Psalms Lesson 21

Psalm 33:1-3

We move to the third category of Psalms, the individual descriptive praise and as we do this I’d like to review just briefly the lessons that we can say we’ve learned, or at least been exposed to, in this category. To refresh your mind, the four lessons that we learned from the first category, the individual lament Psalms, were as follows: the first one was that God reacts to us in a personal way, and we got that from the first category because we noticed how God would react in anger and He would react as a person would react, in other words, it was definitely God was alive and operating at the other end of the line. The second lesson that we learned was that in praying there’s such a thing as claiming God’s glory, in other words, we said was “Jew-ing” God by holding God up to His promises and saying if He didn’t answer the petition then His glory was defective, rather a bold form of prayer but nevertheless one that occurred all the time in the Psalms. The third lesson we learned from the first category was that there was a tremendous stress on God’s righteousness and justice. And the fourth lesson that we learned was that there was judgment upon evil doers because they persecute the righteous ones.

Now in the declarative praise Psalms, what would be some lessons that you have seen in this type, spiritual principles that you see over and over again operating. [someone says something] All right, that praise is a response to historic acts of deliverance. Now this is a long, long way away from the usual rude business that occurs in a lot of fundamentalist circles. And not only is it bad manners to interrupt somebody’s train of thought when they’re trying to speak by saying some ridiculous thing but also it is a very unscriptural concept of praising God. What do you notice in the Psalms? When God is praised what is happening? It’s very simple, if you’re going to praise God, praise Him biblically. And what happens when God is praised in the Psalms. Well, specific historic events are related, in other words, this declarative praise is a response to something that God has done in space and time.

Turn to Psalm 30:4 where we see this principle operating. Remember the last part of verse 4, how I made a point about one of the words there, where it says “Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.” Notice it doesn’t say give thanks at the concept of His holiness, or the doctrine of His holiness, precious though that may be. The Psalm goes back further to the remembrance of His holiness. Now you can’t remember something that wasn’t a past historic event. And so therefore this focuses emphasis on the fact that praise is related to what God has done in history and if you do not know history, you cannot praise God. It’s very simple, if you do not history then you cannot praise God; it’s that simple.

What’s the second lesson? Any other lessons that you’ve seen in this kind of Psalm. [someone says something] Okay, this would be the Psalmist is learning out of this historic revelation; in other words, something is learned from this thing, and this is why, if you have noticed, in this particular Psalm category, the declarative praise Psalms, what was it that some of them drifted off into? We came to the end and some of them would end: we vow to praise God always, forever, etc. That was one ending. But remember we had one or two of these declarative praise Psalms that kind of drifted at the end off into what kind of literature? Instruction, or wisdom literature. Now that drift shows you then that with praise, or wrapped up in praise, is understanding, heightened understanding, is that when the Psalmist turns around to thank God for what has happened he is also turning around with heightened understanding of the nature and actions of God Himself. And he derives this, not because he sits in an ivory tower contemplating infinity, this is not a philosophic pursuit, this is something that happens to him in history and as a result of this, his knowledge is heightened.

And some illustrations of this, Psalm 32:8, that was one of those Psalms that drifted off into instruction literature, remember how David related in Psalm 32 how God had delivered him from carnality. And then what does he do in verse 8, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that you should go.” And then verse 9, very excellent, “Be not as the horse, or like the ass, who has no understanding,” see, that’s a picture of a carnal believer; and why, because his “mouth must be held in with bit and bridle,” what he’s saying is that God is going to move you along the road but it’s far easier to go if He doesn’t have to just drag you; that hurts, and God will do that, but it’s far better that you just go of your own volition. And it’s a lot easier on you, and probably if we could talk in those terms it’s easier on God too. So that’s the instructional lesson. So the second lesson I think we derive from the declarative praise Psalms is that with the praise comes heightened understanding or wisdom.

A third lesson that we have is that the proper response to God’s saving work is praise before others. Turn to Psalm 30:9 where he’s pleading that God would deliver him because he says, “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare Thy truth.” Verse 12, notice why has God delivered him, “To the end that my glory” which is his soul, “may sing praise to Thee, and not be silent.” And that third lesson of the declarative praise is that what can we do in response to what God has done? Praise Him before men in the Biblical sense. Do you realize that right here you have the missionary mandate. You don’t have to wait till the great commission; that was given to the Church Age and it’s tailored to the Church Age but the concept of spreading the Word before men is there in the Old Testament also and here it is: praise is the guts of missions because what are missions, Biblically speaking, a relation or narration of the historic words and works of God, and the motive behind missions is praise.

