Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 33 | Date: May 5, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Introduction

Continue our series through the Psalms. Today, Psalm 33. Psalm 33 is not one of the more familiar psalms, generally, but a psalm that is really very typical of why the Psalter is referred to as the book of praises. This is a psalm of praise.

Psalm 33, I’ll begin with verse one:

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to him with the harp of ten strings. Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth, all their hosts. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap. He puts the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke, and it came to be. He commanded, and it stood firm. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of men from where he sits enthroned. He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashioned the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The warhorse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, our studies in the Psalms have been so refreshing for us; it has ministered consolation, comfort, and strength for mourning. It has refreshed our hearts and enlivened our souls for praise. It has told us of the greatness of your kingdom, the surety of your reign over all, and the certain coming of your king to carry out your rule upon the earth. For all of these reasons, we sing. We sing because of your grace to us in Jesus Christ that you’ve promised, that you’ve given, and that we rejoice in. As we look at this psalm today, we pray that you would refresh our hearts once again, remind us of the things that we have to sing about, that we may be marked by joy as you’ve called us to. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

This is a praise psalm. We’ve studied some time ago now that the standard form of hymns or praise psalms follow generally a standard form. Not always, but quite often they do, and this is one that pretty much does. We have the call to praise, and then explaining for us the cause for praise, or the reason for praise. And then in the conclusion, we have either some concluding remarks like we have here, or a renewed call to praise.

So we have in verses 1 to 3, the call to praise: “Shout for joy.” Here the psalmist calls the people of God to give praise to God. Then in verses 4 to 19, we have the cause for praise: “For the word of the Lord is upright,” and he explains it further. And then in verses 20 to 22, we have the conclusion: some final reflections on this.

So it’s a praise psalm. I’ve entitled it, “A Singing People,” because this psalm is not only about praise, but it explains for us, as these psalms often do, why we should praise and what kind of praise we should be giving. Now you’ll notice that there’s no superscript here in Psalm 33. Other than Psalms 1 and 2 that open up this first book of the Psalms, this is the only Psalm in that first book that does not have a superscript attributing it to David. We assume this is a Davidic psalm. It seems that the editors of the Psalter thought that as well, and it seems also there’s some connection that they’ve placed it in the order that they have because of the connection between Psalm 32, verse 11, and Psalm 33, and verse 1.

Psalm 32:11 says, “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, shout for joy, you upright in heart.” And then Psalm 33 and verse 1, we have virtually the same. So the respective themes of the psalms, these two psalms, are different, but the call to praise is generally the same, and it’s this idea of calling the people to praise that unites these two psalms. By the way, there are some manuscripts, some medieval Hebrew manuscripts, that do attribute this to David. The Septuagint attributes this to David as well. It’s likely genuinely a Davidic psalm. But we’ll work our way through it then.

A Call To Praise

First of all, verses 1 to 3: a call to praise. Here, David is addressing the people. As usual, he’s not addressing the Lord himself in prayer, but he’s addressing the people of God. Verse 1: “Shout for joy in the Lord, O ye righteous. Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to him with the harp of ten strings. Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.”

Now remember, when we see these calls to praise, this is not to be understood primarily in terms of a personal call to praise for you and your private devotions or something like that, but you are to picture the people of God gathered at the temple, gathered together as a congregation to sing, and here we have the worship leader, likely the king himself, calling the people to praise. And this begins their time of praise, and we have here a five-fold call to praise. Verse 1: shout for joy; and then verse 2: give thanks to the Lord with the lyre, make melody; and then verse 3: sing to him and play skillfully on the strings. A five-fold call to praise: shout for joy, praise, give thanks, make melody, sing, and play skillfully on the strings.

Now all of these together then answer several questions about our corporate praise, and I’m going to spend a little bit of time on that this morning. First of all, this is one of those psalms that helps us to understand why it is we are a singing people and why singing enjoys such a prominent place in our corporate meetings.

So first of all, verse 1: notice who should praise. Who is it that should be giving praise? This is a familiar theme in the Psalms that we’ve seen before. It’s the righteous, verse 1. It is the righteous and the upright who are called to give God praise. “Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise befits the upright.” It is a familiar theme in the Psalter that God expects his people to praise. We saw that in the beginning at the outset of the Psalter in Psalm 1, that Psalm 1 presents us with two different people, the righteous and the wicked, advising us from the get-go as we work through the Psalter that these psalms, these songs of praise, are to be sung by the righteous.

