Amen. Well, let's turn to the Psalm 29. And we'll read the Psalm together. Psalm number 29. And let's read the word of God as we find it here. It is a Psalm of David. And in verse number one, in Psalm 29, he pens these words, give on to the Lord. Oh ye mighty, give on to the Lord, glory and strength. Give on to the Lord, the glory Jew, unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars, yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf. Lebanon and Syria, like a young unicorn. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kedesh. The voice of the Lord maketh the hounds to call. and discovereth the forest, and in his temple doth everyone speak of his glory. The Lord sitteth upon the flood. Yea, the Lord sitteth king forever. The Lord will give strength unto his people. The Lord will bless his people with victory. Amen. May the Lord publicly, as we have read the word publicly, bless the reading of it this evening. The book of Psalms was considered by the reformer John Calvin as a unique book in the canon of holy scripture. In his commentary on the Psalms, John Calvin wrote the following, there is no other book in which there is to be found more expressed and magnificent commendations, both of the unparalleled liberality of God towards his church and of all his works. There is no other book in which there is recorded so many deliverances, nor one in which the evidence and experiences of the fatherly providence and solicitude which God exercises towards us are celebrated with such splendor of diction and yet with the strictest adherence to truth. As a minister in my pastoral duties, I find that I turn to this book of the Bible more frequently than any other book as I come to consider what portion of scripture to read with a senior who's confined in their home, or maybe to someone who's in a sick bed and has been hospitalized, or to a family who's going through a very difficult patch, or one of life's many. valley experiences. I'm sure that's been the case in your life. You find comfort in the scriptures and often that comfort has been found in the writings of one of the inspired psalmists. Tonight we come in our studies in the book of Psalms to the 29th Psalm, a Psalm in which we are confronted with the being of our God. We come to be confronted with our God. And it's no bad thing for us to dwell on who our God is from time to time. When little is happening in our own personal lives and whenever little is happening within the life of the church, we can become very glum. in our thinking, very gloomy in our disposition. Portions of God's word like this, especially this psalm, are profitable for us in such times because they remind us of who our God is, the majesty of our God, the greatness of our God, the power of our God. And for a few moments, I want us just to consider this psalm together and see what we can learn about our God this evening and I trust that that will be to the encouragement of your heart as it is to mine in these days. I want you to consider first of all the preeminence of God as we find it here in Psalm 29. The preeminence of God. Now before we come to look at any of the specific statements that are found in the psalm that really draw our attention to the preeminence of our God, we see this thought of God's preeminence as we make our way through the psalm. I say that because if you let your eyes just scan down the 11 verses you'll find that there is a name that is repeated over and over again. In fact, it is a name that appears some 18 times within the psalm, and it is the name Lord, or the name Jehovah. And so we find God preeminently presented within the psalm by just the usage of the name Lord. And if you add those pronouns, he and his, also the mention of God in the psalm and also the king in the psalm, you'll find that God is mentioned either directly or indirectly no less than 25 times in this particular psalm that's more than twice in every verse in the 11 verses 25 times there is reference to the lord and that's a good detail to consider because the psalmist david seems now to be a man who has taken up with a with his god so much so that he cannot but help speaking of him God is preeminent in David's thinking and therefore as a consequence he becomes preeminent in David's talk. God is preeminent in his thoughts. and thus he becomes preeminent in his talk. And those who are taken up with God, those who find themselves thinking most about God are the people who will talk most about him. I wonder, is that the case with us? Do we talk about the Lord? Do we love whenever we meet someone who just wants to speak to us about the Lord? That's what we ought to do. The people that we come into contact with should leave our presence being better acquainted with the Lord than when they first came in to our presence. I wonder, is it the case that that is so in our lives? Are people more acquainted with the Lord having spoken to us. You know, here's a good test. Do people avoid us because they know what they're going to hear from us? You know, it's amazing the disappearing acts that can take place, especially if you're a Christian in a place of employment where most of the people are unsaved or you're an individual as a Christian going in to an ungodly place. environment whether that's school or a place of employment it's just amazing the disappearing acts that can take place whenever you appear around the corner there's the christian coming we'll certainly try and avoid them maybe that's happened in the past week you've saw someone they have seen you and You look again and they're nowhere to be seen because they know right well what you're going to speak to them about. You're going to maybe challenge them about the Lord, about their need of Christ, about salvation. And it just