God of the Thunderstorm - Corey Hill

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Psalm 29

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Good morning, church, it is my pleasure to get to preach the word with you all and to you all this morning.
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And as you open your Bibles, we'll be spending the majority of our time or all of our time rather this morning in Psalm chapter 29,
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Psalm chapter 29. And as you're turning there, as way of introduction,
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I want to ask you just a few questions to think on as we've approached this passage this morning to help us see it more clearly.
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I want to ask you, have you ever looked at something great, something grand, something with wonderful majesty, looking at something so wonderful, so grand that it drove you to worship?
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Have you ever been so moved by God's demonstration of His power that you immediately worshiped your triune creator?
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The Psalm that we come to today, Psalm 29 is just that.
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This is a Psalm looking at an immediate praise of God for something magnificent put before us.
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David, it's a hidden gem of sort in the Psalms. It's chock full of God. Why would
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I say it's chock full of God? Well, is it, pastor? Is it all scripture chock full of God? Well, it absolutely is. But this morning's passage uses the word
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Yahweh, covenant name of the triune God of the Bible, 18 times in 11 verses.
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David, its writer, was so enamored by God and His power and His might and His complete dominion that he instantaneously ascribed
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Yahweh glory and worship. So before we continue this morning and get into what this
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Psalm means in its direct context for David and what it means for us, church, let's bow our heads together and pray.
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God, I come before you this morning thankful, thankful for passages like Psalm 29, thankful for reminders in your scripture of just how magnificent and wonderful and how beautiful and how glorious you are.
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Father, I pray that I would get out of the way this morning, that you would cause me to decrease in your
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Holy Spirit increase and that this sermon would edify saints, would help us see
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God in a more true manner, in a manner that we could behold Him more, not because He should be beheld more, but because our lenses would be less fogged, because He should be beheld to the uttermost.
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Father, I pray that if anyone here this morning is yet to bow the knee to King Jesus, that this sermon might prick them, it might convict them of the sin that they carry with them that they can only carry to the cross.
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They were to repent and follow Him this morning. Father, I thank you for your word.
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You're most for your Son, it's in His name we pray. Amen. To start us off this morning,
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I want to give you all the doctrine that I believe that Psalm 29 teaches us, the doctrine
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I believe that Psalm 29 teaches us. It's a little bit of a lengthy statement, so I'll say it a few times and I will go slow for those of you here this morning that are note takers.
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The doctrine that I believe is being taught in Psalm 29 is this, Yahweh, the triune
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God of the Bible is King forever. And in His kingship,
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He has dominion over all of the earth. And that dominion's exercised beauty and glory must point us to worship
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Him as the forever enthroned, generous King that He is.
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Again, I know it's a mouthful, so I will repeat it for you note takers. Yahweh, the triune
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God of the Bible is King forever. And in His kingship,
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He has dominion over all of the earth. And that dominion's exercised beauty and glory must point us to worship
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Him as the forever enthroned, generous King He is.
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Now let us stand for the honoring and reading of God's holy word. Psalm 29 in its entirety.
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Psalm 29, the voice of Yahweh, the
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Psalm of David. Ascribe to Yahweh, O sons of the mighty.
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Ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of His name.
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Worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness. Verse three, the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters.
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The God of glory thunders. Yahweh is over many waters. The voice of Yahweh is powerful.
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The voice of Yahweh is full of splendor. The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars.
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Indeed, Yahweh breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes the
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Lebanon skip like a calf and Syrion like a young wild ox. The voice of Yahweh hews out flames of fire.
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The voice of Yahweh causes the wilderness to tremble. Yahweh causes the wilderness of Kadesh to tremble.
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The voice of Yahweh makes the deer to calve and strips the forest bare. And in his temple, everything says glory.
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In verse 10, Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood. Indeed, Yahweh sits as king forever.
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Yahweh will give strength to His people. Yahweh will bless His people with peace. This is
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God's holy word. Amen, please be seated. Before we completely dive headlong into this passage this morning,
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I want to provide you all with a few pieces of context that we must consider when approaching this psalm.