Now, it is not that God is not deserving of praise from the unrighteous also. Of course He’s deserving of praise from the unrighteous. He is deserving of praise from all. We sang that this morning earlier: “Let all that has breath give praise to the Lord.” He is deserving of praise from all. But given the unrighteousness of the wicked, given their disobedience, any verbal praise to God would be insincere; it would be a sham, and God finds it insulting, and he detests that. We find that several times in the Psalms. We’ve seen it before. He’s repulsed by it. It’s an insult to him.

And in fact, that’s a theme that we find reiterated several times elsewhere in the scriptures as well: don’t pretend to worship God with your mouth on Sunday morning when all week long you disregard his word and live in disobedience. You find that in the book of Isaiah where the prophet condemns Israel for going through the motions of worship that God had assigned—the sacrificial system, all of it. Isaiah condemns them. The Lord condemns them for going through these motions of worship that God had assigned them because they were doing so hypocritically. We find the same in Ecclesiastes chapter five. We find it even in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, with regard to the observance of the Lord’s table. Those who observe it insincerely are judged by God as well.

So God detests the so-called or the mouthed praise of the unrighteous, but he invites the praise of the righteous. To put it another way, praise of God entails a moral and ethical obligation. If we are going to stand with the people of God and sing praise to the Lord, it entails something of the life behind it. If we come insincerely, he’s repulsed by it. It is only the upright and the righteous that he wants to hear from with praise.

Now that, of course, raises a problem that only the gospel finally can resolve. We find in the book of Psalms—we’ve seen it already, for example, probably most famously in Psalm 14—”there is none righteous.” There’s no one who does good. This is a problem. God wants praise. He expects praise. He invites the praise, but only from the righteous. And yet we find in this very book of Psalms that there are none. There is none who is righteous. We find the same in Isaiah. We find the same in the book of Romans. There’s none righteous, no not one.

But through Christ, and we saw something of this last week in Psalm 32, through Christ we’re given a right standing before God. And given that right standing of acceptance before God, we become the righteous. And by His Spirit, He transforms our hearts, and He welcomes our praise. Psalm 32, verse 11—you might have noticed, I didn’t stop to point this out last Sunday, but you might have noticed in verse 11—”Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart.” Now in Psalm 32, last week, who are the righteous? Who are the upright in heart? It’s the repentant, forgiven sinners who are righteous. And we saw that last week, that God has not counted their sin against them. And we saw that the gospel is caught up in that, of course, in the flow of Scripture.

So it is the forgiven, repentant, and forgiven sinner who is righteous. And we have the same now in Psalm 33, verse 1: “Shout for joy in the Lord, O ye righteous.” It is in him and through his provision that we are righteous. So shout for joy because he is our God, because he has made us his, and because in him we are righteous. This is a glorious theme that we find throughout the scriptures. And for what should we be joyful? Shout for joy because we are righteous through his work for us through Jesus Christ. Paul echoes this, by the way, in Philippians chapter 4, verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” It is not just an unfounded joy, but rejoice in the Lord and his provision for us.

So the people of God then are to be a singing people. But notice again verse 1: “Shout for joy in the Lord, O ye righteous, praise befits the upright.” Praise is fitting. Praise is entirely appropriate. And so here we are given assurance that God invites our praise and in fact delights in our praise. There is something altogether appropriate about the righteous singing God’s praise. Calvin comments here: “there is no exercise in which they, the people of God, can be better employed.” In our book on the Psalms, we have a line that reads like this: “if we are robed in the white righteousness of Christ, then our songs of praise are the appropriate jewelry.” That’s the idea here. There’s nothing more befitting, nothing more suitable for us who are righteous in Christ than to have a song of praise on our lips. We are forgiven people. We saw that in Psalm 32 last week. Because we are forgiven people, we have much to sing of.

Now notice here, though, as we work our way through this, that this call for the righteous to give praise to God is not conditioned on their musical ability. It’s not “you who are the best soloists or the most advanced musicians give praise.” It is all of us forgiven sinners that are called to give praise. Whether you can carry a tune or not, you must never think lightly of the responsibility and the privilege of singing with the people of God in the congregation. God calls us to do it, it is fitting, it’s entirely appropriate, and he delights in it.

