Amen. All right, continuing our study in Psalms, entitled Psalms and Hymns and Work for Worship and Praise, Psalms 1 through 72 for this quarter. Our aim for the quarter is that we'll learn that seeing Psalms and worship and praise will help us through the good and the bad times. This is Lesson 5, The Powerful Voice of God, the text of Psalms 25-30, and the focus is on Chapter 29. Key verse is Verse 4 of Chapter 29, The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The application of today's lesson is that we will each commit to listening to God's voice and then giving Him glory and praise for All things. All right, a little bit of context for this lesson today. Psalm 29 is a hymn of praise unto the Lord. King David witnessed an awesome thunderstorm moving across the land of the Canaanites and attributed it to the power and sovereignty of God. These earlier Canaanite nations who possessed the promised land before God helped the Israelites take over, before he gave it to them as their promised land, the earlier Canaanite nations that lived there sang praises to Baal, who was their god, who was their god of the storm. because he was called Air Storm God because he supposedly caused and controlled the storm. But Nathan knew better than that. He knew who was really in control of the weather. He probably wrote this psalm to contrast the truth with those pagan songs, because he knew God alone was the creator and the sustainer of the universe. God could cause a storm, he could calm the storm. So, whether we're watching an approaching storm, as this lesson will depict David doing, or enjoying a peaceful Sunday afternoon, sunny afternoon, or participating in a worship service like we are right now. There are reasons all around us to motivate us, praise God. So the opening question, can you describe a time when you were moved to worship God by the things you saw or otherwise experienced? Anyone? Alright, by the time we get through this lesson, it'll help you with some tools and ways to be looking for God's moving in our lives and then to caused us to worship Him. So, our lesson outline, the voice of the Lord is upon many waters. Verses 1-3, the voice of the Lord is powerful. Verses 4-9, in the voice of the Lord blesses His people. So, the voice of the Lord is upon many waters. I'm going to read just the first phrase out of Psalm, out of verse 1. Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty. Mighty here is literally the sons of the mighty, mighty, or really it's God's angels, God's mighty angels. So I'm going to read verses 1 and 2 in their entirety. and then we'll come back and talk about them. Verse one says, given to the Lord that we might give unto the Lord glory and strength, or power. Given to the Lord the glory due unto his name, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. So this passage, verses one and two, is climactic. It builds up to a climax. David repeats, the phrase, given to the Lord, three times here with slight changes to the words that follow that phrase. First he says, given to the Lord, then given to the Lord, glory and strength, and then given to the Lord, the glory given to his name. And then the final part of verse two, he expands on that idea until this final line, which calls for worship in the beauty of holiness. So, the angels were told to give God the credit for His glory and for His power. But, like the end of verse 2 says, that praise should be accompanied by holiness. Using the imagery from Israel's solemn assembly, For the Lord was holy. I'm going to read a couple of verses here. In Leviticus 11 and 45, chapter 11 has to do with clean and unclean animals, but this whole area of Leviticus is talking about the setting up of the temple and all the activities that will happen there. Leviticus 11.45 says, For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. Then Peter quotes this verse over in the New Testament. 1 Peter 1.15-16 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. So he quotes Leviticus 11, 44 or 45. I'm gonna skip verse three and come back to it here. So how can you give glory to God? What are some ways you can give glory to God? Follow what He tells you to do. Okay. All that He tells you to do. Be obedient to His commands. All right? That's kind of a... that covers everything, really, doesn't it? Any specific things? Read and study the Bible. Okay. Read and study the Bible. Know who God is, who Christ is, what He's done, all that goes with it. Okay. Pray. Be fruitful, spiritually. I'm sure we can just go on and on and on, different things that we're to do to live for Christ. It was interesting in your student guide, the writer gives an illustration And he said he knew a preacher who described giving glory to God by saying that, here's his definition, when we walk into a room, the opinion of God goes up. Think about that for a moment. When we walk into the room, this is, we are giving glory to God. If we walk into a room and the opinion of God in that room goes up, That was really good. That's something you can put in your Bible and look back at often as kind of a check for yourself. How are we doing in this area? All right, we'll go back to verse 3. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. So, the middle phrase here has to do with, it says, the God of glory thundereth. And that's not unusual, but we see that in other places where the voice of the Lord is often associated with thunder in the Bible. I'll just read a couple of passages. Job 37, four and five. says this, after it, a voice roars, he thunders with the voice of his excellency, and he will not stay then when his voice is heard. God thunders, verse five, God thunders marvelously with his voice. Great things doeth he which we cannot comprehend. So, read one other, Psalm 18 and verse, 13. The Bible says, So that's just two verses that associate thunder with the voice of God. David here in this verse calls it the voice of many waters, upon many waters, which indicates to us that the Lord's voice is loud and it's far-reaching. And we know when a thunder, or any other sound for that matter, hits the water, it's reflected and it reverberates. Sometimes, thunder, we hear one clap, then lightning, and then it's over. But other times, it's like a rumbling. It