Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 29 | Date: October 23, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Open your Bibles with me, if you will, please, to Psalm 135. Psalm 135. We’ve been looking at specifically praise psalms, that is, psalms that are given to praise. And I’ve mentioned that there is a, or I’ve emphasized that there is a rather customary form to the psalms that the psalmist will use in a praise psalm. I want to say again that they are not enslaved to this. There are praise psalms that don’t follow these forms. And sometimes these praise psalms combine other forms with them. There is a variety, but there is a customary form that praise psalms follow. Just as we have customary forms for certain kinds of poetry in English, so they had there evidently. And David or the others who as they wrote, had these forms in mind, and understanding those forms helps us to follow their train of thought in the psalm.

So we come now to another praise psalm. And you remember that’s marked by a call to praise at the beginning, and then a cause or reason for praise. Why should we praise the Lord? And then typically at the end, there’s a renewed call to praise. And there is some variety within that as well, as we have seen. Sometimes those components are repeated. But those are the standard elements: a call to praise and a cause or reason for praise. We find that here in Psalm 135. This one in particular, though, is different in that it not only is a praise psalm with the regular components, but it’s a storytelling or a narrative praise psalm. So it gives praise to God in the form of a narrative. And that, again, is not something unique in the Psalter. We find some others like that. We’ll see those when we get to the expositions on Sunday mornings. But we have that here, a praise psalm that praises the Lord by means of a historical narrative.

So let’s begin with verse one. “Praise the Lord.” Here’s the call to praise. “Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Give praise, O servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God.” And now the cause or reason for praise. Here’s the historical narrative. “Praise the Lord for the Lord is good. Sing to his name for it is pleasant. For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession. For I know that the Lord is great and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.” So he’s the sovereign ruler.

And here’s the narrative proper. “He it is who makes the clouds rise at the ends of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain, and brings forth the wind from the storehouses. He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, both man and beast. who in your midst, O Egypt, sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants, who struck down many nations and killed mighty kings, Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan, and gave their land as a heritage, a heritage to his people Israel. Your name, O Lord, endures forever. Your renown, O Lord, throughout all generations. For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear. Nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.”

And now a call to praise again. “O house of Israel, bless the Lord. O house of Aaron, bless the Lord. O house of Levi, bless the Lord. You who fear the Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord from Zion, he who dwells in Jerusalem.” And then a final or renewed call to praise. “Praise the Lord.”

So we have these standard components here. This is a psalm given to praise. Here in particular, it traces out the reasons for praise in terms of what God has done in the historical past with Israel. Now, this section that I’m calling the cause or reason for praise in all of these psalms, typically, this is where we find the theological themes that the psalmists like to emphasize. And typically, this is going to emphasize God’s character, his attributes, his greatness, his majesty, his sovereign rule, his work of creation, his work of redemption of Israel, choosing Israel. These big themes like that about God is typically what we find in this praise section or the reason for praise in the Psalms.

Now, I’ve mentioned the psalms of grateful praise. We will get to those as well, but those are not your typical hymns or praise psalms. A psalm of grateful praise is more individual oriented. Here, the psalmist will look back to some event in his life where God has intervened for him personally, and the psalm is written to give God praise for that particular mercy that he has given. But in these praise psalms properly, the praise is broader. It looks to God and his greatness, his majesty, and the big attributes as creator and redeemer and so on.

The Lord’s Superior Greatness

Now in that, one repeated emphasis that we find in the Psalms in praising the greatness and the majesty of God is the Lord’s superior greatness over the gods of the pagan neighbors around Israel. And the Psalms show a very close awareness of the religions of the ancient Near East surrounding them and of all their gods and all that goes on with their gods. And they reflect a close acquaintance with their myths about their gods and so on. And a repeated emphasis in the Psalms is to show the Lord’s greatness over those gods. And it entertains for the sake of the poetry and for the sake of the imagery and the emphasis of the Psalms. It entertains the theoretical reality of those gods. And it speaks of God as greater than those gods. Not necessarily, not of course acknowledging the real existence of those gods, but something like what we find in some of the older English poets like John Milton; they would talk about Zeus and some of the other Roman gods and whatnot, not believing that they actually existed, but it enriches the poetry and makes the point better.

