Psalms Lesson 23

Psalm 33:8-22

We’re continuing Psalm 33 which is a descriptive praise Psalm and once again to review the five steps involved in getting to the descriptive praise level, remember we started with step one which is the lament. That would correspond to the diagram Christ in the heart as positive volition; these are rough approximations. But we have the positive volition of the believer in an adverse situation in life, so here’s the lament. So the first thing in spiritual growth or spiritual advance is using the assets that God has provided that you know of at that situation.

The second step would be when God executes a historical deliverance of the psalmist and that corresponds in the Christian era to the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament it was revelation; in the New Testament it is illumination. There is no direct revelation occurring after the canon of Scripture is closed. This is why there is no such thing as speaking in tongues in this generation because speaking in tongues connotes automatic verbal revelation. And since the canon is not being added to it means there are no speaking in tongues either. So the historical deliverance then, is the second step and that is when God shows His hand by how He delivers the believers.

And then the third thing… and step one would be the lament Psalm, the individual lament Psalm is concerned with step one type, then the declarative praise comes at the third step and this is the believer’s response to the deliverance. And so steps 2 and 3 have to do with the declarative praise Psalm and this would correspond to the rise of the divine viewpoint framework. That rises in response to the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life. The Holy Spirit illuminates your mind to certain things. Now those things are in the Word and the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to things that are in the text of God’s Word; both in a full sense when you’re reading through the thing you see things literally that you didn’t see before, and secondly things that you have seen before now take on a deeper meaning because of your own personal spiritual experience.

Then the fourth step after declarative praise is the accumulation of wisdom; this is the reflection upon wisdom, and we have some of that wisdom also in the declarative praise Psalms. This would correspond to love because love in this context means a response by the believer to God’s love; a clarity so that you now experience God’s love, you experienced it before but now you’re conscious of experiencing God’s love.

And finally, the fifth step which is the step of Psalm 33, which is descriptive praise, and that is the highest form of praise in God’s Word and that would correspond in the Christ in the heart to fulfillment. That is when you can spontaneously and wholly and fully enjoy the Christian life regardless of your circumstances, regardless of the situation, that you have such a strong personal bond with Christ that now there is a personal fulfillment.

Now these five steps sequence for you in logical order the movement of thought in the Psalms. The Psalms are worship literature and they lead you, they are the gateway to true worship. And the worship must come this way and the worship comes by no other way. Those who are doing some counseling in the Graham film, we found out that it has a miserable review and the reason is that this film is as always happens in evangelical circles, put together by believers with very little doctrine. So they are trying to promote love and fulfillment without going through the first three steps which makes it more difficult for you who are doing the counseling. You will have to probably be in a situation where you are going to have to disagree with sections of the film when you counsel people, which will add to the confusion. But you have to state clearly that the reason someone becomes a Christian is because their faith must be grounded on facts, not feelings. So in the film where you see this kind of thing, precipitating false decisions based on emotions, you will have to correct it. This doesn’t mean that you have to contradict everything but it does mean that where there are critical things to be corrected you have to do the correcting. If you do not have Bible doctrine you cannot clarify the issue; it’s just a sloppy mess. And those of you with Bible doctrine and can think your way through these issues, who are aware of the need for evidences for faith, then you’re going to see a lot of confusion; you’re going to see confusion on the part of the people involved, confusion on the part of the people that make the film. So much more could be done in our generation if we had trained believers who knew what they were supposed to be doing.

In Psalm 33, the highest form of praise, and this is the goal of it all; all evangelism should lead to this ultimately. But you have to go through these steps, there is no shortcut. That’s another thing, that’s the reason behind a lot of the charismatic movement; it’s nothing but a spiritual shortcut and we have shortcuts everywhere we look today. You pay for shortcuts and that includes paying for shortcuts in the spiritual realm. Every time you have evangelicals trying to get love and trying to get fulfillment without building up a divine viewpoint framework you have confused people and that’s what we’ve got all over the place, confused people because they are too lazy to take the time and the effort to study and study and study and study and study the Word. This is the only way we can stimulate in our generation a group of believers who are going to be tough, who know the Word and can apply the Word and can defend the Word against skeptics instead of taking a mousey attitude, “well you have your opinion and I have mine” kind of thing. That’s ridiculous. What do we care about opinion, your opinion doesn’t count for pennies and mine doesn’t either; the issue is what is the truth, that’s the issue, not what your opinion is; we’re not interested in opinions. There’s only one person’s opinion we’re interested in and that’s God’s opinion. That’s the only opinion that’s worth consideration.

