Summer Psalms #3: Sovereign – Psalms 33:8

Summer Psalms #3: Sovereign – Psalms 33:8

Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. 

There’s something wrong with our nation and you can hear a lot of enlightened from mainstream media about racism or capitalism or how we need to stop global warming. You hear government leaders tell us that big oil is bad, while big pharma and bigger and bigger and bigger government is good. You can hear lots of reasons outside a Bible believing, local church, but inside a church that actually teaches and preaches the Word of God, there really is only one explanation why we are having riots in our streets, unprovoked attacks against the most helpless, protests for the right to kill unborn babies. There is a reason drug dealers and criminals are made into heroes while the police who protect us are made into killers. There is a reason why shoplifters, rapists, murderers and pedophiles are getting get out of jail free cards in major cities across our nation. There is a reason why traditional families are an endangered species, why the worst forms of perversion are now promoted as a family. There is a reason why our schools are instructing children in the most destructive life choices, while outlawing anything that might save them. 

There is a reason. And it isn’t about any freedom, social, political or economic issue. No, the reason is a spiritual one. The reason is the most basic necessity of any individual, any family or any nation. We as a nation have forgotten who God is. We have turned our back on the only hope we have and we are suffering the terrible consequences of that choice.
 

That brings us to the 33rd Psalms.
The is a Psalms about praising God because He is the Sovereign, the ruler, the sole arbitrator of creation and history.
 

It is a Psalm exhorting the people of God to rejoice in their omnipotent, sovereign God. It is specifically speaking of Israel’s relationship to God and before we can apply the Psalms to our own relationship to God, we must understand it original meaning or the application may be false. We must understand that no other nation has ever been or will ever be God's nation but Israel. God will not allow anyone to steal Israel's relationship with Him. In His sovereignty He chose Israel through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
But we can and should take Psalms 33 and after understanding its proper interpretation, then apply its exhortations and encouragements to any people or nation who also have a relationship to Israel’s God. 

You can't ignore or neglect Israel, but you can rejoice with Israel through the New Covenant relationship with we share with them as believers.

Praise Jehovah – Psalms 33:1-3

Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the LORD with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise.

Rejoice In The Lord

Israel, the people of God, are exhorted to rejoice and praise the Lord Jehovah. They are told to magnify their praise with the harp and with the psaltery which most commentator say was a special harp with 10 strings which gave it more range and more beauty.
 

They are told to sing a new song and to play skillfully with a loud noise. Most of the Psalms and especially ones like this were sung outdoors by large choirs or male only singers. (Ladies take it up with the Lord if you don’t understand why. I don’t understand why I have to be bald while my little brother has a full head of hair either) The sound of the choir, harps, psalters would rise as they sang this song and the sound of their praise could be heard all over the Old Testament city of David.
During the feasts and holy days of the Lord, as pilgrims with their sacrifices would make their way up Mt. Zion towards the Temple, the sounds of voices singing and harps ringing would echo from the walls and fill the streets of Jerusalem.
 

And throughout all would be the wonderful sense of joy. Joy because they were God’s people, and He was their God. They knew they did not deserve the blessings they had received from Him, but they also knew that He had chosen them by His grace and sovereign will. They may not ever understand why but they could absolutely understand what it meant in their lives. It meant joy and joy should bring praise.

Rejoicing Still

And here is the place where we can make the first application to our own lives. Some things are common to all of God’s people, whether they be of the 12 tribes of Israel or the highland clans of Scotland. Whether they descend from Abraham or MacDonald, MacEntire or O’Donnel. Rejoicing is common to all of God’s people, Old Testament or New Testament they are God’s people, and they should rejoice.
 

If they are the people of God and share a covenant relationship with him, whether that is Old Testament or New Testament they are God’s people and God’s people are blessed and they should express thankfulness for those blessings by rejoicing.

Praise Him

I use a website called Hymnary when I’m searching for a hymn and I searched the site under the topic “praise,” there were 6487 songs about praise on this site. I think it would be worth it if I read all 6487 at this time. (Some of you woke up right then and asked, “What did he say?)Well, I’m not going to read them all, in fact I’m not even going to read the titles, but I am going to read the titles of the first few that came up sorted by popularity.
 

Ready? Praise Him! Praise Him! By Fanny J. Crosby. (382 hymnals) Praise to the Lord, the Almighty by Catherine Winkworth and Joachim Neander. (374) Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow by Thomas Ken. (1024 hymnals) To God be the Glory by Fanny J Crosby (203) and Come, thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robert Robinson is the most popular praise hymn it is in 2121 hymnals.
All of these familiar hymns were written not by David, or Asaph or the Sons of Korah but by New Testament Gentiles in a New Covenant. A covenant of Grace established through the death of Jesus Christ and we can enter into that covenant by the same grace from the same God that blessed Israel.
Listen to this verse of Come Thou Found and you realize why it is in so many hymnals.