And we find that the psalmists do that as well. For example, here in Psalm 135, look at verse 5. “For I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all gods.” Then verse 15: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” So you see here, he’s acknowledging these gods, in a sense, but then he goes on to mock them, that they have ears on them, they’re shaped on the sides of the heads, and they have mouths carved into the middle, and they have eyes, but they can’t see, they can’t hear, they have noses, they can’t smell, and they mock the false gods, showing that they really are just nothing. And by doing this, they show then the greatness and the superiority of the Lord God, who does all that he pleases and sees, and hears, and speaks, and so on.

Now we’re going to look at Psalm 29, but before we get there, let’s look at a few more samples of this, just to give you a feel for how often we find this in the Psalms. Look back at Psalm 77. Psalm 77, this is actually a lament psalm, but it’s the praise section of the lament psalm. Verse 13: “Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God?” Turn over to Psalm 86 and verse eight. Again, this is the praise section of a lament psalm. This is verse eight: “Psalm 86 in verse eight, there is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.” Psalm 89, verse six. Psalm 89 is interesting in that it’s a combination psalm. The first 37 verses are a praise psalm, and then the rest of the psalm is a lament psalm, and they’re brought together. But in this section, we have a praise, and in verse six: “For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord?”

Psalm 95. Again, we have a praise psalm. We touched this briefly last week. “For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.” And then last week where we spent some time and actually sang afterwards, Psalm 96 verses four and five. Again, a praise psalm: “For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.” And then Psalm 97, another praise psalm, verse seven: “All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols. Worship Him, all ye gods.” And then verse nine: “For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods.”

And then Psalm 115. Here we’ll begin with verse one. This is a wisdom psalm. Psalm 115 verse 1: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak. Eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear. Noses, but they do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel. Feet, but they don’t walk. They do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.”

All right, well there’s a sampling of this “God over the gods,” or “the Lord above the gods” that we find in the Psalter. We’ve talked before, both in our studies in Genesis and in the Psalms already, we’ve mentioned the expression “polemical theology,” where the biblical writers will show an awareness of the pagan religions around them, and they would make reference to them in a way to show the superior greatness of God over the gods of their neighbors. And the psalmist then is saying something to the effect of, in these situations, it is not Baal, it is not Marduk, it is the Lord who is great. And often in these, like I mentioned, they will highlight attributes of God in contrast with the attributes of the so-called gods of their neighbors.

One that is very interesting to me is that the emphasis in the Psalms that God is good. The Lord is good. Dr. Waltke, who’s helped me so much in the studies of the Psalms, got his second doctorate, his PhD from Harvard back in, I think it was 1959 or something like that—yes, he is that old. And he got his PhD in ancient Near Eastern language and literature. So he’s very, very well acquainted with the literature of the ancient Near East. And when he’s able to say something like this, you can bank on it. He says this emphasis in the Psalms that the Lord is good is unprecedented in the ancient Near East. All that we read about the gods in the ancient Near East and their hymns to their gods and their praises and all of that, you never find this emphasis that they are good. In fact, sometimes and often quite the opposite. But we find this consistent emphasis that the Lord is good.

And so the psalmist wants to contrast the attributes of God to that of the pagan religions around them. And there’ll be other things like God is Creator. God made the world and everything in it is an emphasis we find in the Psalms. Or like we saw in Psalm 115, the Lord is great; he does whatever he pleases. He’s in the heavens; he does what he wants and no one can interfere with his will. And then often as we’ve seen, they even mock the false gods. They have ears and they can’t hear and they have mouths and they can’t speak and so on. The Lord by contrast speaks, he hears, he sees, he intervenes, and he moves and he does according to his will. And in all of this, they are contrasting the Lord God of Israel, who is and who actually is, with the supposed gods of the pagan neighbors in order to show the superior greatness and majesty of the Lord God.