seems that they disappear into thin air. They run, as it were, for the hills. It's no bad testimony to have, brethren and sisters. Be an individual that always speaks about the Lord, wants to talk about the Lord. Well here's a man and he comes to speak about the Lord and he seems to refer to him almost two times in every verse if not on a more regular basis throughout the psalm. But the psalmist also comes to present the preeminence of God as he makes his way through the psalm, and especially, I believe, in the opening two verses. And I suppose we could say that we can infer that to be the case, that God is preeminent. We come to infer that from what we find in those opening two verses, because in those verses, David exhorts his readership to give glory and to give worship unto the Lord. Now we know that we only should give glory and worship to the one who is deserving of it. And the one who is deserving of it is the one who is preeminent. He's the one who is above all others. And that is our God. And thus, as David comes to express that we are to give glory to God and that we are to give worship to God, he is really presenting to us the thought, though it be a secondary thought, he's presenting to us the thought that God is preeminent. He is the one to be worshipped. He is the one to be glorified. Now whenever we talk about God's glory, it speaks here about give unto the Lord the glory due to his name. You know, when we speak of God's glory, we can talk about God's intrinsic glory, His essential glory, the glory that belongs to Him and His very nature. Now, we cannot add to that glory. What we do in our worship, we cannot add to God's inherent, His intrinsic. glory his essential glory this glory that he possesses in and of himself but though we cannot ascribe or bring glory or add as it were to god's essential glory we can as it were add to his ascribed glory and we do that by declaring his glory openly to those that we worship with and those that we rub shoulders with from day to day. We are ascribing glory to our God. Now the statement at the end of the verse two brings us to consider the arena in which this glorifying of God is to be done initially. And it is in the public arena of the public place of worship. It says, give on to the Lord the glory due to his name, Worship the Lord and the beauty of holiness and therefore when we come to worship We need to make sure that we're belonging to an assembly Where God is glorified? Not the preacher not the musicians not the worship leader Not any other individual within the assembly, but that the Lord is being glorified and that the Lord himself is being worshipped We must glorify him in our praising We must glorify Him in our praying. We must glorify Him in our preaching. We come to give glory to God when we worship Him in a manner that reflects the glory of His person. And that is why we are to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. This is the way in which God is most glorified. When God's people gather together to worship Him, and then this is the way, this is the manner, this is the nature of our worship, our worship of the Lord is to be in the beauty of holiness. Why is it to be in the beauty of holiness? It is to be in the beauty of holiness because our worship is to be reflective of the one and the character of the one that we come to worship. When we understand that God is holy, then our worship of him is going to be marked by that holiness. And thus, whenever you maybe watch into other places and you see irreverent worship, you see worship that would not be deemed as holy, the problem is that the people within that congregation have not a true understanding of who the God of the Bible is. God is holy, thrice holy. It is his attribute that the seraphim heal and laud and anthem as they fly around the holy throne of God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And therefore our worship is to be a holy worship. It is to be guided by holiness, not irreverence, not worldliness, but holiness. holiness to our worship and in that god is glorified now notice that the psalmist does not say that we are to worship the lord in the fear of holiness you think that should be the way it was stated god is to be feared don't get me wrong but he does not say that we are to worship him in the fear of holiness but the psalmist says we're to worship him in the beauty of holiness and that word beauty it translates to mean a holy Ornament. or, sorry, a holy adornment, a holy adornment. When we come to worship God, we are to be adorned, we're to be clothed, we're to be dressed in the beautiful garments of holiness, holiness marking the internal as much as the external. How often we try to get all of the externals right, and rightly so, that ought to be right, but yet at times the inward is all wrong, We're holding on to our sin, and we're grieving the Holy Spirit. You see, worship should come from a holy heart. And worship should come and proceed from holy lips. And worship should come that is inspired by a holy motivation. What is that holy motivation? To glorify the Lord. This is why we come to God's house. We come to worship Him. We don't come to see everybody else. We thank God that we can have that fellowship with one another, and that's part and parcel, but initially, primarily, preeminently, we come to worship the Lord, and that worship is to be conducted in holiness. God is to be feared in the assembly of his saints. And oh, that there would be a holiness that would mark our worship, oh, for Greece to worship With holy motives and in a holy manner as becometh the saints. Arthur Pink, he wrote these words. Ornate architecture and expensive apparel, God is no delight in. It is the loveliness, he said, of inward purity and outward sanctity which