Turn to Psalm 116, remember that there this comes out quite clearly in verse 12, what can the believer do because God gives him a present, so to speak; God delivers. It’s very interesting that sometimes it’s awful hard to accept grace and you automatically want to do something in response to somebody that’s done something for you. And this comes up quite often in my life as a pastor, people give me things and I wonder what I do, and of course my response is when somebody graces us with some gift or something is the only thing that I can do, so to speak, in response is to be a better as far as I’m personally concerned, study harder, teach the Word better. Now the believer’s normal response to what God has done for us is given here, and the question comes up in verse 12, “What shall I render unto the LORD for all His benefits toward me?” What is going to be my response, what do I do now. God’s graced me, now what do I do. And what does he do, “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD. [14] I will pay my vows” which is the public praise of God. That’s what you do. So the proper response to grace is praise. And that would involve some details and works, yes, but that is the proper response.

Then I think a fourth lesson that we can say we’ve seen in the declarative praise Psalms, and it’s here in Psalm 116, is that emotions are part of the response but only after the act is firmly identified as an act of God. Now watch it, there are two things about this. There is an emotional response to what God has done, where people, we have emotions, there’s nothing wrong with emotions but notice, in every case the emotional release or response happens after the psalmist is clear that it’s the work of God. So the knowledge precedes the emotion. There’s nothing wrong with emotion but the knowledge has to be there to control it and to give them a framework to operate in. For example, in Psalm 116, notice the emotional response in verse 15, this is an exclamation in Hebrew, it’s a very emotional sentence, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.” And then the admiration and the wonder in verse 16, “O LORD, truly I am Thy servant; I Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds.” That’s an exclamation of wonderment and emotional happiness at what God has done. He’s saying look what’s happened to me, I’m a servant of the Lord, I’m the son of His handmaid, He’s released my bonds. And there’s a source of an emotional response to God here, nothing wrong with the emotional response, it’s just that it is framed in a doctrinal setting.

Turn back to Psalm 34:8 and you’ll see the emotional response. Here’s where the emotions do enter into the worship. What is he saying in Psalm 34:8, it’s an exhortation but it’s an emotional response also. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him. [9] O fear the LORD, ye saints; for there is no want in them that fear Him.” There’s an emotional carrying on here. So the fourth thing that I learned from the declarative praise Psalms is that there is an emotional response within the framework established by the doctrine and the Word.

Now we come to the next category of Psalms which will be the individual descriptive praise; we have covered the individual lament, we have covered the individual declarative praise, and now we come to the individual descriptive praise. All are individual; this is the last category of the individual. After we finish this category we go over to what is called the national Psalms; this is where the nation as a group praise. But so far we’ve dealt only with individual, the lament Psalm emphasizes the problem; the declarative praise Psalm emphasizes the answer.

Now we have a five-fold progression in these Psalm categories that to me is quite interesting, and here’s the way it starts. The first one is the lament; at the first step in the logical progression we view the situation in a fallen world. So the emphasis in the first step is always on the men. The second step or progression after the lament, what happens, just kind of putting the two Psalm categories you know together and thinking through the chronological sequence of things, after the psalmist laments about his situation what is the next major thing to happen. I’m presuming now in the lament he’s already asking God. What is the next thing that happens, after he laments and asks God about the situation, what’s the next major thing to happen. [somebody says something] All right, between the thanking and the lamenting, what else; the praise can’t come until what happens. You have to have an answer, right. So the second thing is that we have a historic, a historical revelation in deliverance. I just want you to notice these five parts that we’re picking up here in the Psalms and you notice how these five parts depict history. In other words, this five-fold cycle repeats itself both in the structure of the Bible itself and in the structure of our personal lives, and the structure of the Psalms too. So the second thing is that there’s a historic revelation by God’s words and works in deliverance. That’s the second thing that happens in this sequence.