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First, I think we must think about the literary pieces to the proverbial puzzle before us. We must recognize this psalm as poetic in nature.
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As many psalms are, there's a multiplicity of different types of psalm, and this psalm here this morning has been labeled a praise psalm or an enthronement psalm.
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The superscription of this psalm this morning tells us that this is a psalm of David. It gives us no other clues to its time of writing, what occasion it was written for, or if it was written in response to something that was currently happening in David's life or taking place in the nation of Israel.
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Now, some scholars debate when the writing of this psalm took place. Some date it to the great drought of three years, mentioned in 2
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Samuel chapter 21, verses one through 10. Now, we do not know this for certain, but we are most certain about this, is that King David wrote this in response to a great thunderstorm.
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You can see that in your own Bibles, the second half of verse three.
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Now that we've handled some of these particulars, I think it necessary for us to dive headlong in this morning.
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We have four points this morning. Point number one, Yahweh's ascribed worship.
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We'll find that in verses one and two again. Yahweh's ascribed worship. We find that in verses one and two.
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Second this morning, we have Yahweh's voice of power. Yahweh's voice of power.
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We find that in verses three through nine. Thirdly this morning, we have
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Yahweh's eternal throne. Yahweh's eternal throne. We find that in verse 10.
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And then finally, our fourth point this morning is Yahweh's generosity to his people. Yahweh's generosity to his people.
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We find that in verse 11. So we come to point one this morning, Yahweh's ascribed worship.
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Look at your own Bibles with me, if you will, and we're gonna read verses one and two again. Ascribe to Yahweh, O sons of the mighty.
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Ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name. Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness.
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Saints, the first thing I want to point you to this morning is the command language here laid before us.
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The command language here laid before us. Ascribe is an imperative verb. It's to do something.
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We are commanded to do this. Ascribe is an imperative verb here. In the way in which a psalm is penned, nothing but worship may and can be given.
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James Montgomery Boyce, the great expositor, says this. A psalm is pure praise.
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It does not call upon us to do anything because a psalm itself is doing the only thing it is concerned about.
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It is praising God. I want to get to the verse one, the second part of verse one.
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You see this phrase, O sons of the mighty. O sons of the mighty.
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Scholars and commentators alike are split on who this might be. Some believe it to mean the heavenly host of beings surrounding the throne, as the throne is mentioned later in this psalm.
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Others believe it to be the mighty men of the earth, the princes and the kings and those in power that surround
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Israel. We see multiple different regions and peoples mentioned through verses three through nine as well.
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There's supporting evidence for both of these opinions. Personally, I agree more with the second point of view.
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I think it flows more with the train of thought that this psalm is putting forth and what it is teaching.
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So I believe that David is calling those abroad and near to worship the Lord, do his name, invoked by this great storm.
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And I mentioned it, the front half and off the top this morning that this is written in response to a great storm.
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We find that in verse three, the God of glory thunders. I'm skipping ahead just a little bit. We'll come back to verses one and two, but I want to give you this so that you're not surprised when we get there.
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But the Hebrew kind of translates more or less to the
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God that is full of glorious thunder is of God. It's a little bit, it's hard to kind of come through in the
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English language, but David is akinning this to some passages that we see in 1
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Chronicles as well, that this God of being this God of glory and full of thunder, this thundering voice of God that we see in verses three through nine is a theme throughout the
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Scriptures. So this is in response to this great storm. And in this response to this great storm that's laid forth before King David, he commands this worship, especially to recognize
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God's glory and his strength. God's glory and his strength.
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As mere men, we can ascertain these attributes of God. As mere men, we can often desire to be measured by these two things.
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Sometimes maybe we even measure ourselves against these own two things. I want you to hear this quote from Charles Spurges, is neither men nor angels can confer anything upon Yahweh, but they should recognize the glory and might and ascribe it to him in their songs and in their hearts.