Now in this Psalm, when we get to the point of praise, please notice that the fifth step cannot occur unless the other steps are there. And this is why in the middle section of this Psalm, beginning at verse 4 and running down through the end of verse 19, you have the cause of praise. The first three verses deal with the call to praise. Then beginning in verse 4 we have the cause and do you see that this is not emotions. The cause is not emotions. Where do you read, beginning in verse 4, notice this section and just think of some of the hymns you sing, oh let’s praise Jesus because I feel so sweet or something like this. These are the reasons that are given in Christian circles. Now where do you read in Psalm 33 praise God because you feel so sweet? I don’t see that there.

Beginning at verse 4 you have a series of statements made about the structure of the universe and they either true statements or they are false statements but you can’t excuse them as maybe they’re true and maybe they’re false; they make true dogmatic assertions and the whole Psalm hangs on verses 4-5. Last week we considered verses 4-5 and how verse 4 was expanded beginning at verse 6 and working down through verse 12. And then verses 13-19 expand verse 5. So you have an expansion; you have the topic stated concisely in verses 4-5 and then each verse is then expanded.

Notice verse 4, “For the Word of the LORD is right, and all His works are in truth.” Now that’s emphasizing the dependability of God’s Words and works. And then when we went to amplify verse 4 we skipped to verse 6 because verse 6 gives you the reasons and the development. Notice a literal creation in verse 6. How do I know that the word of the Lord is sufficient? Because of a literal Genesis 1, a literal creation, and the literal creation is given as the reason why I praise God. “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” And if you think that evolution is doing it, then the logical conclusion from the mentality of verse 6 is that the word of the Lord must be equated with the evolutionary process and now what are you going to do with verse 4. “The Word of the LORD is right, and all His works are in truth.” And if you’re going to substitute an evolutionary process for God’s Word in verse 4 you’re going to have to say that the evolutionary process is right and in truth, and then you’ve really got a problem because you’ve got survival of the fittest and you’re going to have to say that might makes right. That’s the logical conclusion. If the evolutionary process is the means which God used then He used an unrighteousness means because the morality of evolution can be summarized survival of the fittest. If you want to live that way that’s fine, but don’t talk about the Sermon the Mount, “Blessed are the meek for they shall” survive or something like that. You can’t fit them both together, you’re going to have to go one way or the other but you can’t mix them both. Take one, forget the rest of it; go one way or the other way but don’t stay in the middle.

And then verse 7, another statement about the creation except as Hebrew participles, God is the One who “gathered the waters of the sea together as an heap, He is the One who laid up the depth in storehouses.” That refers to the oceans of the antediluvian world.

Verse 8 is the response of the people. [“Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.”]

Then verse 9, “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. So notice again verse 9, emphasizing the power of the Word but the argument of verse 9 falls all apart if we do not have a literal Genesis. If you don’t have a literal Genesis verse 9 means absolutely nothing but providence. But if you’re going to say that verse 9 is an amplification of verse 4 and actually teaches something about our Lord’s Word and shows the power of the Word, then verse 9 means something.

Verse 10, “The LORD brings the counsel of the heathen [nations] to nought; He makes the devise of the people of no effect.” Again it shows whose word prevails, God’s Word or man’s word. And obviously God’s Word prevails and this is what verse 10 is teaching, the contrast between God’s Word, God’s authoritative Word and man’s speculations.

The idea of verses 10-11, notice verse 10 is a negative, verse 11 is the positive, “The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the thoughts of His heart exist [to] in all generations.” So the contrast between verse 10 is a contrast between human’s words and God’s Words. And the reason for this contrast is that all human’s words must be grounded on knowledge if they are to endure. But trouble with man in space and time is that our knowledge is limited. And so therefore, no matter who you are, every time you make a sentence about something you are speaking out of limited knowledge. In the early days of science it was thought that Euclidean geometry would adequately describe the universe. However, in the 20^th century, with additional data, we find out there are certain situations that are better handled by non-Euclidean geometry and all the time mathematicians were thinking Euclidean geometry is really good, it’s really good, it’s really good. Well what happened? We had a new experience; man’s experience was enlarged and his conclusions had to be altered. That is always the danger of any system of words that are cranked out by man. And in the context of verse 10, “The counsel of the heathen,” are actually political advice, it’s actually political advice given to the ruling Gentiles by various witch doctors and so on. And they would advise the man on the role of history, obviously what does a political advise to do but to advise his king or his prince to do such and such here in this situation because the movement of history is thus and such. So to give advice to a ruler you have to have a knowledge of the purposes of history. But you can’t have a knowledge of the purpose of history when you have limited information.