Third, after that then there is declarative praise in which we have a thankful response to point two. That’s the response to point two. First we have the lament, then we have the historic revelation of God in a delivering situation, and then we have the declarative praise and the declarative praise begins to shade off into wisdom and you see the development of the wisdom sections which we just mentioned. You have a heightened wisdom as a result of this. So you see how this chronologically operates. You go from a jam, God rescues you from a jam, you’re thankful to Him and after thinking about what He has done your wisdom about what God is and how He works is heightened; it’s heightened because now you have seen God work in a situation that you can observe. And now you know something more about God than you knew before. Furthermore, it’s been personal, it’s been experiential and so therefore it’s not just academic knowledge but it’s chokmah, it’s wisdom.

Then finally we come to the fifth step; [can’t understand word] the step of wisdom, we now have the last and final step which is descriptive praise. Here’s where it all comes together. The descriptive praise is the highest link in this chain; the descriptive praise is the response to the heightened understanding of point 4. So whereas the declarative praise was a response to the specific deliverance, the descriptive praise is a response to what has been finally deduced about God and who He is and how He works and what kind of a God He’s like and what He does in history, what His purposes are, what His plans are, and now because of all this, now I give praise to God on a higher plain than just His declarative praise. The declarative praise was rooted to a specific, it was rooted to a point event, it was rooted to some specific thing in history. The descriptive praise backs away and gets a panoramic view of God Himself. And so this becomes the highest and most mature praise in all of God’s Word.

Now there’s a parallel of sorts to the idea of Christ in the heart; we start out with positive volition and here you might compare this to the lament in the sense that here’s the psalmist, he’s in a mess, all he’s got is positive volition; that’s all he’s got. Then we have the second step of Christ in the heart, which is the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit which in our generation is illumination, not revelation, but would correspond in the Old Testament to revelation, because the psalmist was in the middle of a situation God delivered, and the deliverance equals revelation or new light. So there was a heightened illumination, a revelation to the psalmist and out of this… in our corresponding thing we have the divine viewpoint framework, one of which things is the faith technique, exercising prayer, etc. and here you have declarative praise where you see the basic framework of the thing and you respond to it; that’s declarative praise.

Then we said the next step in Christ in the heart is a real encounter with God’s love because now you understand the big thing, and here the love in this step is tied in Ephesians with understanding the height, the length, the depth, and the breadth of the body. Well, the Old Testament didn’t have the body, but they had the wisdom of God and so there’s a rough correspondence, not exact, but there’s a rough correspondence with the wisdom [can’t understand word], that here because of the wisdom I’m getting more and more and more of this thing, it’s beginning to fit together more, and then finally the fulfillment step which is a very direct comparison here with descriptive praise. Why do I say that? Because in Ephesians 4 it talks about that all of us may be filled with the pleroma or the fullness of God. And when it says this it’s talking about the ultimate in sanctification, the final stage in sanctification.

If you turn with me to Revelation 4 and we look at the Church, the body, in the closing moments of history, after the body has suffered, after it’s gone through hell on earth, after it’s suffered torture and persecution, the body of believers responds before the throne of the Father, and when the body responds to the Father on the throne, what does the body do, Rev. 5:9, “And they sang a new song,” and they said, “You are worthy to take the book, to open the seals thereof,” that is not declarative praise, that’s descriptive praise. Why? Because declarative praise would root it to one or two point events. But the phrase, “Thou art worthy” is a total panoramic view of all of history that has gone before, summing up all the incidents of thousands and thousands and thousands of times that God has reached down and delivered, reached down and delivered, and delivered and delivered and delivered and saved and saved and saved and saved, putting all those things together we come up with this picture of God, “Worthy art Thou,” and that is the final stage in history, when the believers convinced to the guts of their very soul, there’s no more doubt, in spite of all the suffering, in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of all the sin, all of this will have worked itself around to the point there will be no doubt, there will be no dark areas in the human heart of doubt, everything will be brought into the light, and then the believers respond in fantastic chorus, “Worthy art Thou to be praised.” Now that is the final stage.

Now I take you through this because the category of Psalms that we are now about to study are the highest and most mature of all the praises in the Old Testament. So let’s turn to the first one of the series, Psalm 33. Those of you who remember when we went over to the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-11, remember when I went there I said that was a descriptive praise psalm, it was a high form of praise, now you can understand why it took Hannah some years after her problem, it was two years before that woman could come to this level of maturity in her praise. Two years from down in the dumps when she was competing with her handmaid, with the other wives in the polygamous situation; she wanted a baby just to compete with the other women and remember God turns her request, He answered her request and gave her grace upon grace, because the baby that she had was the first prophet in the series of prophets for the kingdom; he would be the man who would deliver, he would be the man who would set up the Messiah of Israel.