The best known of the polemic theology is what we saw in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian account of creation, which has some faint resemblances here and there to the creation account in Genesis. And we see that Moses there is drawing some analogies in order to do some of this polemical theology and show the greatness of God over the so-called gods of their neighbors. And again, the idea is that it is not Baal and it is not Marduk. It is the Lord who is great. In the Babylonian creation account, the account is of the gods and the struggles between the gods in the making of the world, and it’s the working of one god over another, the god of chaos, and finally this god and the struggle and the great fight that they had, bashing him over the head and things like that. Finally, this god emerges as victorious over the others, and so on. In that, Baal is the storm god. He’s the god of lightning and the god of storms and the god of rain, a fertility god. And you have others like the sea god who is the symbol of chaos and so on. And these kinds of things creep up in the Psalms where the psalmist makes reference to those, which in our own frame of reference are not as easily recognizable, but in that culture were very easily recognizable as some of this, what we call polemical theology, showing the greatness of God over the gods of their neighbors.

In fact, the psalmists sometimes show such a familiarity with the religions of their neighbors that it has been conjectured that the psalmists at times sort of take over some of the hymns that were written to false gods around them and baptize them, so to speak, and make them about the Lord God instead. The evidence that they’ve actually taken some over is a little thin, but there is at least some kind of reference to those themes in the psalmist as well. Let’s do one more before we get to Psalm 29. Let’s look at Psalm 74 to see another example of that. We see at least an echo here of the religious texts of their neighbors. Psalm 74, look at verse 12. “Yet God, my king, is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan, and you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. You split the springs and brooks. You dried up ever flowing streams. Yours is the day. Yours is also the night. You have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth. You have made summer and winter.”

We have here in part of these, some of these verses, a battle scene being described in which God breaks the heads of the sea monsters and so on. This is the God of Israel, the true God defeating the foes and the gods of chaos is a reflection of the religious texts of their neighbors around them. It’s poetic imagery. And again, it’s polemicizing against the pagan neighbors and it portrays then the greatness of God over them. So these psalms then are generally about the majesty and the greatness of God and his sovereign rule over everything. But it is often with this particular angle, and that is not just the greatness and majesty and sovereignty of God, but the greatness and majesty and sovereignty of God over the gods of the pagan neighbors. And then with that, it is encouraging the peoples and calling the peoples to trust in Israel’s God.

A Call To Praise

All right, so all of that is sort of the backdrop that I want to have in mind when we come to Psalm 29. We’ll focus the rest of our time here. Now this is one of those psalms that some have conjectured was actually an adaptation of a hymn to Baal and transposes it instead to a hymn to the Lord. I don’t know that that’s exactly right, but there is some reflection of those hymns at least. In directing our attention to the greatness of God, we have, first of all, a call to praise, verses one and two here in terms of ascribing strength to the Lord. “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 His holiness.” To ascribe, connotations are usually that of a public declaration, to declare publicly and acknowledge the greatness of the Lord, His glory and strength, the glory that is due His name. Well, there’s the call to praise, verses one and two.

The Cause Or The Reason For Praise

And now, beginning with verse three, we have the cause or the reason for praise. And here, the reason is the revelation of his strength. “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 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 forest bare, and in his temple all cry glory.”

A Closure With A Plea For Strength

And then we have the conclusion, this is slightly different from our usual conclusion of a praise psalm, but it’s a closure with a plea for strength. Verse 10: “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.”

Now it seems here, just by way of overview first, that the key word of the psalm is strength. Verse one: “Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” And then you have in verse 11: “May the Lord give strength to his people.” It seems to be a frame for the psalm. This is a psalm about the power and the rule of God. God who is strong, and it concludes with a plea that he will lend that strength to his people.