just goes, seems like it's going on and on. And that's when it's reverberating off of some solid object, whether it be water or mountains or buildings or whatever. And this too speaks of the power and authority of God's voice. What God says is true for all people all over the world. God is not just the God of Jews or the God of Americans, He's the God of everyone. And what He commands in the Bible is to be obeyed by everyone. The second point is, the voice of the Lord is powerful. This is the majority of this lesson. In these verses, actually starting back in verse 3, where it uses that phrase, the voice of the Lord, there are six descriptions of the voice of the Lord in which the thunderstorm is an emblem. In verse 3, David attributed the rise of the storm over the mighty waters, which would be the Mediterranean Sea. David is looking out over the Mediterranean Sea as the storm approaches. And David attributes the rise of the storm to the voice of the Lord. Verse 4 says, The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. Though, poetry, there's a lot of poetic language, I guess you'd call it, or something means something else, or something is used to represent as a symbol of something else. And just like the voice may be a poetic designation of thunder, It probably also was meant to convey that he who created by his word, go back to Genesis 1, chapter 1, also controls nature by his word. So what we're seeing here are not a stretch as far as whether to believe that a word and to understand it or not, but he draws this parallel. The One who created by His Word, the heavens and the earth and all that in them is, also controls nature by His Word. So that a thunderstorm evidences God's power. In Genesis 1-3 God said, let there be light, and there was light. We might paraphrase that and say, in this lesson, God said that there'll be a storm, and there was a storm in all different parts of it. And David saw God through the demonstration of his power in a thunderstorm. Now, as an overview, I'm just gonna run through the path of this storm. So I said, David is watching it come from out of sea, the Mediterranean Sea, eastward toward land. And it hits landfall in Lebanon, in the northern part, in the mountains of Lebanon, and then it turns south to sweep down through Israel. So let's look at this, what happens on this path. Verse 5 says, The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. So as David witnessed the voice of the Lord at the height of this storm, he says it moves inland and destroys the cedars of Lebanon. Now we have in our mind a picture of what a cedar tree is in the United States. And out west there may be some bigger ones. I'm not used to big cedar trees though. But it's a different story in Lebanon. Cedar trees are much larger. Some have been known to grow to 120 feet high and 30 feet in circumference, which would be about 10 foot in diameter. I have an oak tree, or I don't have an oak tree. The guy who lives behind me has an oak tree, which is just across the property line, but it's three foot in diameter. And I look up at some of those limbs that were starting to hang over my house, and I'm thinking, The tree guys that were cutting down a tree for me said, you don't have to worry about that one, that's another tree. It's not coming down, but it's getting some good sized limbs that are over my house. But that's a three foot diameter tree. We're talking about 10 foot, nine and a half, 10 foot here. Lebanon, as big as they were, would be a really powerful voice, and it was, the voice of God. Verse 6, He maketh them also to skip like a calf, Lebanon and Syria like a young unicorn. So Lebanon and Sirion are mountains in Lebanon. Mount Lebanon runs down more or less the center of the nation, the country of Lebanon. And Sirion, which is what we know of as Mount Hermon, runs down and is basically the border between Syria and Lebanon. And both of those mountain ranges run from southwest to northeast, so they're at an angle, but they're parallel. And so that's the two mountain ranges that he's talking about. And at God's voice, this verse says, these massive mountains jump like running animals and they rupture and rise as if they were calves or a young ox jumping in the air. Now, mountains rupturing sounds more like an earthquake, you know, but earthquakes and storms sometimes go together. But mountains running and dancing moving around, jumping in the air. And that's what God's power does to these mountains in this storm. Verse 7 says, The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of the fire. Many times with Maybe every time with thunder you get lightning, and lightning sometimes leads to fires. And that's what he's describing here. Lightning divides flames and fire. Fire starts here, another fire starts there, as a result of lightning striking. So the voice of the Lord breaks out of the clouds and makes way for lightnings, which are suddenly dispersed over the face of the earth, and fires break out. Verse 8. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. So the voice of the Lord shakes not only mountains but also the desert or the wilderness of Kadish in Syria. Kadish was a town about 75 miles north of Damascus, Syria, so north of Israel. And there's another view on this that the Kadish they're talking about is which would go well if the storm is turning and going south through Israel, that would make sense, but from what I've found from reading, that's not the majority view. and the animals in this eastern wilderness. Verse 9, first part of verse 9 says, Voice of the Lord, make of the hinds to calve, and discovereth, or strips, the forest. Hines are female deer, and evidently the shock of this loud thunder makes the deer go into labor prematurely due to fear. And then discovering the forest, or stripping the forest, evidently the same shock makes the trees to shake, which then strips them bare of their leaves. So if we summarize this passage up to this point, the Lord's voice has the power to shatter great trees, the cedar trees of Lebanon, to uproot mountains out of Mount Lebanon and Mount Urm, to shake deserts or wildernesses, to strip forests, and to strike terror into all living things. And what's the people's response? Verse 9, the second half, and