So you remember, Hannah, two years after that she comes and she turns Samuel over to the priest and when she does, either she sings the song or she has somebody sing it for her, but Hannah has composed a song and the song is the first 11 verses of 1 Samuel 2, but it’s written in the style of the descriptive praise Psalm, and that tell us that Hannah did not just write that psalm because of the one prayer answer that she had; had she written that Psalm in 1 Samuel 2:1-11 over just the fact that she had a baby, she would have written it in a declarative form. But she doesn’t write it in a declarative form; Hannah writes her psalm in a descriptive praise form, which means, then, that this woman has two years of thinking about the fact of her baby, about the fact that God answered the prayer, of connecting it with the history of Israel and getting it all together, and then she comes and she offers her child and then she offers [can’t understand word/s].

1 Samuel 2:1-11 then actually is a revelation of the depth of the maturity of Hannah by that point. She was a very mature believer at that point. She’s got it all together and probably no one equaled Hannah’s insight into Israel’s history until Samuel himself, for a generation there was no insight like that woman had into the history of it. But it shows you that in two years a believer can move from a position of absolute chaos in the soul over to a fantastic witness. But there it gives you a time factor and this is why I tell you, you do not grow overnight in the Christian life. That is unusually fast, for a woman to move from where Hannah was and in two years be able to do what she did; that is unusual. So that should give you an idea of the time involved.

Now let’s look at Psalm 33, let me show you the parts of a descriptive praise Psalm so we can take this apart like we did the early ones. Fortunately this particular type of Psalm is a little bit easier than the declarative praise. The laments are easy and the descriptive praise is easy. It basically has three parts; it has the call to praise, which will be spotted by imperatives, commands to praise. It starts off a little bit, you might say, like the declarative praise. It’s a call to praise.

The second great part of a descriptive praise Psalm is the cause of the praise. This is the guts of the Psalm, why should I praise God, why should I? And this section tells you why you should, and the cause for praise section is divided in half; it starts with a summary sentence, one or two verses usually. Occasionally there aren’t any, but most of the time it’s one or two verses. And then the rest of it is an amplification of that sentence. In other words, it’ll all be summarized to start with and then the rest of the Psalm is spent amplifying, defining words, giving you pictures and justifying that sentence.

By the way, do you notice something; there’s rationality in the Bible. This is not just hooked together as though someone wrote this thing with a pinball machine or something; this is all written together logically and coherently and what feature do you notice about that that I’ve pointed out to you over and over again that shows you something of the Hebrew mentality. What do they do first in their literature, generally speaking. What is their style of literature. You see this in poetry and you see it in their prose. [somebody says something] All right, the Jew always likes to summarize everything to start with. This is why Genesis 1:1 probably is a title and not a specific act, and everything that follows Genesis 1:1 is an amplification. So everywhere you read a major passage of Scripture, learn to think this way; watch what happens, the Jew whips you with the whole [can’t understand word], here it is and then he spends the rest of his time saying now this is what I mean, boom, boom, boom, it goes on like this. This is typical of how they work.

The third section of the psalm is the conclusion and this, in these particular psalm types is a variable. It can be a petition, it can be an exhortation, it can be another call to praise. It’s variable. Your [not sure of word] section is the center one, but this last conclusion is a variable.

Looking now at these three sections and looking at Psalm 33 before you, could someone suggest where some of these divisions might fall. [somebody says something] All right, the call to praise, verses 1-3. Anyone want to add to, subtract from or in any way disagree. [somebody says something] Verse 6 is the summary. Anyone else. [somebody says something] Okay, did you hear the justification for this? Let me just go over this. Verses 1-3 is the call, that’s easy to spot. Why? Because you’ve got imperatives, don’t you see the first verb of verse 1, verse 2, verse 3, what are they? They’re all imperatives, do you see that. Now look at verse 4, don’t you see there’s a shift, it’s more by way of explanation and so on. See, there’s your cause; verses 1-3 is praise Him and now he’s saying why you should praise Him. There’s a shift here. So verses 1-3 very definitely is the call to praise.