Now let’s quickly work our way through it. Verses one and two, we have the call to praise. It summons the heavenly court here, the angels, to give praise. “Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” That combination of nouns there, glory and strength, the idea is that of a prevailing power. God uses his strength in a way that brings him glory. And so he’s saying in verse one, acknowledge the Lord as the universal unrivaled King. He is the one who rules over all. Verse two: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name, worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.” So first part of the verse, this praise to God and acknowledging Him as the unrivaled King is something, is a praise that is due Him. It gets back to what we’ve seen before, that often in the Psalms it is an obligation, a duty on the part of all creation to praise God. We, in a sense, pay our praise to God. And then at the end of the verse, “Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” The idea of worship, particularly in the Old Testament, the language of worship signifies to bow down. Bow down. Bow down in reverence before this God. Acknowledge his greatness. So the psalm begins then with a call to all of heaven, the heavenly beings, to bow before the Lord and to acknowledge his rule. So it starts off with this note of the majesty and the greatness of God.

And that’s what picks up on then in the beginning in verse nine, or beginning with verse three, through verse nine, the reason for praise. And here, this section seems to be framed by the idea of glory. Look at verse three: “The God of glory thunders.” And then verse nine: “In his temple, all cry glory.” So the glory of God now seems to frame this part of the psalm. Now verses three and four, we have a particular display of God’s glory and strength. And that is the thunders over the Mediterranean Sea. So he pictures this raging storm over the sea and he portrays it in a poetic way, but it’s clear that he has a storm in view. Now think by the way, who’s the God of the storm? Who’s the storm God? That’s Baal, right? In terms of their neighbors, keep that in mind. But here, the display of God’s glory is this thunder. “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.”

So here we have the imagery, the voice of the Lord, beginning of verse three, is defined for us in the second part of the verse. The voice of the Lord is, in fact, the thunder. So the last part of verse three defines the first part. So in other words, the psalmist is not a materialist, he’s not a naturalist. He looks and he sees the thunder and he doesn’t try to explain it like we would today in scientific terms. He sees behind it the God who makes it. And he calls it in a poetic way: this is the voice of the Lord when you hear the thunder. So you have this great storm to the West out on the Mediterranean Sea, verse three, it’s over the waters, it’s over many waters. And he says in verse four, it’s powerful, the voice of the Lord, the thunder is powerful, and it’s full of majesty. So now envision here this great storm raging over the Mediterranean Sea, and he sees in this storm a kind of theophany. God making himself known through the storm. And the storm is not made by Baal, the storm God; it is the Lord. He is the one thundering. And the idea here is that of a great storm, it thunders, it’s full of majesty. This isn’t just your little rain. You ever been in one of those real thunderstorms? Or just boom! And it just rattles your insides. That’s what he’s hearing, and that’s what he’s imaging here. This raging storm over the sea, and you have this loud, crashing thunder. And he says, “That’s the voice of our Lord.” To the psalmist then, the thunder is a revelation of the majesty and the power of God, and it evokes awe in those who hear it.

Then verse five, this storm raging over the sea comes crashing over Lebanon. Now it’s moving east and so it hits shore. Verse five: “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The voice of 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 forest bare. And in his temple, all cry glory.” Now the significance here is that the storm is coming off the sea and it’s crashing into Lebanon, the center of Baal worship. And it comes crashing into Lebanon and verse five emphasizes that it breaks the cedars. Now the cedar trees are the pride of Lebanon. They’re majestic trees themselves. I understand they grow up to something like 120 feet high. I don’t know if that’s the highest tree in the world, if that’s bigger than our California redwoods or not, but I think it is. Anyway, it’s a big tree. And these are the pride of Lebanon. But here we have the thunder and the lightning and this raging storm come crashing into Lebanon and breaks the cedars. And that which is a symbol of Lebanon’s strength, God breaks and he just smashes it entirely.