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The ideas that you and I have around glory and strength come directly from God. God is glorious and God is strong, and those are things of him.
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And when we think about these things that ascribe to Yahweh glory and ascribe to him strength and the glory of his name, we're looking at worship here, folks.
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We see immediately following an imperative verb ascribe telling us that we must ascribe a certain glory.
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So in verse one, in the second part of verse one, it says ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength.
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And then in verse two, David somewhat doubles down. And he says, ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name.
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So it's a certain type of glory that David's really pointing us to. It's this glory to his name.
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I think it's important here for us to saturate in this spot for just a moment. See, all of what
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God does is glorious because it is of God. In his triunity, he is inherently glorious.
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It's something that he is inherently. He's inherently glorious. God is inherently full of glory.
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Meaning he is glory and glory is he. It's a attribute of God. It's part of the doctrine of God.
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One helpful way to think through this might be that glory to the rulers and the princes and the kings of the day would have been a very real idea that we're all used to.
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Some even sought that in glory. Even earthly glory could have been construed in a multiplicity of ways, depending on your perspective.
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But the glory of God's name is above all else. See, this morning
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I can tell you or ask you to think about what's the most glorious achievement that you've ever achieved.
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I can ask you, what is the most glorious thing that you've ever seen? And you can attribute it to some earthly ideas, some earthly thing.
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But all of that pales in comparison to the glory of God's name. In Exodus 34, we see
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God saying, I am. Moses asks his name, he says, I am who I am. It's God's inherent glory that he is who he is.
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God is glorious. So in our worship, David here is commanding us to worship
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God in the ways in which he must be worshiped, to the glory of his name.
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We come now to this end of verse two. And we have the second maybe strange phrase for us, or maybe something that we're like,
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I'm not really sure what that means. We come to the end of verse two, it says, worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness.
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Worship here is also another imperative verb. It's a command. We're ascribing this glory and we must worship him.
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We're ascribing him this strength and we must worship him. So David pins the only proper response that we could have in describing all of this glory, ascribing all of the strength is worship.
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David's sitting here. Put yourself in David's shoes for just a moment, saints, not for long, but just for a moment.
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David's standing here and he's watching this great wall cloud. We're all, most of us probably in this room are from Oklahoma.
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We've seen a wall cloud or two, I'm imagining. He sees this great storm.
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I want to skip ahead of myself again, just a little bit. In verse three, it says, the voice of Yahweh is upon the water.
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So we can ascertain a little bit that this great storm comes from the sea. It moves from the sea and it comes over the nation of Israel.
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And David's looking at the storm and it's in Lebanon and it moves through Israel and it moves out towards the desert,
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Kaddish. And it's this great, huge, gigantic thing that's in front of him.
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And David in humanistic terms and responses could have been scared. He could have had fear.
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He could have been scared of the damage coming. He could have been scared of the wind coming. He could have been scared of the rain coming. He could have been scared of a multiplicity of things.
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He could have just been so dumbfounded by how wonderful it looks, he forgets who controls this thunderstorm, but he doesn't.
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He's so enamored by this and so in tune with who God is that he sees, oh my goodness, look at this great beauty.
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Look at this great strength. Look at this great glory. It must be God's. I must worship Him in response to what
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I'm seeing in front of me here. What he sees in all the strength and all this beauty and all this glory drives him to worship.
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Drives him to worship God for this wonderful thing that's been set before him. And I want to point you to that word worship.
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That word worship, it is a imperative verb, like I've said, and it's probably not what we think of when we think of worship.
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We think of this as worship, and this is worship. Don't get me wrong here. Don't hear what I'm not saying.
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But the Hebrew word for worship here means fall on your face. It means prostrate yourself.
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It means level yourself with the dust because that's the only position you can take because you can't crawl underneath the dust.
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This idea here, this praising God consists of these two things. Ascribing to Him what is
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His, the glory and strength, the glory of His name, and then worshiping
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Him in light of these truths. I want to again read you a quote from James Montgomery Bush, the great
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Psalm commentator. The appeal describes the praising of God as consisting of two things.