Now the first section of the cause of praise has to be the summary. Now a summary can’t be specific, it can’t be specific, it’s got to be general, right, because if anything that follows it is going to be specific it’s got to be general. So now look at verses 4 and 5? Don’t you get the flavor by looking at verses 4-5 that that’s a general statement. Verse 6 is a very critical verse, by the way, a very, very critical verse of this whole Psalm. By the way, verse 6 also helps us to prove a literal Genesis which I’ll show you when we get there. But verses 4-5 are general truths; you see where it says “For the word of the LORD is right, and all His works are done in truth. [5] He loves righteousness and judgment; the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.”

By the way, do you notice the difference in style between this and the declarative praise Psalm. Remember how the declarative praise Psalm did it; for example, hold the place here and turn to Psalm 30 and notice how it started, just so you get the contrast. See how Psalm 30 starts, “I will extol Thee, O LORD; for You have lifted me up, and You have not made my foes to rejoice over me.” Now that’s a specific, isn’t it, in the psalmist’s life. And turning back to Psalm 33 you don’t see any specifics in verses 4-5. It’s not something that individually happened to the psalmist, it’s just a generalized truth. And then verses 6 and following amplify it.

Could any of you catch where this amplification terminates and the conclusion begins. [somebody says something] The end of verse 12, that’s one bid. Anybody else. [somebody says something] The end of verse 20. [somebody says something] Verses 20 and 21 go together. Okay, verse 22 is a definite shift. Do you see why verses 20 and 21 have to go together? Why do they have to go together. The way verses 20 and 21 are connected is it’s “our,” don’t you see? It’s first person plural, do you see the shift. Up to that it’s just been describing God, God did this, God did that, God did this, and now beginning in verses 20-21 the psalmist comes back to the congregation and he says now us. So the end actually is the end of verse 19, so the center section runs from verse 4 to verse 19 with a summary contained in verses 4-5, amplification in verse 16-19, and the conclusion, verses 20-21.

Now let me suggest an outline, and in this particular case, I started with Psalm 33 because the outline fits perfectly with the form so there won’t be any fudging around to get the outline to work out of this. The first part of the Psalm is verses 1-3, and I have entitled the thought as the psalmist calls upon the righteous to praise with musical accompaniment, because it is fitting to do so. Now notice the “because” as I summarize the thought, it’s not because God has delivered, don’t you see, it’s not declarative praise any more, it’s not do this because God did something for you; it’s rather do this because it’s the nature of things, it’s fitting to do this. Verses 4-19, the cause of such praise is the dependability of God’s words and works together with His worldwide grace and justice. It’s a very important section, the worldwide, because this also shows you the missionary vision of the Old Testament. And then finally verses 20-22, the third section, the righteous reaffirm their faith in Yahweh.

Now we have time to do the first three verses; I’d like to go to the call to praise section, the psalmist calls upon the righteous to praise with musical accompaniment because it is fitting to do so. If for next week in reading ahead you’d like to read in this Psalm, see if you can split up that second section. We already know verses 4-5 is the summary; see if you can outline in any way verses 6-19 and relate it back to verses 4-5. Think consciously of how verses 4-5 can be justified from verses 6-19; see if you can pick up the psalmist logic, why he’s saying these things, his evidences that he offers you.

We notice there’s no heading on the Psalm so therefore we don’t know who it is that wrote it. If you read, by the way, in this first book of Psalms, as I said in the beginning the Psalms are divided into five books, this is the first book of Psalms, that this Psalm has no title; all the ones nearby do; for some reason it doesn’t and none of the texts have it. Let’s look at the three verses. “Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous; for praise is befitting to the upright. [2] Praise the LORD with the harp; sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. [3] Sing unto him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise.” Now there’s some adjustments we have to make in the translation but this obviously is instrumental music that is meant here, and I think out of this we find some very exciting things about the role of music in the universe and in the cosmos.

First let’s look at verse 1, “Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous;” this is a command, the word for “rejoice” means a public proclamation, this is not something done in private, this is something done out in the open, in public, “Rejoice in the LORD” in public, “O ye righteous ones, for praise is comely to the upright,” now that’s just old English for the word to be beautiful, “praise is beautiful for the upright,” it’s a combination of something that is just sheer beauty and in combination with something that’s not just beautiful but something that’s beautiful and in place. There’s two aspects of this beauty, there’s beauty that’s actual beauty; on some people it doesn’t look good and on other people it does, and this point is that it looks good on the righteous. And the word “beautiful,” since by context, verses 2 and 3, refer to instrumental music.