pleases the thrice holy one. Sincerity of heart, fervor of spirit, reverence of demeanor, the exercise of faith, the outgoings of love are some of the elements which comprise the beauty of holiness in our worship. Did you notice in those opening three verses, the statement that is repeated three times? For in those three verses, there is that exhortation, give on to the Lord, give on to the Lord. Give on to the Lord. And we have to ask ourselves the question, why does the psalmist repeat in such a short period of time, why does he repeat that repeated phrase? Why is he inspired by the spirit of God to repeat that phrase three times? Has he got a... Problem with forgetting what he's just written, of course not. The emphasis is placed here because the psalmist, knowing his own heart, and knowing the hearts of his fellow countrymen and women, is fully aware that man is reluctant to give glory to God. Man is backward in giving glory to God. he's reluctant backward and giving glory that is due to the Lord because what we tend to do is that we want to glorify ourselves what we tend to do is that we want to glorify others rather than giving glory to the to the Lord and you can find that in times when People come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, maybe through the preaching ministry of a minister, or through an evangelist, or some other lay individual. You know, people start to glory in the preacher. People start to glory in them, instead of the Lord who did all of the work. But if your theology is right, and you're convinced that salvation is all of the Lord, then you'll have no problem in ascribing all the glory to God. It's the Lord who saves. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. It doesn't belong to a preacher. It doesn't belong to an evangelist. It doesn't belong to a minister or pastor. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. It is his to give. And therefore, when he comes and saves, then all glory is given to the Lord. Oh, let's be careful not to touch the Lord's glory. By ascribing glory to any other person or any other being rather than him, let's give on to the Lord. Give on to the Lord, the glory that's due to his name. And so we come to see the preeminence of the Lord. And we notice secondly, we come to find in this psalm, the focus is now placed on the power of God, the power of God. This attribute of God's power is vividly drawn to our attention by the use of an illustrative object lesson. Some people would say, well, you shouldn't use object lessons. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ used them. A seed. A coin. He used objects. And here we find the psalmist inspired by the Holy Spirit and he employs an object lesson and he employs that object lesson from nature. And the object lesson that he uses is that of a thunderstorm or a tempest. that comes and moves in from the Mediterranean Sea and sweeps over the entire land of Israel. It tracks its way from Lebanon. Lebanon on the northern border of Israel right down to Kedesh. You'll find those names in the psalm. If you glance your eyes down the psalm, you'll find. that this storm, it comes out of the Mediterranean, moves from Lebanon in the north, sweeping down through Jerusalem and right down to the southern border there in Kedesh. And David, he comes in this section of the psalm, it runs from verse 3 to verse 9, he comes to focus on this voice of the Lord. He comes to focus on the voice of God, a voice that according to the verse number four is powerful, a voice that is full of majesty. So powerful is the voice of God that it breaks the cedars like twigs. And it divides the flames of fire, and it shakes the wilderness, and it causes the young hinds or the young deer to give birth prematurely, and it strips back the forest to expose its undergrowth. And in using that object lesson, he says, this is like God's voice. Now I'm sure we've all experienced a thunderstorm sometime in our life. On a balmy summer's evening, you hear in the distance the rumbling, the faint rumblings of thunder. Then the sky, it starts to darken overhead, and the rain, it begins to fall slowly at first, drop, and another drop, and then another drop, and then it's like a deluge of Sheets of rain coming down and soon loud clashes of thunder are heard overhead accompanied by intermittent flashings of lightning. It's a scene that inspires awe and reverence to nature. When we come to see and experience firsthand the power of God in nature. And this is the picture that the psalmist is trying to paint for us. As he draws a parallel between the tempest and the mighty voice of God, as we come to listen to his voice, we're left in awe. We're left in reverence of the voice of God. A reverential fear is cultivated in our lives as we listen to God's voice. You might ask, well, how is God's voice heard today? Well, it's not heard audibly from heaven. Is it not heard in his word? Is this not God's voice to us today? God speaking to us. And as we hear his voice through his word, how should we respond? Well, we should respond as we find there in Psalm or Isaiah 66 in the verse two, there should be a trembling at God's word. It's like the voice of thunder. The voice of God speaking in to our souls. And we should tremble at God's voice. We should receive it as if God is directly speaking the words to us. We should be in awe of it. We should be awed by it. To think of the fact that the God of heaven is speaking to me. That he's communicating to me. I believe that we can draw parallels between the effects of God's voice in nature and the effects of God's voice as it's found in the word within our own lives. Let me explain what I mean. In effect, God's powerful and majestic voice, we're told that it breaks. Verse