’s word has the power to make right that which is broken and crooked.
Also by His word, The LORD made the heavens, “and by the breath of his mouth all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses…For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm (vs. 6-7, 9).” These verses are the echo of the creation story. By His word the heavens were made. The LORD’s word is His work. There is no separation. What He says, He does. What He declares, happens. All the hosts were made. That is the sun, moon and stars. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. That is 7 1/2 times around the world in one second. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years in diameter. It contains 100-400 billion stars. Now consider this- the Milky Way occupies 0.00000000000000042% of the universe. That is what the LORD’s word created by the breath of his mouth. What happens when you breathe? When God breathes, unfathomable expanses burst forth from nothing. Billions of stars are created. Planets swirl into orbit. The sun begins burning at a heat of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface, and 27 million degrees Fahrenheit at its core.
The Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean, is the deepest point of the earth. It is 36,000 feet below sea level. If you were to put Mount Everest inside of it, you would still have over a mile of water to go before it would break the surface. The pressure at the bottom is 16,000 pounds per square inch, which is the equivalent of 50 jumbo jets sitting on top of your chest.
Most of the ocean has never been seen by humans. Sunlight disappears after 650 feet. Beyond 3,300 feet it is permanently dark and many creatures below that level have never experienced daylight. The ocean has 332 million cubic miles of water. Imagine a cube of water where each side of the cube is 690 miles long (about the distance from Minneapolis to Denver). That is how much water there is in the ocean. God gathers this vastness into a heap, just as a child gathers sand in a sandbox to build a castle. I put my lawnmower in my shed to store it. God puts 332 million cubic miles of water and the Marianna Trench in his storehouse.
The universe that was created by the word of the LORD is also full of his steadfast love (verse 5). “He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.” Where you can see righteousness and justice on display, there you will see the display of his love towards us. Yes, this world is broken and evil happens continually. Yet, at the same time it is full of God’s acts of righteousness and justice. Where wrong is made right, where evil is punished, where you see displays of virtue, there you see the display of love from the LORD that we do not deserve. If God loves righteousness and justice, this is what we ought to long for and desire as well. Look for ways to see again and again his faithful work through displays of righteousness and justice for that is the display of his steadfast love.
We can’t wrap our heads around the glory of these words and works. The magnitude of the universe and the fullness of the earth with His steadfast love is meant to bring you into fear and awe of the LORD (verse 8). We are the inhabitants of this world that God made. Every person in every place in this world should stand in awe. We are fragile, mortal humans. The wealth of Elon Musk, the athleticism of Michael Jordan, the speed of Usain Bolt, the genius of Albert Einstein is at kindergarten levels compared to the riches, power, strength, and wisdom of the LORD, our great God. He speaks. Stuff happens. He commands. Things stand firm.
Plant your hands in the giant crag of the LORD’S works and words for a life-giving, joy-producing, awe-inspiring description of the self-existing One. Use these verses to help you set your mind on who God is, to serve your heart in taking joy and gladness in Him.
Lord’s Counsel and Purposes
“The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations (vs 10-11).” Here we see the contrast between the counsel (plans and decisions) of the nations and the counsel of our LORD. The LORD’s counsel will stand forever and impacts all the generations of humanity, and He crushes and breaks the plans of nations as He sees fit. What God has spoken will come to pass and what He has purposed He will do.
Consider David in 2 Samuel 17:1-4, when he had to flee Jerusalem because of the uprising rebellion of his son Absalom. Ahithophel, who was at one point David’s trusted advisor, betrays David to join with Absalom. When David flees, a close friend of his, Hushai, stays behind in Jerusalem and pretends to support Absalom, but actually wants to get information and influence with Absalom as a way to protect David. Ahithophel wants to immediately chase down David and kill him so he is no longer a threat to Absalom’s reign as king. This is a solid plan, but Absalom wanted a second opinion so he asks Hushai what he should do. Hushai plays up to Absalom’s pride and recommends a strategy of waiting until he could gather more soldiers together in his army to ensure an overwhelming defeat of David and his men. Absalom goes with Hushai’s decision and this allows David time to escape and disappear. His life is spared. This story concludes by saying in 2 Samuel 17:14, “For the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring harm upon Absalom.” That is Psalm 33:10-11 played out in reality.