Now, in point of fact, your ability or not to sing might disqualify you from the choir. If you can’t carry a tune, please don’t join the choir. And you may not be asked to sing a solo. Please don’t, if you are. But musical ability or no never exempted anyone from this delightful responsibility and privilege of singing God’s praise with the congregation of God’s people. That’s the whole thrust of verses one to three: the congregation of God’s people singing at the tops of their voices with joyful expressions of praise for what God has done for them.

My dad, I remember hearing him exhort the congregation when he was trying to exhort them to sing more. He would remind the people that God has made both the crow and the canary. And whether you are a crow or a canary, use your voice to sing God’s praise. I have a good friend, a very good friend, who cannot carry a tune in a bucket. He can’t carry a tune at all. You stand next to him in the congregation when you sing, and you absolutely love it. He has such a heart full of joy and enthusiasm for what is being sung that it’s contagious. That’s what’s in view here. Regardless of musical ability, it is a heart filled with joy for what God has done and these people singing at the tops of their voices in praise to God for his saving work.

We’ll see more of that as we go along. Verse 2 now, we come to the kind of praise that we should give. “Give thanks to the Lord.” You might remember my pointing out that in the Hebrew there is no word for thanks in the Bible, giving thanks. The translator’s not wrong for giving it this way; we have to bring it in somehow, but specifically the word means to confess or to acknowledge. And so it’s in the atmosphere of thanksgiving and gratitude, of course, but it’s itemizing, it’s acknowledging what God has done. He has done this for me. He has done that for me. He has done this. And in that sense, it’s a giving of thanks. It’s not just a vague thanksgiving, but an acknowledging specifically of what God has done.

And so our praise, he is telling us here, ought to be marked by a thoughtful acknowledgement of what God has done for us. The content of our songs ought to be a verbal expression of what God in grace has done for us in Christ. And so that’s why joy is the mark of the people of God singing. Joy is the mark of a right apprehension and appreciation of what God has done. What a travesty it would be for the people of God to come together and sing and it not be joyful.

Now this presumably is why the specific call here in verses 2 and 3 for musical instruments to accompany the praise. Verse 2: “give thanks to the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of ten strings, sing to him a new song, play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.” This is a familiar note in the Psalter. Now, we don’t use the same instruments in our culture. In our culture, it was the organ that was played for the singing in the congregation. Then it was the organ and the piano. Today, it’s the organ, the piano, and the guitars, or any of the other fifteen instruments that Jeremy might happen to bring on a given Sunday morning. But this is a familiar note in the Psalms, not just singing praise, but singing to the accompaniment of instruments.

It’s not that bare music has a value by itself, but somehow, instrumental music—the music itself—assists and even promotes praise. One of Jonathan Edwards’ wonderful observations—he was the New England evangelist during the Great Awakening in the 18th century—he never thought of anything, I don’t think, that he didn’t think through to the bottom. He was that kind of a mind. And he had this observation about music: this is the value of music in the church, and that is that it attaches truth to emotion. And so we’re not just reciting words, although there’s value in that. We recite our confession of faith and things like that; there’s real value in that as a teaching value. But the particular value of singing is that it attaches truth to emotion. And so if the truth is there, crank up the emotion all you like.

And I think that’s the essence then, or the reason why we have the call for the musical instruments in verses 2 and 3. And remember now, this call to praise is a temple setting. So try to picture what we’ve seen here so far. Verses 1 and 2: “shout for joy in the Lord. Praise befits the upright. Give thanks.” Verse 3: “sing a new song with loud shouts.” One commentator writes here, “the scene is a noisy, joyous occasion with musicians, singers, worshipers joining together in raucous praise.” It’s a lively scene of celebration. Now there’s certainly room and a place for lament psalms as well. And so at times, songs can be doleful; songs of repentance. Psalm 51, for example, with its repentance of David’s sin, wouldn’t fit really well with a joyous kind of melody attached to it. But for us who have been redeemed by God, this note of joyful praise ought to be prominent.

And now in verse 3, the last part of the verse, we have David speaking to those who lead. So, this is for the music team: “Play skillfully on the strings.” That is, give it your very best. God is deserving of our best efforts, of our finest musical praise. Well, this is true on every level of our corporate worship. A preacher didn’t prepare if he doesn’t spend time thinking how to present his message; he should be left at home. Sunday school teachers, they don’t just come Sunday morning and come off the top of their head; they prepare. If you say something, you might as well say it well. It’s the same with musicians as well. They practice, they do their work for us so that they can lead skillfully because God is deserving of our best, and it will serve most effectively to promote praise.