five, the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. I'm informed I think it was Wikipedia. I'm informed that a cedar of Lebanon can reach some 40 meters in height, that's 130 feet. And it can have trunks that are as broad as 2.5 meters, eight feet, five, two inches in diameter. Now you're not chopping that tree down in a few minutes. If you find yourself at a tree trunk that is 2.5 meters in diameter, I'm suggesting that it's probably the breadth of this pulpit. And God says that by his voice, he breaks them. He breaks them like toothpicks with his voice. It's pictorial, but this is the power that is in God's voice. And if this is the power that is in God's voice, what is the power of his full being? The power of God. He breaks. This voice, it breaks the cedars. These, as it were, insurmountable, these unbreakable living beings, he comes and with his voice, he breaks them in a moment of time. Now you think about what we read in the book of Jeremiah. concerning the word of God, the written word of God I now speak of. Because in Jeremiah 23 verse 29 we read, is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. And so just as God's voice breaks the cedars, And God's Word, as it were, breaks the cedars in the natural world, so His voice, so His Word, like a hammer is said, to break the rock in pieces, because that's what the Word of God does. That's what the Word of God should be doing. The Word of God should be breaking us. It should be used by the Spirit of God to break us. Us who are so stubborn. Us who are so rebellious. Us who are so immovable as believers, the word of God should be breaking us down, breaking us. It broke our hearts, did it not, when we first heard it preached? That night we came to faith in Christ, is that not what the word did? It broke your will, it broke into your heart, it broke into your life. All the excuses were gone, and you came to faith in Christ, and this is what it should be continually doing in our hearts. It should be breaking the hearts of God's people. Oh, for more of that among us in these days. We hear the word of God, we're broken by it. Oh, that the sinner would be broken by it, that the believer would be broken by it. One preacher said the word is the instrument which he always uses and none other, wielding it like a hammer to smite the human heart. Oh, that we would feel the strikes of the hammer of God's word in these old hard hearts of ours as we read the word and as we hear it preached. God break my heart as I hear the word preached. As I listen to the gospel, break my heart. As I consider my dying savior and the atoning sacrifice, and as I stand and view the cross, Lord, break my heart again. Break it. God's powerful, majestic voice, it does something else. Notice it moves. It moves, verse six, he maketh them also to skip Like a calf. Speaking of these cedars again, Lebanon and Sirion, like a young unicorn. When God utters his voice, those deep-rooted cedars of Lebanon are said to skip like a calf. In other words, they're moved. They're moved by it. They leap in the same way as a calf leaps when it's put out for grass, and some of you farmers know what that's like. You're probably hoping that'll happen very soon. Sadly, the weather just isn't convenient at the time, but whenever you put young heifers out in the field, you need to be making sure that you're standing beside the barbed wire fence, that they're not going to skip over the top of it. You should see them. Sciplic hands leaping up into the air. They're moved at the thought of it, and such is the picture here. Ah, there's movement here. There's a moving. And there's times whenever we come to listen to the word of God, there's times whenever we come to read of the word of God, and our hearts leap with joy. God spoke to me. God dealt with me. God challenged me, God comforted me, God encouraged me. Woe for more of that among us as the people of God. The heart leaping for joy as the word of God is read and as the scriptures are preached. Something else that God's word does, God's powerful and majestic voice, it divides. Verse seven, the voice of the Lord divided the flames of fire. The illusion here is undoubtedly to lightning. The image is either that it seems to be cut out or cut into tongues or streaks, or more probably that the clouds seem to be cut or hewn so that they make opening or a path for the lightning. And so we find a dividing, a dividing taking place as the voice of God is spoken, as the word of God is being spoken, there is a dividing. Do not read of that in Hebrews 4, verse 12, for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. As we read the word of God, as we sit under its preaching, it should lead to a severing off in our lives when it comes to sin. And oh, for more of that in our lives, a putting away of sin will always benefit in our Christian lives. It divides the word as it goes forth. It divides us from the world and from sin and from all that is ungodly. There's a dividing line. Oh, that God would help us to heed the word Not only that, God's powerful majestic voice, it shakes. Verse eight, the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kedesh. Aye, and we need a good shake. We need a good shake from time to time to wake us out of our slumber and our sleep as Christians. And maybe you've left the house of God some Sunday or some Wednesday night and the feathers are ruffled. You went home in rage. The minister, listen, God is shaking you up. He's trying to get your attention. Don't ship the messenger. Don't be criticizing him at the door of the church or in your car or on the way home. God's trying to shake you. Getting you out of your old dead sleep and my dead sleep and my apathy. And oh, for more of that among us, when God shakes the people of God. Heed the counsel. Submit to