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Ascribing glory to Him and that is acknowledging His supreme worth with our minds. In worshiping or bowing down to Him, which means a subordination of our wills and minds to Him.
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So we can think with our minds that God's given us that how supreme
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He is. And then in that thought of supremacy, of knowing God that is supreme above us, we must then bow down and subordinate ourselves and prostrate ourselves before God to worship
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Him. That's what that must create. And then now
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I want you to focus in these last couple of words of verse two. In the splendor of holiness, in the splendor of holiness.
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This phrasing in the Hebrew lends to an inherent beauty that true holiness has. An attractiveness to it somewhat.
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This word is used in other places in scripture and it's used for us to help to understand that this beauty of holiness of God's is to be taken in and take a part of in the symboled body.
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In the symboled body. So David isn't just one -offing saying when you're out in the field, plowing the rows and you see a thunderstorm coming to get out of the tractor and lay down over the top of the seed you planted and give
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God glory and worship Him. He's not not saying that. But what David's talking about here is we as saints, this splendor of holiness, it's getting at we as saints must gather together and look at God's glory and His strength and His beauty, not just in the things in which
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He does inside of us. Not things in which we interact with all the time.
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Not things in which are easy to access. But in ways in which
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He moves and works that sometimes we're deaf to see. We're dumb to look at.
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These things that happen around us that happen every single day around us that we go, cool.
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Or maybe don't even notice them. This passage of scripture here is to help us kind of understand those things that, all of these things that go on around us in this world.
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Not just the things that we interact with. Should point us to worship of God because of His beauty and His glory and His strength and His power.
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I want you to think on these things in the direct context of verse one. He starts demanding the sons of the mighty, these earthly kings and rulers and princes to ascribe glory and strength to Yahweh.
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He's demanding this in this direct context here. And if He's saying, you princes, you rulers, you kings of these nations around here, worship
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Yahweh in the splendor of holiness. Think about that. Then I want you to think about it and ask yourself the same question.
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Saint, how much more should you and I, knowing a more full measure of God's glory and strength, worship
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Him? How much more, Saint, should you and I worship God, having known a full measure of His glory and strength by saving you, by bringing you to repentance, by His providence and His sovereignty in your life to land you in the seat that you're sitting at right now?
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That hundreds and even thousands of years ago, the gospel spread and got to a small little place like Tulsa, Oklahoma, for you to hear the word preached.
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How much more should it drive us to worship? How much more should we see God's glory and beauty on the things that don't directly involve you and I?
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It should. Weak or faint -hearted
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Saint this morning, can you remember a time when you've known such truth so richly, that you were so full of recognizing
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God's beauty and His strength and His glory and His might and His power that you were constantly worshiping
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Him, saying, God, thank you for everything that you do. God, thank you for the rain. Thank you for the sun. Thank you for all that you've given me, all of these things that I don't access or exclusively outside of me individually.
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You're seeing all of these things around you. But yet now today, you can walk down the street and it is null and void.
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You feel so empty or weary. And part of that is your neglect of worship of God.
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I want you to look down at your scriptures again and see that David doesn't command sons of glory to be happy or full or well -watered near the well of Yahweh.
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He calls them to worship because he knows in that worship, they will fill full on the surpassing riches of godly worship.
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We don't have to go fill ourselves up to worship God, folks. We must open our eyes.
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We must be thankful. We must repent and have correct heart posture. Saint, if this is you this morning, repent and stop navel -gazing.
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Take your eyes off of yourself and fix your eyes on your creator who is the only one who can fill you full of the richness of God's grace and mercy.
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It can cause you to fall on your face and worship him in the splendor of his holiness because of who he is and not what he's done for you.
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Amen? How great an indictment on the people of Yahweh that we don't continually ascribe the glory of his name to him like we ought.
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All of us, folks, all of us, myself included, we must repent of this.