Now, back in verse 2, David sets the controlling aim of it all. First part of the verse: praise is offered to the Lord. Second part of the verse: “make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.” That is, the use of musical instruments, the use of music in the corporate worship, is not for the purpose of mere performance, much less the entertainment of the congregation. It is all to assist in directing our praise to God. Verse three commands further: God is concerned even with the decibel level of our praise. “Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.” That’s festal shouts, shouts of celebration.

So this is far from a dull, doleful song service. That can happen at times. This is far from that. This is more like cheers in a stadium. That’s the idea. You have a joyful people cheering and singing with joy for what God has done for them. They’re full of enthusiasm. They’re so taken with what God is and what God has done for them that they just—they can’t just whisper it quietly. Now that’s a familiar theme in the Psalms, and I’ll take this time just to highlight a few of the samples of it, this matter of singing loud, loudly.

Psalm 47:1: “shout to the Lord with loud songs of joy.” Psalm 51:14: “my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.” Psalm 59:16: “I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.” Psalm 81:1: “sing aloud to God our strength. Shout for joy to the God of Jacob.” Psalm 150:5: “praise him with loud clashing cymbals.” Now why is God concerned about the volume of our singing? Why is it he doesn’t want you just to sing like this? Why is it he wants you to sing aloud? Because volume simply is an indication of enthusiasm. It’s an indicator of joy. Half-hearted praise is unworthy of God. God expects that his people’s hearts be moved for what he has done, and he expects it to be evident in the way that they sing.

Verse 3 again: what should we sing in our praise? “Sing to him a new song.” The old song, of course, is the song of the Exodus, but God’s work for his people didn’t stop there. There’s been the conquest, there’s been the Davidic king, the Davidic promise; work our way through the prophets and we have further promises culminating in the promise of the new covenant. We come to the New Testament itself and those promises become fulfilled in Christ and finally in the book of Revelation they all come to culmination. And when he says we should sing a new song, what he is saying is that our singing ought to be redemptive-historically up to date, reflecting all that God has done for us to date.

We come to Revelation chapter 5, and we have that scene of the ascension of Christ. The sovereign is on his throne, Revelation chapter four and chapter five; he has the scroll in his hand, his purposes for salvation and judgment. And no one is worthy to carry out his purposes for salvation and judgment in the earth. And so there’s this wailing and they’re looking for someone who’s worthy, and finally this lion of the tribe of Judah, who is a lamb who was slain, he comes and takes the scroll and heaven breaks out in cheering: “you are worthy.” And it says they sang a new song, because he is worthy, because by his blood he has redeemed us to God out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. We come to Revelation chapter 15 and we have the culmination of God’s saving purpose in salvation and judgment. And it says, they sang the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. The song of Moses, of course, is Exodus chapter 15—a song of deliverance when they crossed the Red Sea and were delivered from Pharaoh in Egypt. But all of that now has been keyed up and brought up to date in the song of the Lamb and what he has done to fulfill all that that deliverance anticipated.

Now in the Reformed tradition, for seemingly endless decades, the tradition was to sing the Psalms only. There’s a lot of wonderful thinking that goes into that, and I don’t mean to criticize it entirely. I think it’s mistaken on one point, and I’ll get to that in a second, but there’s some great thinking that goes into that—that what we sing ought to be biblically endorsed. That way we know we’re not teaching error when we sing. We have to be very careful about what came to be called hymns of human composure. It was Isaac Watts who made the change, so he’s either the villain or the champion, depending on your perspective on this Psalms-only singing. But I think he got it right when he observed that the church’s singing, which ought to be their most joyous occasion, mentions nothing of Jesus. If all we’re doing is singing Psalms, there’s no explicit mention of Jesus.

And so what Isaac Watts proposes, first of all, is what we ought to do is have these psalms imitated. And so he imitated the psalms, and so Psalm 72 of the reign of the Davidic king, the psalm of Solomon, it becomes “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” or Psalm 98, the psalm of the coming of God to reign over the earth, that becomes “Joy to the World, the Lord is Come,” and so on. Psalms imitated. And I think that it does open it up for songs of human composure as well. The point here with this new song is that our song and our singing and the themes that we sing ought to be redemptive-historically up to date. And so he calls for a new song.