We must say that the beauty that is given here and the beauty of the Church, the beauty of the body of Christ, ultimately in eternity, because of Revelation 4 and 5, the beauty of the body of Christ is her praise. The Church is clothed with white robes; this indicates Christ’s imputed righteousness upon every believer. When we become Christians Jesus Christ imputes to you His perfect righteousness. That is a positional righteousness, but in eternity it becomes experiential righteousness, and we are pictured as having white robes on in eternity, free from all sin, sharing Christ’s righteousness. But it’s not just walking around in white robes looking in mirrors to see how white they are; it is a group of people in mass wearing white robes doing something, and they’re not tithing and they’re not being baptized. They are singing praises to God. That is what they are doing, and the psalmist here says it’s that which ultimately fulfills our beauty. So I’d rather think that verse 1 is looking forward in time to eternity; it’s not just a statement about what happens now but it’s something that is the destiny of believers. “Praise is beautiful and fitting” for a believer, so therefore, this is the occupation with Christ in our words, “Praise is comely for the upright.”

Now turn back to Revelation 4, I want you to notice something that occurs in eternity and then we’ll go to one other passage to show you what happened in eternity past. In Revelation 4:11 we have a song, “Thou art worthy, O LORD, to receive glory and honor and power….” And then in chapter 5 verse 9, “And they sang a new song, saying,” and in verse 11 you will notice who is doing the singing, “I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts, and the elders….” [12] “Saying with a loud voice….” And verse 13, “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto Him that sits upon the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.”

Now if you look at that you’ll notice that the angels are joining with men at the point of musical praise… the angels are joining with men. Now obviously we share verbal communication with angels because angels, men and God all have verbal communication, but it’s not just prose verbal communication, it’s communication in an art form of music. And so therefore in this passage and in another passage I’m about to show you, we make the point that music is a fundamental form of the cosmos, that music basically is rooted to the very nature of the way the universe is designed. There’s a book, a very rare book, not well-read, and less read today than when it came out, but it’s a very important volume. It’s analysis of music from the standpoint of mathematics. And the man has done an extensive study to show that underlying music is not just random noise, and it not just chance but what we call harmony and what we call beautiful music can be quantitatively measured with certain forms of mathematics, that music has a mathematical structure to it. And this shouldn’t strike you as unusual because the physical universe has a mathematical structure to it, and therefore we come to the fact that our God is a mathematical God. God invented the universe and He made it along mathematical lines. Mathematics reveals some of the force of God and it shows that when God thinks of how to build things He thinks in what we call mathematical terms. And this includes the very structure of music itself. Now don’t look so shocked.

Turn back to Job 38 and we’ll see music as it pre-existed man. How different music appears in Scripture than how it must appear to one who thinks in evolutionary terms. Nobody in the universe makes music on an evolutionary base except higher forms of men. The apes go grunt grunt but do not make music; man is the only thing that makes music; music is just an isolated appendage, something that just dropped out of the evolutionary hopper later on. But how beautiful the fact that when the Scriptures talk about music they’re talking that preexisted, was there from the moment of creation, even before the creation of man.

Look at Job 38:7, here the angelic force sings and man is yet to be there, because God says Job, were you there, implying no man was there. When I laid the foundations of the earth, Job, were you there? At that same time, “When the morning stars” those are angels, “sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” That is the same kind of verb structure that is used in the Psalms for praise. So it shows you that music anti-dates man; music precedes man’s existence. And music, therefore, is very closely related, I want you to also know music is very closely related to verbal communication. The connection between music and verbal communication is very close in Scripture because everywhere you see music, what is it doing in Scripture. Every time you see music mentioned, with one or two exceptions, there’s one therapeutic value of music that David gives to Saul for demon possession, but apart from the therapeutic side of music the fundamental main line use of music in Scripture is that it’s a vehicle for praising God. And I think the reason why music becomes a vehicle for praising God is because it’s a more powerful form of praise than mere verbal praise. Verbal praise gives us content but in the music you have the marriage between the content and the emotional reaction. These can be expressed much better through the medium of music so music becomes a very important medium. And this elevates music to a high lofty position and I want you to understand that as we come to Psalms.