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There is infinite glory due his name and it is our job to worship him because of it.
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We come now to our second point this morning, Yahweh's voice of power. Yahweh's voice of power.
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We see through the next six or so verses and verses three through nine, this voice, you keep seeing these same literary terms, this voice, this voice, this voice, this voice of Yahweh comes to this transition and we see in these next six to seven verses, the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters.
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The God of glory thunders. Yahweh is over many waters. The voice of Yahweh is powerful.
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The voice of Yahweh is full of splendor. The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars. The voice of Yahweh hews out flames of fire.
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The voice of Yahweh causes the wilderness to tremble. The voice of Yahweh makes the deer to calve and the strips the forest bare.
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This voice of Yahweh here is evident, it's real. It's something we need to pay great attention to.
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I want you to see where David starts out here. David starts out and says, the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters.
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Now earthly kings and rulers and princes all could have went to Lebanon and cut down every one of the cedar trees.
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Could have went and cut down every one of those cedar trees. He could have went and caused the wilderness to tremble at their mighty army, their fortress in taking over lands.
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He could have even stripped the forests bare. All of these things could have been done by kings. But where's David start at?
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What no earthly king can have dominion over. David starts at where no earthly king can have dominion over.
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He starts with the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters. The God of glory thunders,
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Yahweh is over many waters. No earthly king can command any of those things, amen? Only God can.
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David is highlighting God's power over literally everything. He doesn't build small and go big.
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He starts big and says, can't do nothing about that. David Guzik on his commentary on this psalm makes an excellent point.
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The strength and the authority of God's voice is also connected to his word. If the voice of God has such power, then the words uttered with that voice have the same strength and authority.
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We mustn't separate the word from its power. We come to the
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God of glory thunders here in the second part of verse three. And I wanna point you to Exodus nine and Exodus chapter 19.
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They both associate the sound of thunder with God's voice as do two separate passages in Job is 37, four and five and 49 respectively.
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So this idea that God is, his voice of God is thunderous in nature is a theme across the
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Bible as well. So I wanted to make sure that we knew that, we understood that as we move forward. Spurgeon has great thoughts on this verse here.
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And I want to read to you his commentary on this one single piece of this verse. And as the thunder is not only poetically, but instructively called the voice of God since it peels from on high.
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It surpasses all other sounds. It inspires all. It is entirely independent of man.
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It has been used on some occasions as a grand accompaniment of God's speech to Aaron's sons. This was two references to Exodus that I mentioned.
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So this idea that God, the God of glory thunders is very real. It's very through and throughout the pages in the analogy of scripture, this is something that represents
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God. And now we come to Yahweh's voice of being over many waters.
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Now, a lot of scholars, I say a lot of scholars, a few scholars differ here on exactly what David's getting at.
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Some say this is a play towards showing God's power in relation to pagan worship, the gods, the sea.
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Others believe this is more set towards the firmament, the atmosphere, the sky, hence the thunderstorm.
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Either way here, I don't think it matters a whole lot how we interpret this or can think about what
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David might mean because God's powerful over all of it. The sea and the storm, the clouds and the rain, the atmosphere, all of it falls under his dominion.
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And after verse three, we see this transition. We start out on the sea and things that no man can tame.
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And this transition now goes to creation. It goes to the voice of Yahweh is powerful.
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The voice of Yahweh is full of splendor. The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars. The cedars of Lebanon were known for their might and their strength.
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David was proclaiming that God's voice would utterly splinter some of the sturdiest pieces of nature around.
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In our day and time, I want you to think probably something akin to redwoods, much like a great thunderstorm could.
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Children, I want you to find my eyes this morning. I know it's been a little bit since I addressed you all.
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Do you remember the last time it stormed really, really bad at your house? Maybe some limbs fell down or a tree fell down or your shed was knocked over as Pastor Brandon's shed was flung up in the air and set on its top.
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All of those things around you probably seem very sturdy, right? Maybe some of the trees that fell down around you are some trees that you've climbed before.