whatever he says to you. Let him stir you up. greater obedience and greater zeal for God as you listen to the word of God. Something else the word of God does, the voice of God, it discovers the voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve and discovereth the forest. So afraid were the hinds, these are the young deer, but the noise of the thunder that the period of calving was often hastened on and it was frequently premature when the storm arose and so it is with God's voice. Not only that, but he discovereth the forest. I can imagine that forest, the gale blowing through it, as it were a hurricane or a cyclone blowing through it. Those little, those large cedar trees, they fold back, they part, they bend over. And all that is underneath and all that is hidden is now discovered. And is that not what happens when the word of God is preached? God speaks into our hearts and he strips us all back and he shows us where we are. He reveals the true nature of our hearts, where we are really with God and with our fellow man. The dividing off at the forest is discovered, he exposes our hearts and oh for more of that in our lives. that we're discovered, that we're exposed for who we are. God, by his voice, he exposes our self-centeredness. He exposes our ungodly sensuality. He discovers our arrogance. He discovers our untamed desires, how our hearts are discovered and how they're exposed when we come to pick up the word of God. It's like it penetrates into the dark recesses of our hearts. so we see ourselves for what we really are and oh for more of that to discover more about ourselves and who we really are and where we really are with God. Is it then any wonder in light of such a demonstration of God's power the psalmist closes the section with the words at the end of verse number nine in his temple that doth everyone stink of his glory. Oh for a day of power that God's people start to speak of God's glory again. And so we have God preeminent. We have God's power. Two quick final thoughts, and they are very quick. We see the position of God within the psalm, verse 10. The Lord sitteth upon the flood. Yea, the Lord sitteth king forever. The Lord is no constitutional monarch, a king that has no real power. No executive power simply acts like a figurehead for a nation. No, God's not a constitutional monarch. He is an absolute monarch. And here we find him, and where is he sitting? He's sitting in calm serenity upon the flood. He's presiding over it. Notice what it says. Now remember, the picture is that of the storm and the rain that comes as a result of that storm. And now it says, the Lord sitteth upon the flood. Brother, sister, he's above the storm. Your storm. Whatever it be tonight, he's above the storm and what's he doing? He's not ruffled by it. He's not perturbed by it. He's not perplexed by it. But he's presiding over it. He's ruling over it as king. Ruling over it as king. And that's why, beloved, when we pass through the waters, He's with us. And when we pass through the waters and through the rivers, they'll not overflow us because he is above the storm and he is above the flood. He sits as king of the flood and from that governing position, he will not be moved. Did you notice at the end of the verse 10 that it tells us that the Lord said of king, forever. Forever upon the flood, that's where he is tonight. The flood that's come into our land and our nation and into the world. He's sitting keen above the flood and he'll be king forever. Forever. Do not think that someone will remove him. Do not think that circumstances will cause him to vacate the throne. But he will be king forever. His reign will never come to an end. Regardless of the storm, he will continue to rule and reign. And then note the provision of God, the final verse. God provides two essential things for the day of storm. He provides strength and he provides, and I'll put it like this, serenity. For the word is peace here, it's peace in the verse. The Lord will give strength onto his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace. And is that not what you need whenever you're going through a life storm? These are the two things we need. We need strength and we need serenity, we need peace. Henry Law wrote, amid all storms of nature now and troubles within, In the final crash of worlds, God's people are undismayed. Strength for all trials is their portion. His blessing which conveys all joy is on them. Christ's legacy is peace. Peace I leave with you. My peace give I unto you. Christian, lean on God's strength. Rest in his peace for soon. Maybe sooner than we imagine. All of life's storms will be over. And then forever we'll be with the Lord. In this psalm we come to read about the preeminence of God, the power of God, the position of God, and the provision of God. May your eyes be lifted to him tonight. And may the word of him to the encouragement and to the skipping, leaping up of your heart, even in these days. Amen. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our gracious father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee for thy voice. Voice that is full of majesty, a voice that is full of power. Oh God, speak to us. Cause these things to occur, these effects to occur in our lives. We cry to Thee, Lord, break us. Lord, melt us, as it were. Divide us. Discover us, Lord. Cause our hearts to be moved as we listen to the word of God. May we not sit in idleness. Oh, help us, we pray. May we do that which God has told us to do, even if it is O God, to the humbling of ourselves, taking as it were, O God, the lower place. Help us to do all, Lord, that thou would have us to do. Now bless us as we continue. Lord, in this meeting we pray and help us as we seek the Lord. We pray this in Jesus' precious name.