Psalm 29
February 5, 2011
Our Great and Terrible God and His Love for Us
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer" Psalm 19:14.
My prayer in devotion is this: that I would be so saturated with the word of God and joy in my rock and my redeemer and a desire to be clean and holy before Him and to rightly image forth the greatness of our God, that my words would be God's words and that they would carry the ring of truth. LORD, let all my words pass away and only the abiding, enduring word of God carry on into eternity. "He must increase, I must decrease."
As one of biggest heroes, my dad/pastor, would say, "Now, into the text."
Psalm 29
A Psalm of David
Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in 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 Sirion like a young wild ox.
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 forests bare, and 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 with peace!
Verses 1-2: Call to Worship
Verses 1-2 call the "heavenly beings" (the angels) and, I believe, us to worship God by acknowledging (ascribing) His glory and strength. Here we see two calls that we are entirely unable to respond to. The first is the call to ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name. He is infinite and we are finite. We cannot grasp God's greatness or His glory. We are therefore unable to give Him the glory that he truly deserves. The second call that we are not able to respond to is the call to be holy in our worship before God. We are utterly fallen creatures and can never fully express how great God is and we can never stand before Him in holiness. This is a problem.
Verses 3-9: Declaring God's Great and Terrible Power
As if to show us how huge God is and how pitifully small we are, the psalmist goes on to describe the awesome and terrible things that God does. We see, described in vivid poetic language, the great things that God does. We see God sitting enthroned over raging, cataclysmic floods capable of wiping out the entire Earth. We see raging, rolling thunderclouds ushering in a hurricanes and tornadoes that wipe out whole cities, wreaking havoc on humanity. We see raging seas that toss aircraft carriers around like rubber duckies in the bathtub with a two-year old. We see winds and tempests that snap towering monoliths, the cedars, like dried twigs. We see God skipping and tossing whole countries like pebbles and stones across a pond. We see the Sinactic raging and flaming of mountains and volcanoes spewing forth lava and venomous gases. We see earthquakes and tsunamis wiping out whole regions and the sudden devastation of forests that would take us months to clear. (I skipped "The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth" on purpose, I'll use it later on.)
It struck me that this great and terrible power is not God's arm nor is it God's hand. It is not even God's finger; this is all caused by God's voice. God would not even have to lift a finger if He wanted to wipe out all of existence. He would merely have to speak to unleash great and terrible wrath and judgement on this earth. What might happen if God should lift His arm?
Our proper response to God's awesome might is shown in verse 9. When we catch a glimpse of God's might displayed we have no real choice but to fall flat on our faces in pure terror and awe and cry out "Glory! Great is the LORD! Holy is the LORD!"
Verses 10-11: The King: Terrible and Good
At this point, we have no room for doubt that YHWH is powerful and that He is sovereign over His creation and the creatures He places in it. He was king at creation, He was king at the flood, He is king now and will be king forever. We look back at the beginning of the psalm and we again see our inadequacy. The power displayed here is merely (ha!) the voice of God and we wondered in fear what it might look like if God were to bare His arm in wrath. We are completely unable to express the greatness of our God and give Him "the glory due His name." Worse yet we are unable to approach our holy God and worship Him rightly. God is infinitely holy and right and good and has every right to visit this great and terrible power on us . We can do nothing but fall on our faces and beg for mercy.
Then verse 11. [this is where I broke down like a baby girl...that's hard on the pride, strangely fitting when I am expounding on the greatness of God and our inadequacy in approaching God.] "May the LORD give strength to His people; may the LORD visit His people with peace."
Our great and awesome God sees that we are weak and frail creatures trembling before His terrible and awesome might. With the gentleness with which He causes the deer to give birth, He picks us up and gives us strength to stand and speaks peace inexpressible into our trembling souls. The gentleness of God in extending grace to us is vividly foreshadowing the gospel and is fulfilled completely in Christ Jesus, God incarnate.
Conclusion: Our God is Both Transcendent and Immanent
God is transcendent (completely above and beyond our comprehension and reach) in His great power over the earth and his holy otherness from His creation. He is immanent (intimately and lovingly and graciously involved in our lives) in the incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross to purchase strength and peace for us in salvation. Our God is great and terrible and holy, but he is also good and rules us lovingly.
C.S. Lewis' character Aslan the Lion in the Chronicles of Narnia is a great picture of Christ. Capable of both loving care and great and terrible destruction wrath, Aslan is described in this exchange:
"Aslan a man! Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
So, where do we turn when our spouse dies after suffering for years of disease and brokenness, your parent dies of terminal cancer, your child is brutally murdered and you have to see their mangled body carried away in an ambulance, your family is broken with greed and hate, you fall into sin over and over again and again, you sink into the depths of despair and depression, you feel like life is not longer worth living, close family and friends reject God and live wildly sinful lives that lead them to destruction?
Is our God able to give us the strength and peace we need to carry on?
Yes, our God is powerful and our God cares. He never promises that life will be an easy, fun rose garden; but He does promise to give us the strength and peace that will carry us through our trials and pain. We can turn to God when we have no where else to turn.
I'd like to end with Mathew 7:7-8 "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."
God has promised to strength and peace to us and He has promised good things to those who ask and seek and knock diligently. So, ask! Trust our great God's great promises and don't stop one prayer too short. Ask, seek, knock brothers and sisters, ask seek and knock.
Soli Deo Gloria