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They can hold your weight, they're sturdy. The wind and the rain and the storm tossed around those things like they were nothing.
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Do you know that God, by the power of His voice, could turn mountains into mere dust?
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Do you know God could do that? That God, by the strength of His voice, can turn the biggest tree in your yard into a thousand little bitty matchsticks.
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It's true. And it's in this power that King David is marveling at while he is writing these words of Scripture.
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King David, much like you children, was once in awe of a great storm and what God could do with mere wind and water and cloud and sky, and he worshiped
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Him because of it. Children, I want that to be said of you. That when you see the weather outside, you're reminded of God's power.
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Something as simply as the weather. You're reminded of God's power, that how even that must drive us to greater worship of Him.
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Next in your Scriptures, you'll see that He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox.
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Coming through this passage this week as I was studying and poring over different commentaries, I was kind of taken aback by this phrase, like what is
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David getting at here? What are we trying to understand from this passage here? To paint a little bit of context on that for you all, that the mountainous reasons of Lebanon were where these cedars grew at.
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They believed, the Canaanites, they believed that's where their gods dwelled. And David is here pinning and saying,
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God is gonna go make the mountains that your gods live in skip like a little cow. He's effectually saying that to these kings and rulers.
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He's ascribing and telling the psalm to, you must worship because your mountains are gonna be blown over.
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The houses of your gods are going to be flattened. That He'd make
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Sirion, which is Mount Hermon in this region, skip like a young ox. He'd toss it to and fro by the strength of just His voice.
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That even He would make the wilderness of Kadesh tremble. The animals would give birth, the forest would be laid bare, that all of His utterance of His voice, all of these things would happen.
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How mighty is God in His voice? Over and through again in these seven verses here, we hear this voice of Yahweh and we see the effects of it.
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We see how just His voice is so powerful that He could level mountains. He could break huge sturdy trees.
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He could do all of these things. He hues out flames of fire, that's lightning for those of you wondering.
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That God could do all of this with His voice. We come to the end of verse nine.
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It says, in His temple, everything says, glory. In His temple, everything says, glory.
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David's saying in response to all of what just happened. We must say, glory!
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Oh, Saint, how this should be our response. This should fill our lips, this should fill our thoughts.
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Do you find yourself here this morning jaded to the power of the triune God? Do you find yourself bored of God's glory?
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You find yourself bored of His power, bored of His beauty? Are you colored unimpressed by the majesty of Yahweh?
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Repent, Saint, and pray that the Holy Spirit would fill you with adoration so that you might heed David's words to the sons of the mighty.
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Glory, glory, glory.
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We come to verse 10 in our third point this morning. Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood indeed.
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Yahweh sits as king forever. Here, David's reminded of the great flood.
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Children, the one that you've probably all had your parents read to you about or you've read about in your own
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Bibles. The great flood where God flooded the earth and Noah had an ark and his family and lots of animals were on that ark.
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And it was a great flood that covered the whole of the earth. David is reminded of this great flood. And we can be so sure of this because this word here for flood that David uses is only used in Genesis six through eight when describing the effects of the flood.
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It's used no other places in Scripture except in Genesis six through eight when we're being told and taught what the flood did and how it flooded the earth in the 40 days and the 40 nights and that the water covered the whole earth.
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We can be sure that David's thinking about that. In light of this wonderful, majestic, powerful, beautiful, glorious storm that's in front of David, he's reminded of this great flood that Yahweh used to judge the earth.
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As much as God was enthroned over the whole of the earth, so much that he could and did flood it, he's sitting now as king forever.
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If David's gonna remember the flood, he's gonna remember the promise too, right? He's gonna remember the flood, he's gonna remember the promise that God will never flood the earth again.
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You have a rainbow as that promise. So David knows that this isn't the end here.
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This thunderstorm in front of him, this rain, all of this in front of him, it's not gonna be the end. This reminded of this,
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I'm reminded of the flood, I must be reminded of the promise as well. Texts of scripture like this are soothing to the
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Christian soul. They drive every fear away of knowing that our king sits forever upon his throne.