it looks like it clipped off a last phrase in verse 9. It says, And in his temple So the faithful followers are worshiping in the temple in Jerusalem, they see this awesome power of the storm, and from it they know the voice of the Lord is even more powerful and even more majestic. So their response is one word, glory or praise, praise to God. What's the greatest expression of God's power to you? In your mind, what is the greatest expression of God's power that you've seen? Creation. Okay. Seen through God's face, right? Okay. Creation. And if you've been in a bad storm, really bad storm, I don't know what they had around in Addiston, but please, I haven't heard raining that hard for a while, like we got yesterday. But, you ever been in a storm where your life was threatened, or you felt like your life was threatened? And yet he was figured that would be definitely an instance of God's power. All right, let's look at this last one. Look at this last point. The voice of the Lord blesses his people. Verse 10 first. It says, The Lord sitteth upon the flood, yea, the Lord sitteth king forever. So this is Noah's flood he's talking about here. And God's sitting on a river. Of course you remember God destroying the world with the flood. But then he gave us a rainbow as a promise that he would not destroy the world again with water. And so to me, sitting on the flood is that promise that he's not going to destroy the world again by flood. He's holding it down. He's keeping it from happening. He's not allowing it to happen. Then he goes on, the Lord saith, King forever. Unlike all the human kings of history, you can go in the Old Testament and look at all the kings of Israel and Judah, they all reigned for so many years and died. Unlike all these human kings, the Lord's kingship never ends. He's King of kings and Lord of lords. It's not what he will be when he returns, it's what he is right now, because he sits at the right hand of God. He's King and he's Lord now. And although we may think this world is out of control, it is not. God's sovereign plan and the right one's schedule and the outcome is already been written. He knows what it is. So the Lord is King forever and He is in complete control. Verse 11. The Lord will give strength to His people. The Lord will bless His people with peace. As we read that verse, it's like if you're reading verses 4 through 9, all these things that David sees happening through this storm. And then he gets to this verse, which is a calming verse. There's quite a contrast here between what we've been reading and now these last two verses, especially with verse 11. It might seem kind of like a mundane ending, but God's trying to draw a contrast. God is drawing a contrast. David is drawing a contrast here between that storm and God's great power in another way. Find the same God whose voice reverberates over the seas, who can wipe out an entire forest, who shakes the mountains and the wilderness, who can strike with powerful lightning bolts, who controls the animal kingdom and the human race. It's the same God, verse 11 says, who gives strength to his people and blesses them with peace. Your study guide makes a really good point here, at this point. The writer says, too often we undervalue the power of God in our lives. He shifts and shapes our lives every day, and often hindsight is the only way we see the great power of God at work in our lives. I think that's very true. I went through the Exterminating God series, and there's one point about halfway through, or it's toward the beginning, where the exercise I gave you to do is go back through and create your spiritual heritage. Go back through your life and make a list of all the people who have influenced your life spiritually. And that's a really good exercise, because it's hindsight, again. It's hindsight that's better than no sight. I mean, if you look and see, it makes you thankful that God brought all those people into your life to point you and guide you. But the good part about doing that exercise is, hopefully, as I go forward, I can see God's hand molding and shaping be when it's happening rather than looking back on it. But looking back on it is a good start. So what's our application? What do we do with this lesson? How do we apply it? Psalm 29 is a reminder that we should praise the Lord. Those people in the temple said, glory, glory to God. We need to take time every day to reflect on how the Lord has protected us and provided for our needs. We can always find reasons to praise God. Sometimes we just have to sit long enough, sit still long enough, and think. clear up everything else that's going on in our world out of our mind to just focus on God and what He's doing. Lastly, we have this promise in the Psalm. It's kind of another way of restating what I said before. We have this promise that the eternal King, who can control nature, which most of our lesson had to do with, is also strong enough to calm and empower his people. God's power is shown in a different way. So, really two questions here. One goes to point number three in our lesson. How has our powerful God blessed you and given you peace? Anyone have a thought on that? Because I know where I'll be when I take that turn. It's giving you peace of God. He's powerful. He's the only one who can do that. He's the only one that could send his son to die for our sins. Man, another man couldn't do it. But Christ could, because he's perfect. He has no sin of his own. And then the last one. I'll let you think on this one and take home a question. How can you praise the Lord every day of this week? Think about that. Take maybe a few minutes each day and think over your events of the day and where God did things that you can praise him for. All right, we'll close here. Father, thank you for the lesson today. Thank you for showing us, once again, the power that you have. And thank you for power to be shown in our lives and for us to be mindful of that and looking for how you're working. service, we pray for the worship service coming up, pray that you hear your name will be lifted up in praise, you know, our song service, through the words that are said, through the message, and that you will get the credit that you deserve. In Jesus' name, amen.