The Cause For Praise

So verses 1 to 3 then, he calls the congregation to praise. I spent more time on that than I planned. Verses 4 to 19 then, we’ll have to hurry through. The psalmist here identifies the cause or the reason for praise. Now these cause-for-praise sections of these praise psalms are often marked by the word “for.” “Praise the Lord for,” “praise the Lord because”; sometimes they’re marked off by the pronoun “who.” “Praise the Lord who does this and who is the other.” But here’s the word “for” in verse four that starts it. And here in these sections we are told why we should praise. What is the reason for our praise? Why should our praise be so enthusiastic?

And verses 4 and 5 provide the answer in crisp summary: “For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” Now in most of verses 6 through 19, it will be an expansion in one way or other of these two verses. Praise the Lord with joy and enthusiasm because the word of the Lord is upright, all his work is done in faithfulness, he loves righteousness and justice. So praise the Lord with enthusiasm because of his word, because of his works, and verse 5, because of his attributes. And here these cause-for-praise sections of these praise psalms serve the teaching function of the psalms. This is where we learn theology about God and what he has done and are reminded of the themes that we’re to be singing about. And it’s a reminder that our praise is not some empty formality. It’s grounded in the word, the works, and the attributes of God.

So in verses four and five, we have the summary statement of these reasons for praise. Let’s run through verses six and following. Verses 6 and 7: we praise God because of the greatness of his word in creation. There’s a familiar theme in the whole Bible, and that is the power of God’s word. Verse 6: “by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.” That’s Genesis 1. God said, “let there be.” By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. “By the breath of his mouth, all their hosts. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap. He puts the deeps in storehouses.” It’s an amazing thing that God speaks and the world is put into order. It’s staggering. If you read through Genesis chapter 1 with any thoughtfulness at all, you have to go away just reeling from it. Who can do this? He speaks and the world appears. And now he says, “let this be this way, and let this be this way, and let that be that,” and it all happens. What kind of authority is that?

And so the only appropriate response, verses eight and nine: “let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm.” This is the greatness and the majesty of God.

Verses 10 and 11: the works of God, and specifically here, it’s the rule of God in history. So now it’s not just the works of God in creation, but more specifically, the rule of God over human history. Verse 10: “the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” So the nations of all of the world, with all of their combined strength together, are nothing before this God. After all, he’s the God who spoke and the worlds came into being. This is something that’s picked up later in the scriptures as well. Isaiah chapter 40 very famously speaks of the same theme of God’s greatness in terms of the nations being as the dust of the balance. So picture a balancing scale, and there’s dust on them, and you’re going to weigh out your meat, or your produce, or your candy, or whatever it is you’re buying, and you want to weigh it out and make sure you get a full 16 ounces to the pound, and you see a little dust on the scale, and “wait a minute, wait,” you blow it off, and you’re really persnickety. That’s how God views the nations. Nothing. It’s nothing. Daniel learned this lesson, you remember, after he’s grazing for seven years like a cow. This is the great difference between God and all of the false gods. We find this often in the Psalter: the difference between all of them and our God is that our God does what he wants and nothing ever stands in his way.

Verse 12: if that is so, then what a blessed people Israel is. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.” This is the centerline of the psalm. This is the point. What a blessed people we are to be the people of this God.

Verses 13 and following: God’s rule is not only sovereign, but his rule is also deeply ethical. “The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.” You are not autonomous. You’re accountable. This is that familiar theme that we have in the scriptures of God keeping the books as it were, keeping careful record of the deeds of every last person, and then bringing out those books finally in the day of judgment. And he judges not only what was done, but the motives of them all. His rule is ethical and he judges accordingly.

And verses 16 to 19: the outcome of human history will not be determined by anything human. Verse 16: “a king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The warhorse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.” That is to say, God rules over all, and he rules for the sake of his people, and any attempt to frustrate his purpose will be futile. The nations have their purposes, but God has his, and his purpose will never be frustrated. We’ll see more of this in just a moment.

A Confession Of Trust

We come finally then to verses 20 to 22, and this is his conclusion. He concludes with a confession of trust. If all this is true about God, then it ought to be reflected in our trust and in the way we pray. Verse 20: “our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name.” And then his prayer: “let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”

So this psalm ends as it began, with an expression of confident trust and a firm anticipation that God will do all that he has said he would do. Now once you’ve said all of that, it’s difficult to miss the prospective outlook that dominates throughout Psalm 33. It doesn’t jump out and grab you, but once you’ve read through thoughtfully the whole psalm, it becomes very obvious that there’s a prospect involved, an anticipation involved in the psalmist. It’s common in the psalms of praise. David is certain that God will intervene at some point. Verse 20: “our soul waits for the Lord.” Verse 21: “we trust in his name.” Verse 22: “we hope in you.”