All man’s information is limited, so the Bible emphasizes over and over again it’s the counsel of the Lord that endures forever because it is grounded on infinite knowledge and no additional information exists. You can never come up with a new piece of information that’s ever going to alter any of God’s plans. God’s plans, by definition, include all knowledge that exists now or ever will exist or ever can exist. And therefore God’s Word is authoritative and unchanging, that is, if you by God’s Word mean a literal Bible. If you don’t have a literal Bible you have no Word of God, in which case verse 11 means nothing.

Then verse 12 is the basis for the blessing. The logical result is “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,” notice the word “Lord” is Yahweh which is the national name of God. It looks like that in the Hebrew, in the Hebrew it’s written Y, that little thing there is the yod and that’s what Jesus meant when He said no yod or tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law until all be fulfilled. He said that letter, which is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet will stay written in God’s authoritative word, period, unchangeable. So we have YH, then this yod which is a W and then we have H. And how to fill in the vowels has always remained a mystery, nobody really knows except we know the middle vowel there is “ya.” And that’s about all we know and the rest is speculation as to how this word looks, but there’s one way it can’t be; it cannot be Jehovah, which is very interesting for a certain group. These three vowels have been injected from another word in the Hebrew, Adonai, and what the Jews have often done is they took the consonants and they added the vowels from their word for “Lord” which is Adonai, and that is how you got this “Jehovah” business. But no Jew would ever pronounce God’s name that way because he knows that’s just something in the Masoretic text that had developed over the centuries because they considered God’s real name too holy to pronounce and they’d never pronounce it; but we know one thing, however you pronounce it it can’t be Jehovah; that’s the only name we know it can’t be.

Verse 12, one other thing that you want to see here is that the people whom God has chosen introduces what great doctrine? Whenever God chooses something what great doctrine is always there? What do we call it when God chooses something? Election, and when did God choose Israel? At the time of Abraham, so verse 12 is the basis for the Abrahamic Covenant. Now verse 12 doesn’t mention the Abrahamic Covenant, but verse 12 teaches the background for the Abrahamic Covenant because God is such a fantastic God, if that’s the God that has chosen our nation then blessed are we; that’s the thought behind verse 12. Now all of verses 6 down thru the end of verse 12, the total theme has been an amplification of verse 4. Here is where Israel completely differs from every other civilization on the face of the earth. It’s God, not nature forces, notice the theme from verses 6-12, it’s the word of the Lord that controls nature because it is the word of the Lord that created nature; so always in the Old Testament under Israel’s economy it is God who is above nature. There are no gods in nature. And this is the difference; all the other nations, the Code of Hammurabi for example came from Shemish, the sun god. All the other nations related their revelation to gods inside nature. The Jews, God was outside nature and above it. This why Professor Frankfort would say this: “Hebrew thought, held out with a peculiar insolence against the wisdom of Israel’s neighbors. The dominant tenant of Hebrew thought is the absolute transcendence of God.” That means He’s above creation. “Yahweh is not in nature; neither earth nor sun nor heaven is divine. Even the potent natural phenomena are but reflection of God’s greatness. Nowhere else in the world do we meet this fanatical devaluation of the phenomena of nature.”

I’ll read that last sentence because it’s very important; “Nowhere else in the world” that means all other civilizations, “Nowhere else in the world do we meet with this fanatical devaluation of the phenomena of nature.” The Jews were not scared by nature; they were not scared of what happened in nature because they knew the God above nature. The application for us as Christians today is this: There will never come a problem in our lives that will be bigger than the God over creation because all of our problems are inside creation. See, all of our problems are inside the circle, God’s outside the circle. So you’ll never have a problem that is bigger than the Lord, whose Word we have to trust.

Now beginning in verse 13 we start amplifying verse 5. Verse 5 is, “He loves righteousness and judgment; the earth is full of the loyal love of Jehovah.” The word “love” is a participle and a participle in this situation means abiding character. “He is the One who loves righteousness and judgment; the earth is full of…” and it’s not goodness, it’s chesed, chesed is love to a covenant, or love to an agreement. It is marital love as contrasting to ahav where there is no agreement. Chesed always has agreement behind it, and we said that the only agreement that would be true for the whole world, postdiluvian civilization, is the Noahic Covenant. Now verse 13 begins to amplify what this whole world full of God’s chesed means.