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Psalm 10, 16 says, Yahweh is king forever and ever. Nations have perished from his land.
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Texts of scripture like this spur us on as well. They stir us up to godly obedience, knowing that where we fall short, we must repent and trust
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Yahweh, knowing he will create in us a good work. We might trust and obey and follow him more and better.
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Reminded of Hebrews 4, 16. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace and help, to help in time of need.
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Texts of scripture like this should frighten those that have yet bowed the knee to King Jesus, knowing that the splintering of the cedars could be a very real reality for them if they stand in opposition to Yahweh.
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For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, to me, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God.
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So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Texts of scripture like this awaken us to know that God will never be dethroned, that King Jesus is still ruling and reigning right now and he will continue to footstool his enemies until the day of judgment.
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Psalm 110, Yahweh says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.
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I want to remind you again the context David wrote this to, those around him.
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David's showing them, and us by extension, that their thrones come and go.
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That God is sitting on his throne forever and has been forever. That he can orchestrate great floods and great thunderstorms and everything else under the sun that he desires to.
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This touches on the doctrine of God's aseity with a special respect to his being eternal and his being infinite, but that's another sermon for another time.
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And finally, this morning, I want to point you to, lastly, as we look at this passage, verse 11,
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Yahweh's generosity to his people. In this passage, this verse, these two lines in our scripture probably hit home and mean the most for you and I in these seats this morning.
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Psalm 29, verse 11 says, Yahweh will give strength to his people. Yahweh will bless his people with peace.
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In light of everything that David's seen, this beauty and glory of this thunderstorm set before him, calling the sons of the mighty near to Israel to worship
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God, the splendor of his holiness. Seeing all what a grand and wonderful and mighty storm can do and break cedars down and make animals calves and mountains skip.
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David knows that God will shepherd his people well and he will be generous to them. John Calvin in his commentary on this verse estimates that the entirety of life needed for the preservation of man is to be found in the strength mentioned here.
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This strength mentioned is the whole of the providence and the sovereignty and the inner workings of each individual life of the
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Christian. All that is needed by man to live, love, and worship Yahweh shall be given to him.
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Saints, as we've delved through this song and understood in its writing in large response, or at least from my point of view and what
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I believe the text point of view to a great thunderstorm viewed and seen by David in the nation of Israel, our minds might think that a generous
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God might give his people strength to stand, strength to stand in the face of the storm, strength to not be broken like the cedars of Lebanon, peace that would never know any storm, that they might be sheltered from anything that comes their way.
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Well, saints, this morning I'm here to tell you that's exactly what God's done but probably not in the way that you would think. It's exactly what he's done but not in the way that you would naturally, humanistically think.
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As we would probably construe this and take this in our own physical strength, that God would be generous enough to me to give me physical strength to stand in opposition of the storm, that God would give me individual peace away from storm so that I don't have to deal with it.
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He would give me bodily security and peace of mind of not having to do anything and deal with any of this stuff.
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Saints, God's done something so much greater. He's given us strength in him.
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He's given us peace, surpassing peace in knowing his son, Christ Jesus.
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Saints, that's the sweetest part of the honeycomb of all of today's sermon. That's the sweetest part of the honeycomb.
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Yahweh will bless his people with peace. Saints, you have a peace that cannot be surpassed.
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You have a peace knowing that Christ Jesus is your advocate. He was made a propitiation for your sins.
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He is your assurance, like we've mentioned this morning. Saints, you have real eternal peace, knowing that Jesus is real strength to get through real storms.
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Those of you this morning that have yet to bow your knee to King Jesus, this promise is yours to have as well too.
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You just must repent and follow Christ. For those of you that have a hard heart this morning and you have no real peace with God, I want you to hear the words of Matthew Henry.
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What peace can they have who are not at peace with God? What peace can they have those who are not at peace with God?