Let’s turn back and finish the first 3 verses of Psalm 33. “Rejoice in Yahweh,” or Jehovah, “O ye righteous; for praise is beautiful for those that are upright,” that’s just another synonym for saints. Verse 2, “Praise the LORD with the harp,” the harp, these are various stringed instruments, nobody really knows what most of these words mean. We know some of the instruments because of archeology and we know some of the words, but unfortunately when you dig around in the finds you find the instrument or the pieces of them but you don’t find the labels attached to them, so we’ve got the musical instruments and we’ve got the words but we can’t get them together. So to pinpoint things and ask what the harp is and what the psaltery is, I have no idea and I don’t know where you find out. All we do know is that whatever the instrument is in the last part of verse 2 it had ten strings to it. Maybe it was a guitar or something they had, but those list actual instruments. And I don’t know where this stuff comes from that we can’t use instruments to praise God with. Here it is verse 2, “Praise the LORD with the harp; sing unto Him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.”

Verse 3, “Sing unto Him a new song;” now the new song is also mentioned in Revelation 5:9, the concept of the new song means a fresh song, and this implies that where the church of Jesus Christ exists there should be continual creativity in the area of music. There must be a continual creativity in the area of music. Sing unto the Lord a new song, the creativity not because our music forms change or styles change, this isn’t talking about that. It is bringing the music up to date with a new insight that we have. So “sing unto the Lord a new song” means we’ve had old songs, we’ve sung those, but the psalmist says I have an additional insight and I want to put that one to music, and when I put my additional insight to music then I make and create a new song. So that’s the flavor of this “new song” business. It is up-to-date, it’s a dynamic picture of history, the creative response that man does something that apes do not, when man can respond to God whereas apes cannot respond creatively, to create something and respond back to God with it.

This is also very important in another regard in that in the Bible the universe is not a dream in the mind of God; this word “new song” and “create” speaks of human creativity. Some Christians border on heresy in this regard, they say God is omniscient, God always knew what would happen, etc. Be careful how hard you say that; it is true God knew all things but I know it creeps into my mind when I say omniscience and I say God knows all things, the thought is immediately there then why have history. If God knew ahead of time what was going to come out, why bother and go through the whole process. The answer is that God goes through the process because here at this point you have creation and creation goes on, this, though not equal to God, God is up here in His essence, this is not God, not equal to God, but history has significance outside of God, a significance not in itself independent of God but history has a significance so that God knows that His Son would die. All right. That’s in His omniscience; He knew before the foundation of the world that Christ would die. But Christ had to historically die; He had to historically die in space and time and that was an event that God is involved with.

And here the songs are significant for the same reason; you can say well didn’t God in omniscience know what I was going to create, why do I have to make a new song up for God? Why do I have to respond to Him in a new way? Because you’re part of history, you’re part of a responsible moment of history that is real, it’s not a dream, and you’re actively responding back to God so that how you respond has significance. It has a significance in that God couldn’t have sat there and dreamed it all by Himself and it would have been sufficient; it’s not just God sitting there dreaming it up by himself, it would be so nice if such and such would write me a new song in such and such way. He knew that in omniscience, but still there had to be a responsible action in space/time history to make it, and had that action not occurred, the dream would never have been actualized, so to speak.

So the new song here has a lot behind it. “Sing unto Him a new song;” or create me a new response. And then, “play skillfully with a loud noise,” means play skillfully with a shout of joy and it’s made up of two verbs in the Hebrew, one is to.. the word “play” is to play a stringed instrument, it means to pluck the strings, that’s what this verb means, to pluck strings. And the word “skillfully” just means that. And this is a justification for good quality music. You have to fight to get quality music and you have to fight to get creative music. If fundamentalism would just take verse 3 seriously we’d solve two major problems. But to bring out a new song that is doctrinal is a massive feat, and to have quality music is something else; you have to fight everybody around to get it. And then we have people that say instrumental music is wrong. Well why do we have all these imperatives to do with instrumental music.

Next week we begin with verse 4, the guts of the descriptive praise Psalm and if you are working with Psalm 138 on declarative praise, hand those in next week please.