From our limited, human perspective, we often are aware and notice the stories where we see evil and wickedness seeming to prevail; the counsel of man seems to succeed instead of being brought to nothing. We may feel like God is having a hands off approach. It has felt like that for me when I have prayed again and again for God to strike down the violent acts of gangs in Haiti that terrorize innocent people and run roughshod over the government. That is why we need biblical truths and biblical stories to saturate our hearts so that we are reminded of this declaration made in verses 10 and 11.
The LORD’s counsel stands forever across all generations. No asterisk. No qualifiers. No nuance. We live for maybe 80 years. God sees all of human history and is standing outside of the constraints of time and space. We see the micro-stories. Pieces of the story. Yet God is working and planning and orchestrating all the events of human history for his glory. Fight to see the world through the lens of Scripture and not through the lens of a news feed, social media posts or political commentators. Page through your Bible more than you scroll through your phone that you may delight in the plans and counsel of the LORD for you do not know and cannot see all that he is doing in this moment.
Plant your hands in the giant crag of the LORD’S counsel and purposes for a life-giving, joy-producing, awe-inspiring description of the self-existing One. Use these verses to help you set your mind on who God is, to serve your heart in taking joy and gladness in Him.
The Lord’s Presence and Deliverance
“The LORD looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth (vs. 13-14).” The LORD looks down and he looks out. He has the vantage point we don’t have. He has the high ground. He has the ability to see everything at all times and everyone at all times. What do you see each day? How much do you perceive and comprehend of what is happening across the world? In comparison, God sees it all. Every sin. Every righteous act done in quiet faith. All the things known in public and of that which is hidden in private. The good and the bad, to the ends of the earth. He sees it all.
The LORD is enthroned above it all as well. His throne is His dwelling place and it is the base of operations for all His plans and counsel. The LORD does not serve a 4 year term in office. He needs no votes to get re-elected. He has no term limits. He has no checks and balances to His power. His throne is absolute and total and eternal.
“He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds (vs. 15).” The LORD observes all our deeds. Consider this reality. Each day 320 billion messages are sent over cell phones and there are 13.5 billion phone calls made. The average phone conversation is between 3-5 minutes long which works out to anywhere between 675 million to 1.1 billion hours of conversation. A day. God sees and observes every word of every text and knows every second of every phone conversation. The one who fashioned you, the one who formed your heart (your intellect, emotions, will) and the other 8 billion people on the earth, is not distant. He is present and aware. Enthroned in heaven accomplishing all his purposes.
All the plotting and planning and deeds of man that have built up empires throughout human history have never been a threat to the LORD. “The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation and by its great might it cannot rescue (vs. 16-17).” The 850 billion dollars that is spent each year on the United States military, with its eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, 13,000 aircraft, long-range bombers, ballistic missile submarines, carrier strike groups, and 1.3 million personnel, cannot protect you one bit from God’s plans nor can it keep your soul from heaven or hell. Verses 16 and 17 strip bare and expose the futility of any earthly strength to offer salvation from your problems and rescue from your fears. It is a false strength and false hope.
Verses 18 and 19 come after that, showing where true hope and deliverance come from. “Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.” The word “behold” in verse 18 is meant to be an alert to the reader that something significant is about to be said. The same LORD who looks down from heaven with his eyes and sees all humanity in all of time, also puts his eye on the one person who fears Him and hopes in Him. The fear of those who belong to the LORD is not a fear that produces a running away from God but a fear that produces a reverence for God. Where else can we go? He has the words of life.
Verse 19 says that He delivers his people’s soul from death and keeps them alive in famine. Yet, it is plain to see in the Bible and in our lives today that we still die. God’s people have experienced famine. This verse is not saying that those who fear and hope in his steadfast love will never experience hunger pains or taste death. The deliverance of the LORD is an eternal deliverance. The hope His people have is that one day famine and death will never touch them again. Famine and death don’t have ultimate claim on their souls. While an army, a warrior and a war horse may bring temporary reprieve from danger, it cannot ultimately and eternally bring deliverance. That only comes through the steadfast love of the LORD.