Come Thou Fount

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
mount of God's redeeming love.
 

Now the Psalmist, we are not told who wrote this Psalms, it is one of the “orphan psalms” since it has no named author, now that anonymous Psalmist gives reasons to rejoice in the Lord God, Jehovah. First in vs. 4, Praise God For His Word.

Praise His Word – Psalms 33:4-9

For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth. He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD. By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.

The Wonder of His Word

The Word used here is not speaking of the scriptures or the Bible. Word here is used of the expression of the power of God, this is the voice of God as he created the earth and universe.
Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
 

In this Psalms we read from vss. 6, and 9; 6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.
 

9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.
But it is not just the word of God in creation, it is the word of God in all things.
 

Vs 4-5 says,  For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth. 5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.
God’s word is power but it is not force without reason, or power without purpose. God’s Word is power that is right, it is power that is true, it is power that is love in righteous and judgment. It is power that shows to God’s people the goodness of God.
 

These things the attributes of who God is. He is all powerful, he is all truth, he is holy, he is just and aren’t you glad, that He is love and He is good.

The Word Of God Still Has Power

So, Israel, is exhorted to rejoice in power of their God. And listen Christian, child of God today, you should rejoice because that is our God, the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our God not by the Abrahamic covenant but by a much greater, much wider, all-encompassing covenant, The New Covenant of Grace. And the word of God still has power!
 

The same power that spoke the universe into existence, is the same loving, righteous, true, holy, just and forgiving God whose power opened a new covenant of grace to us and we rejoice in that loving power bestowed upon us.  
 

Romans 3:21-29 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
 

Yes, He is our great God and we can rejoice with the same heart and understanding when we sing 

Fanny J. Crosby’s Praise Him, Praise Him, as those Israelites who walked up to the temple and heard the praises of God being sung by those ancient Levitical choirs. He is the same God, and it is the same sovereign will, the same eternal power that opened a relationship with Him and Yes, we should rejoice because we are included in that great family of faith.

Now we come to what is the heart of my message this morning in vss. 10-12. Here is another reason for rejoicing. Rejoice in the Counsel of the Lord.

Praise His Counsel – Psalms 33:10-12

The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.

Blessed Is The Nation

The psalmist says the people of God should rejoice because their God is greater, wiser and more powerful than the nations that do not know Him.
 

He says their plans are reduced to nothing by God, their schemes and traps have no effect, they will not stand, but in contrast the Lord’s counsel stand forever, the thoughts of his heart, the plans, the providence, the purposes of God, those will continue to all generations of God’s beloved people.
Then we come to a very familiar verse, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.”
 

This is a summation of the reasons to rejoice in the Lord to this point in the Psalms. Israel was a blessed nation because their God was the Lord, Jehovah. They were blessed as a people because God chose them for His own inheritance.
 

Israel as a nation and as a people should no longer be in existence. The world’s nations under the influence of Satan have tried to destroy Israel, from the time of Egypt drowning Hebrew babies in the Nile, to Assyria, Babylon and Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and deportation of the people. Even to the Medieval kings of Europe who banished and drove the Jews from their kingdoms, to the armies of Islam who occupied their homeland and tried to make them slaves once again. Even a few decades ago Hitler tried in all his Satanic influenced power to destroy every Jewish man, woman and child in all of Europe. Even today in the Middle east radical Islamics are still trying to drive out and kill God’s chosen nation, Israel.
 

The Jewish nation should not exist. Satan has done everything in his power to wipe it out, but still, it is here.
 

In 1948 they reentered their homeland and became a nation again among the nations of the world. After all that was meant to destroy Israel, once again they exist as a separate nation, not just a lost people among the other nations. It could not have happened and yet there is Israel. There is only one reason. They were God’s nation, they possessed God’s promises and God never deserts His own. He never made a promise He did not keep. His counsels, His will stands eternally.

Blessed Is Our Nation?

I’ve already said that this Psalm is about Israel, and we cannot take that away and be able to understand it properly. But once we do understand that truth then we can apply that truth to others who share a relationship with God. That is true of people and in an indirect but very real way it is true of a nation.
 

Can we apply Psalm 33:12 to the Unites States? Can we honestly say that we are or at least we were a nation whose God is the Lord?
 

I think the evidence is throughout our history. It is written into the documents that brought us to life and now sustain that life. The Declaration of Independence speaks of being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." The Colonial Congress and the Constitutional Convention were opened daily in prayer.  The motto of our country, imprinted upon our coins is "In God We Trust."  We pledge allegiance to “one nation, under God.”