How does that fit with the rest of the psalm? Look back through it. This God who, verses 4 and 5, is trustworthy, he’s righteous, he’s steadfast in love. This God who, in verse 6 and following, just spoke and the world came into place. Who in verse 10, this God before whom any opposition is futile. Verse 11, this God whose counsel stands forever and he does all that he wants to do. Verse 12, this God who has blessed his people with glorious promises making them his people. And by the way, his people, Israel—all through the scriptures from Genesis 12 onward, we find that expanding to all of the people of God throughout redemptive history, that God will bring the Gentiles as well to share in Israel’s promises. Verse 16, this is the God in whom his people hope, anticipating the day when all of his saving purposes will be fulfilled. And verses 20 to 22, in such a God we can confidently trust. Wait for him to act in his time. He’s the Lord of creation. He’s the Lord of history. He keeps an eye on his people and he directs history accordingly.

All of that together then points us to the universal reign of God in earth, finally realized. It points us to what we find pointed to all through the Psalter: the fullness of the kingdom of God. That was David’s hope. That was Israel’s hope. That’s our hope as well. We saw at the outset of the Psalter in Psalm 2: Psalm 1, we have the wicked and the righteous; Psalm 2, it’s the wicked who are in constant revolt, and it’s what marks the world today—it’s revolt against God. Psalm 33, verse 5, for example: “the Lord loves righteousness and justice.” Surely what the Lord loves, he will bring it about. He’ll establish his kingdom in the earth, and it will be a kingdom that is marked by justice and righteousness. That is to say, as we pray, there is a day coming when God’s will will be done on earth, just as it is in heaven.

Psalm 33 is a hymn of praise, and it anticipates the in-breaking of God’s kingdom in its fullness. It’s a kingdom that’s now realized in degree in the Church of Jesus Christ. Implicitly, all of this looks ahead to the day when God’s moral attributes will be reflected the world over. That’s the prospect of the Psalter. It’s the prospect of the entire Bible, and it is the Church’s hope. This God whose word is true, this God who made heaven and earth, this God who rules over the nations and frustrates the plans of all of the combined might of the nations, this God whose counsel stands sure forever, he tells us finally in verses 20 to 22, is a God who can be trusted. And implicit in verses 18 and 19, we have the same. Those who trustingly look to him will not be disappointed.

We need to remember these verses and this psalm and the prospect of this psalm. When we see culture in decline and we see increasingly the opposition to the righteous, and when we hear increasingly from the wicked, “you need to get on the right side of history,” you need to remember that they have a very short view of history; that God will accomplish all his works, and trusting him and bowing before him and singing to him in praise will be on the right side of history for sure.

Throughout history, kings and nations have come and gone. We’ve seen them all rise and we’ve seen them all go. We’ve seen Assyria and Egypt and we’ve seen Babylon and Medo-Persia and Greece and Rome and we’ve seen the Third Reich. And all of them with their coming and going testify to the final fulfillment of God’s kingdom. It will be brought to pass. Many of those kings and those kingdoms, most of them along the way, have given themselves to the stamping out of the people of God. But the church of Jesus Christ remains and faith still thrives in God’s people all over the earth. Verse 10: “the counsel of the nations has come to nothing.” Together they testify to the coming fullness of God’s kingdom.

Our own culture is becoming increasingly settled in its opposition. And you can be sure, just like Assyria and Babylon and Medo-Persia and Greece and Rome, just like all the rest of them, our culture will come to nothing as well. The world passes away. The gates of hell will never prevail against the church of Jesus Christ. Verse 11: “the counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of his heart to all generations.” Verse 18: “the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love.” The kingdom of God will be brought to consummation. God’s people will be safe. Verses 16 and 17: not by human military might, but by God’s own intervention. And as Psalm 2 reminds us, this world may be in its continual revolt, but God has set his king on his holy hill and he will reign.

So Psalm 33 then, here’s cause for joyful praise. This is something that ought to make his people sing. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father, we praise you for your greatness, praise you for your power in your word, your rule over history, and willingly we bow before you and offer you our praise from willing and obedient hearts. Lord, we confess, as we saw in Psalm 32, we are sinners. We praise you for the forgiving grace that you’ve given us in Jesus. We pray that you’ll enliven our hearts to sing of him until the great day when he comes again to bring all of your purposes to pass. We pray in his name, amen.