“The LORD has looked from heaven; He beheld all the sons of men. [14] From the place of His habitation He looked upon all the inhabitants of the earth.” Up to this point every verb is past, verse 13 and verse 14; all of them are perfect, all of them refer to what God looked at at some point in time. “God has looked from heaven, God has beheld the sons of men, [14] From the place of His habitation,” notice “the place of His habitation,” a definite location in the universe for the throne of God. I know God is omnipresent, He’s fully present at every point in space, but the Bible still insists that God has a throne at a place that you can see and that you will see, one way or the other; as a believer, one who has accepted Jesus Christ, as one who therefore is prepared to walk into the throne room, guilty though we are of all sorts of things, Christ’s atonement covers and therefore since Christ’s atonement covers, we can have fellowship with Him at the throne, or we face the throne in judgment at Revelation 20 which isn’t going to be a pleasant situation. But all people will face the throne and after that there will be no intellectual difficulties with how God can be omnipresent and yet somehow located at a point called the throne because everybody will have seen it. We might have intellectual difficulties and wonder, how could we have seen that, but we will have seen it nevertheless. And that’s the place mentioned in verse 14.

Now the interesting thing about these two verses is who are the “sons of men.” Does this refer to Adam, or does it go back to the postdiluvian era. In other words, how far back do verses 13-14 go? Do they go all the way back to the originating point when God made the human race, and as it were He made it and He looked at Adam and His progeny; or, do verses 13-14 refer to the point after the flood when the races dispersed across the face of the earth. Fortunately the expression “sons of men,” actually it reads like this, beni Adam, beni is sons of, and this is Adam, sons of Adam. But still that, by itself, doesn’t answer the question.

To answer that question turn to Deuteronomy 32:8 for the exact expression is used and there we find where and what this means. When the Most High divided to the Goiim,” the nations, “their inheritance, when He separated the beni Adam [sons of man],” the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Now that last part is a fact that anthropologically, though I think you will find few of your anthropology professors prepared to agree, from God’s point of view the human race is divided into seventy subunits; three major ones with seventy subunits and each one of these corresponds to one of Jacob’s sons. And you can check this because in Genesis 10 and 11, lo and behold, there are seventy names and those are seventy names the Holy Spirit has picked out and preserved in His Word to teach us that all of us here in this room today come from some of these seventy men. It’d be a fascinating study if you could have available to yourself to find out which of these seventy do you belong to. Because to my knowledge very few of you have any claim to Abraham’s seed in the physical way, so therefore all of you are related in some way back to Noah’s sons. And it would explain some of your personal experiences if you knew, so to speak, the tribe to which you belonged because that tribe’s past history determines to some degree your present experiences.

Now when we look at this verse we come to the fact that “the sons of Adam” are divided after the flood, and this obviously again is in connection with chesed to the world, or… [tape turns] …the Noahic Covenant again.

Now if you’ll turn to one other passage, this time in the New Testament, Acts 17:26 where Paul mentions the same thing. God “has made of one blood all nations of men,” now that is an equivalent expression to beni Adam, “God has made of one blood,” that also pronounces the doom statement on any idea you might have of inferior races, there are no such thing in Scripture as inferior races. There are certain racial lines observed in the Old Testament because of various regulations concerning Israel. But “He has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” now notice what is added to that, very carefully Paul adds, “and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,” their time/space boundaries have been set up. Now if you study history you should be fascinated with these two verses; these two verses in the New Testament are fantastic; if you have any interest in history you ought to give these a tremendous amount of study and reflection because verse 27 tells you the basis for the boundaries in time and space of history. “That they,” who are they? The various subunits of the human race, “That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us.”

Now what verses 26-27 are saying is essentially what Psalm 33 is going to say, Paul’s thought here is not a new one, it’s one that was carried out of the Old Testament, and that is that God has so worked history out so that when you have certain civilizations that go on negative volition they are removed by other powers so that in the interplay, the power plays between nations, war and peace, ultimately work out to maintain positive volition across the face of the globe. Now you say it’s an awful horrible way that God has to preserve positive volition by constantly having wars and power plays between various groups of people. Yes, but don’t blame God because whose fault was it that we fell in the first place? It was man’s fault. You’ve got to constantly keep the literal fall in mind. War and peace is an ultimate effect of man’s rebellion against God. Now after man rebelled against God then God manipulates and can use, so to speak, evil for His glory. And after it has originated in the fall then God uses it this way. But verses 26 and 27 give you an overview of history and if you’re a historian and like to study various movements, the rise and fall of various institutions, etc. it’d be a clue here as to what to look at because what this is telling you to look for is when you evaluate something from its historical growth and fall, ask yourself, how has the process affected the spiritual volition of the people involved in this kind of thing. When you see the fall of a civilization, ask yourself, is the net result of the fall of this people a plus or a minus on the spiritual scoreboard.