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You can have none. I'm here to look every one of you in the eye this morning and tell you, if you do not know
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Jesus Christ, as your personal Lord and Savior, you will never know peace. You will spend your life being splintered like cedars of Lebanon, being skipped like a calve of the own gods that you've propped up for yourself.
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You won't know the strength and the peace that the God of the Bible, the triune God of the
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Bible, the covenant God of the Bible is generous enough to give to his people. You will never know it.
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And in good Puritan fashion, I have eight uses for us this morning. Use number one, use this text of Scripture to test yourself.
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Are you deaf to the beauty and glory God has founded in things around you?
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Test yourself. Are you deaf to God's beauty and God's glory to the things that surround you? Use two.
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Use three. Use this Scripture to test yourself. Are you only concerned with things inward and how you feel?
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Are you only concerned with things inwardly and how you feel and how that makes you feel and how that makes you worship
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God? Do you allow your navel to drive your worship of God?
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Test yourself. Use three. Use this text of Scripture to remember how powerful
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Yahweh is. He is mighty. He is all -powerful.
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He has dominion over the whole earth. Use four.
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Use this text of Scripture to rightly think about the beauty of God and his glory. Do his name.
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Use this Scripture to rightly think about the beauty of God and the glory. Do his name. We think of the things that God has orchestrated in this life and how he's set this world up.
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For those of you that have been here for a while, some months ago, I preached a small series on the first couple chapters of Genesis.
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I hammered home to those of you that were here that God did all of this through careful purposing.
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He made this earth carefully for you. He made it beautiful so that you could see it, that you could be a part of it, so that you could look at it.
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God did these things for you. Do you see the beauty?
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Do you see the glory? Does it cause you to worship? Use five.
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Use this text of Scripture knowing the same God that flooded the earth for his namesake sits enthroned today with aim to enact righteousness upon an unruly world.
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Sometimes in our interactions with the world around us, we can forget verses like verse 10.
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The triune God of the Bible is now set enthroned over the flood and he sits as king forever.
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We forget that he sits as king forever. Saints, that means something great for you and I.
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That means that God is one. God is set on his throne forever. It all ends the way that God wants it to.
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Use six. Use this text of Scripture to be secure, Christian.
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In light of what I've just said, use this text of Scripture to be secure, knowing that it's God's world that he's ruling and reigning over and he's footstooling his enemies,
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Psalm 110 tells us. And Psalm 10 tells us that he reigns forever and ever. That it's all
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God's, it's God's throne and it's all his and he has all the dominion and all of the powers. This Psalm so wonderfully lays out for us.
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Be secure. Don't be scared when real life storms or the storms of life come your way.
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In response to this great storm, David says, know that God's on the throne forever. Know that God's on the throne forever.
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Know that he was over the flood as well. It's kind of like the security panel at your house, if you will.
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You say, use this text of Scripture to know that peace, namely in Christ Jesus and him crucified, is a gift your king is powerful enough to endow you with.
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We spent a lot of time in this Psalm looking at verses three through nine, looking at the power of God's voice. And we see in verse 10, that God is set enthroned over the flood and he sits as king forever.
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Then verse 11, we see something kind of different. It says,
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Yahweh will give strength to his people and he will bless his people with peace. The first 10 verses of this are very outward for all of you.
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It's very looking at something different. It's not looking at something that God's gonna give me. But be reminded by the things that are without, not with him, but the things that are without, that God will give you strength and God will bless you with peace.
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And the chief peace that God will give you is knowing Christ Jesus. Let's bow our heads and pray.
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Heavenly Father, thank you for what you've given us this morning in Psalm 29. Father, I pray this text of scripture is edifying to those that hear it,
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Lord. I pray that it helps us unfog our lenses of how we must worship you, how we must see your beauty and your glory, how we must know and understand and think about and hear your voice of power, how we must remember that you sat enthroned forever and the wonderful, generous gifts that you give us as being your people.
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God, I thank you for all of these things. Thank you most for your son. It's in his name we pray, amen.