Evidence of Our Nation and God

The Colonies
Eleven of the first 13 States required faith in Jesus Christ and the Bible as qualification for holding public office.
November 3, 1620 - King James I grants the Charter of the Plymouth council. "In the hope thereby to advance the enlargement of the Christian religion, to the glory of God Almighty."
November 11, 1620 - The Pilgrims sign the Mayflower Compact aboard the Mayflower, in Plymouth harbor. “Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia;
 

The Revolutionary War
Summer 12, 1775 - Continental Congress issues a call to all citizens to fast and pray and confess their sin that the Lord might bless the land.     "And it is recommended to Christians of all denominations, to assemble for public worship, and to abstain from servile labor and recreation on said day."
 

Our Constitution
At least 50 out of the 55 men who framed the Constitution of the United States were professing Christians. (M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company, Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982).
James Madison who was the primary architect of the Constitution. Said, “We have staked the future of government not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions on the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
 

The Presidents
George Washington’s Inaugural Address, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained. 

(Historical note to above: Washington added the pledge, "So help me God," to his inaugural oath. He then kissed the Bible to affirm his submission to the King of Kings.
 

Thomas Jefferson, our third president and one of the principle framers of the Constitution: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" --1781
 

Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation for a National Day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer should be reissued today.
April 30, 1863 “ We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.  We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.
 

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the ascended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.- Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 1863
 

Gerald Ford, our 38th president, quoted a 1955 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower on December 5, 1974 (Two presidents at one time, saves time.) "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first--the most basic--expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be." -1974
 

Yes, as improbable as it may seem today, we were once without a doubt, a nation whose God is the Lord. And having begun on that foundation it is no wonder that the blessings that grew from that planting are no longer evident. It is no wonder why we are seeing chaos and riots and anarchy in our streets, corruption in our government and brokenness in our homes and even perversion in our churches. We as individuals and as a nation have cast aside the beliefs of our forefathers. We as a people have quit believing that foundation of scripture and faith in the sovereign God of creation, the Bible and all people are the only hope we have. The only One who can bless and restore is the Lord, Jehovah, God above all.

Before we grow too pessimistic, we need to read the rest of this Psalm.

Praise His Watchfulness – Psalms 33:13-19

The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their works. There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength. An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength. Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

Rejoice in Hope

Israel could rejoice because God did not just set them up and then let them go. He was still watching and working. He sees all the sons of men. He is the One who fashions their hearts alike. He is the One who judges al their works.
In all the nations, all the sons of men and all their power there is no hope, no king who can save them. It does not matter how vast the army, how mighty the heroes, no matter how powerful their warhorses. All these things are nothing compared to the strength of God.
 

Vs. 18 is where hope is found, “Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy;
Israel as a nation still exists because God was and is still watching and working for those who honor and worship Him.
 

“O Israel, rejoice in Hope because God will deliver your soul from death and keep you alive.”

There is Still Hope

What is said here about Israel is true for all people. God is watching and we can have hope because His eye is on those who call out for his mercy. He will deliver us.
 

I know it is true for individuals for I have experienced it in my life. I know it is true, for I have seen God work miracles of deliverance in the lives of others.
 

I also believe it is true for a nation. This what I believe the Bible promises, that if there is a faithful remnant of God’s people who will faithfully pray for their nation and pray for their leaders then God’s blessing will continue. They may not be as great as they were in the past, but because of God and those who :fear Him and hope in His mercy,” we are not finished as a nation that God can bless.
 

Yes, we need to vote, yes we need to speak out, yes we share the Gospel to the lost because that is where real change, eternal change will start, but right now in the midst of all that is wrong we need to do this one thing right. We must do it every day, we must do it with hope in our hearts and faith in our souls. We as God’s people, must pray.
Let me bring in Ben Frankin here to support this point.
Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention.
In 1787, Our nation was in a crisis after the Revolutionary War. We were a nation ununited and each state was at odds with the others. If Britain had reinvaded we would not have been able to withstand them.
 

They met in Philadelphia to charter a new form of government, but it had bogged down with the same petty problems and selfish interest and it looked as thought America would fail. Then one day, Benjamin Franklin, asked to speak and this is what he said, and this moment changed everything.
He rose from the table where he sat and looking at George Washington the chairman of the convention, he said “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the  more convincing proofs I see of this truth: "that God governs in the affairs of man." And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?  We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in the political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war or conquest. I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.
 

(Historical note to above: the convention was then adjourned for three days of prayer, Bible reading and special church meetings, following which the Constitution was discussed and adopted.)
It is never too late with God if we can still pray to God, then we still have hope in God. Hope for our nation, hope for our children, hope for our grandchildren, hope for the future.

The final two verses are a benediction, a closing prayer for Israel and I think for us as well. It is a final reason to rejoice in the Lord, because He is faithful and will not fail His own.

Praise Him His Faithfulness – Psalm 33:20-22

Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.
 

Is it too late for America? Is it too late for you, for your family, for your church? Is it too late for the blessings of God?  The answer according to the word of God is emphatically, No! It is never too late if we breath and pray it will never be too late, because God is faithful.
 

Our heart shall rejoice in Him!