So that which is considered mighty and majestic, the Lord crushes it and he brings it to nothing. Lebanon is not only famous for its cedars, cedar trees, Lebanon is also famous for its great mountains. In particular, Mount Hermon, referred to here as Sirion in verse six. The voice of the Lord cries or crashes so powerfully that these most stable, majestic parts of the earth just convulse and they tremble. And it leaves Lebanon with all of its mighty mountains scampering like a young animal who’s afraid. So that’s the symbolism of the poem. We have this greatness of God thundering over the ocean, over the Mediterranean Sea, comes crashing into Lebanon, smashing its symbols of greatness, even the earth itself and its great mountains trembling, and he describes it as a young animal running in fear. This then is the mighty power of God coming off the sea. It’s a devastating storm, the crashing thunder, the flashing lightning, and it smashes the fortress of Baal. All the while, verse nine, the third line: those who are in his temple cry, “Glory.” You get this picture of the angelic entourage around God and his throne. Picture Revelation chapter 5: God on his throne and the angels around, and they’re bowing before him. This is his entourage of some sort. They’re described in Revelation as kings themselves, but they are just his servants. And all of this royalty surrounding the throne, they bow, and they see what God is doing, and they say these great expressions of his majesty and power, and they cry, “Glory.” Cheering, in a sense.

Well, all of that then to emphasize that God is enthroned. He is in absolute rule. He is the unrivaled king overall. He’s worthy then of worship and he’s worthy of trust. And all the symbols of earthly pride are just nothing before him. And then we come to the end of the psalm, verses 10 and 11. When the storm dies down, the Lord remains enthroned as king overall. “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.” Verse 10: “The Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace.”

So God has exercised his power. He’s administered justice, even over the great center of Baal worship in Lebanon. And when it’s all over, they’re smashed, it’s in shambles, and God is still seated on his throne, ruling over all. And this the psalmist wants to tell us is the God of Israel. And so, the psalmist prays then in verse 11, that God will exercise that awesome strength on behalf of his people. “May the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace.” In this seemingly uncertain world, may this God who has power over all things be the strength of his people. Here is a God that is worthy of our trust. This is the message of the psalm. He rules over all. He’s worthy of our worship. He’s worthy of our trust. And he in fact does give peace to his people through his indwelling Spirit, secured for us through the work of Christ.

So we have then a call to praise: “Ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength, the glory due his name.” The cause or the reason for praise, verses three to nine, because he rules and he rules over all would-be rivals. And so in conclusion, Lord, we are your people; exercise that power on our behalf and keep us safe.

Again, I would like us to sing this psalm. If you would take your hymnals and turn to number, your Trinity hymnals, turn to number 36. I think the tune is familiar. Let’s stand together and sing number 36, Psalm 29.

♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
♪ From Jehovah he shall come ♪
The voice of Jehovah comes down from the mountains ♪
To angels’ choirs ♪
♪ Alleluia ♪
♪ Alleluia ♪
♪ Jehovah ♪
♪ He is the fount of life ♪
♪ Jehovah ♪
♪ He is the fount of life ♪
♪ From his body he is rising ♪
♪ The voice of Jehovah is endless to sing ♪
♪ The voice of Jehovah ♪
♪ The seed of his making ♪
♪ Jehovah, the seed of his making ♪
♪ Of heaven and of grace ♪
♪ Jehovah the Savior so well amazed ♪
♪ He shone in His temple, His holy proclaimed praise ♪
He sat on the throne, he is sitting on his throne.
Jehovah, O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Lord in heaven, we thank you that you are all powerful, that none can second guess you and overcome you in any way, outweigh you, and that that power is framed with goodness. We thank you that you have declared that you are in covenant relationship with us and which he returns and makes every enemy his footstool with incredible and universal omnipotence. We thank you that when that happens that we will be sheltered