What are you looking to as a means of false hope and false salvation? When you come into corporate worship on Sunday morning, the gathering of the saints, to sing and shout for joy; it is a time to remind yourself to turn away from those things that turn your heart away from the LORD who looks down from heaven and sees you. It is a reminder to look to the self-existing One who formed your heart (with all its intellect and emotions) by breathing life into you, and look to the hope you can find in Him and the steadfast love he offers. Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you do not need to fear any evil. The famine may come. Death will come. But it can never have an eternal claim on the woman or the man, the boy or the girl, who has a heart that fears God. The last word does not belong to famine or death, to Satan or hell, for the people of God.
Plant your hands in the giant crag of the LORD’S presence and deliverance for a life-giving, joy-producing, awe-inspiring description of the self-existing One. Use these verses to help you set your mind on who God is, to serve your heart in taking joy and gladness in Him.
The Waiting Soul and Glad Heart of the Lord’s Heritage – Verses 20-22
This psalm comes to a close by telling us what we are to do with all this. We wait, we trust, we hope. “Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.” The waiting on deliverance that is marked by God’s people comes from a glad-hearted trust in his holy name. A glad heart waits on the LORD. Your soul is where your emotions and passions come from. Your soul needs to be fed the truths of verses 4-19 so that it can be shaped into right emotions and right passions in the waiting and hoping.
Now, until now I have made something implicit and have assumed something up to this point in the sermon, that needs to be made explicit. The promise made in Psalm 33 of the LORD’s deliverance and salvation are not given to everyone. You may have noticed that even though we just worked our way through Psalm 33 verse by verse, we did not look at verse 12 yet. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.” At the time of this psalm being written, the people would understand this to be a reference to the nation of Israel whom God had established a covenant with starting with Abraham in Genesis 15, that was to be passed down to his offspring, which became the nation of Israel. Israel was chosen by God to be His heritage and the LORD was to be Israel’s God. So if this psalm was meant for Israel, why can we read it today and lay hold of these promises for us?
The answer is found clearly in Galatians 3:29. “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” This is the glorious mystery of the gospel. Through Jesus Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection, Gentiles are also allowed to be a part of the LORD’s heritage.
Satan’s counsels and plans were thwarted by Christ at the cross. Jesus, the word made flesh, did the greatest work in human history by being crucified and killed. His death and resurrection canceled the debt of sin by nailing it to the cross, and His deliverance was made available to those who who would put their trust in His word and His work. The LORD’s nation, His people, are not a bloodline. They are not a people marked by a geographical boundary. They are marked by a changed heart that has experienced the steadfast love of the LORD that is better than life itself.
What Jesus accomplished at the cross was greater, stronger and more powerful than any military victory in all of history. The deliverance He purchased for His people at the cross can never be removed. Not by death and not by Satan. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Romans 8:35)”
The darkness may linger. It may not lift for days, weeks, years or decades. The shadows may cast long over your soul. The valley may be deep. When we gather and worship in this place, we can fill up the reservoir of our souls with joy in the LORD that helps us in our waiting. We make melody here. The skilled musicians help us stir up our affections to look to the LORD as our help and our shield. In this place we can go to battle against doubts, unbelief, anger, bitterness, envy, greed, lust, anger, hate and any other sin that seeks to make war on us. We make war back on it by lifting up our voices in a glad battle cry of singing in this place for our joy and for God’s glory.
The songs we sing here put truths in a format that help stir the affections of our heart and help our mind remember the promises of God. Despite the changing emotions that may happen to me on Monday when I don’t feel glad in God, I can look back at Sunday and remind myself to hold on and to trust. I can look forward to next Sunday when my soul will yet praise him again.
The final verse of Psalm 33 ends with a prayer and it teaches us that we can pray even as we sing. Our songs can also be our prayers and this is modeled for us in verse 22. “Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.” Sing. Pray. Hope in the LORD.
God’s people are ones who have had a new song put into their hearts because they have experienced the redeeming acts of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. God’s people are the ones who shout for joy in the LORD on Sunday mornings. And God’s people are the ones who will one day sing a new song in the new earth for all eternity when they say, “Worthy are you (Jesus) to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, they shall reign on earth.”
Because of Jesus, the best is yet to come. So let us praise, let us sing, let us hope. Let us be a people that are marked by glad singing of praise to our LORD.