Let me give you a modern illustration of this; it wasn’t but a decade ago that everybody was very concerned with the Red Chinese going into Tibet. And earlier the Dali Lama of Tibet had gotten Lowell Thomas, the famous radio commentator at that time, and arranged a trip so that Lowell Thomas could come up and broadcast to the outside world what life was like in Tibet, the forbidden city, etc. Now Lowell Thomas didn’t emphasize it but missionaries had emphasized it, that the place of Tibet was demon with demon possessed red-hooded monks, there was a special group of Buddhist-like monks who were just demon possessed to the hilt; they could practice what’s known as levitation, send tables through the air without any help, and many missionaries observed this, and Tibet was essentially impermeable to the gospel. There was no way any missionary could ever get inside Tibet because of the tremendous negative attitudes toward any kind of authoritative Word of God. The Chinese communists went in and destroyed Tibet and you would say on the surface, oh, naughty naughty, but actually what has happened since the Chinese communists went in and very brutally smashed the entire cultural social structure of Tibet, they conveniently put radios in each village to get the party line. Well it just so happens that the Christians very conveniently had the Far East Broadcasting Company tuned to the frequencies of the radios that are now in Tibet. And so they can have their choice, listen to communist doctrine or you can listen to the gospel from the Philippines. But all the area of Tibet is open to the gospel in a way which it had never been before. So again we see the outworking of verse 27. Was it bad that the communists broke up the structure; yes, it was bad, bad as any activity in a sinful fallen world but the net outcome was that “they might feel after God and find Him.”

Now back to Psalm 33 and here you see a continuation of the same thought. Paul did not start the thought, it’s back here in Psalm 33. So, “The LORD looked from heaven; and He beheld the sons of man,” except all these have the idea of intense scrutiny, so that God knows men. Verse 15, “fashioneth” and “considereth” are translated in your King James as present tense, but they are that participle again and they really should be translated, “He is the one who” does whatever that verb is. So it should be “He is the one who fashioned their hearts alike, He is the one who understood all their works.” It refers to a past event that forever marks God’s character.

Now here you have one of the great apologetic ploys of God’s Word. And by that I mean, one of the great problems we get attacked on as believers today, over and over again, is how there can be such a thing as authoritative revelation. Now I understand that tension and I understand what goes through people’s mind when they raise the question because I myself did not become a Christian for over a year and a half because I was fighting with this thing, how can Christianity claim to be “the way, the truth, and the life” and everybody else that disagrees is wrong? Now on the surface that looks a fantastic bigoted statement. But if there is such a thing as definite truth about God then one view must be right and the other is wrong if they’re in contradiction. They can be all wrong or one can be right, but not more than one among a set of contradictory views, if you have definite truth. And the Bible says we do and here’s the basis; it is God who is the one who fashions men, it is God who is the one who makes nature, and so therefore it’s used over and over that here we have God, we have nature, and we have man, God made both and because God made both, both of these fit together and man can know nature scientifically.

Now if you turn to Psalm 94 you’ll see this argument stretched out in more detail. It occurs again with greater amplification in Psalm 94:8-11. Notice the pitch of the psalmist here, and he’s contrasting human knowledge and divine knowledge. “Understand, ye brutish [stupid] among the people; and ye fools, when will ye be wise? [9] He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?” What does verse 9 suggest about how the Jew of the Old Testament tied authoritative knowledge to God? He did it by means of what event? What event in all the history of the universe is the critical event that links God and creation and ties the whole ball of wax together, according to verse 9? Creation. You see how important creation is and why we say over and over again it is the foundation of everything else. Here it is the foundation of the appeal, “He that chastens the heathen, shall He not correct? He that teaches man knowledge… [11] The LORD knows the thoughts of man,” the reason is because He made man. If we had time a similar passage is Isaiah 29:15-16.

Continuing in Psalm 33 the application is made in verses 16-19, God is this kind of God, He knows men, He looks down upon them. Verses 13-14 appear to be looking at dispersion into the postdiluvian world; verse 15 refers to the postdiluvian world, but by way of the fact that God is the One who created it.

And then verse 16, here is the application. Remember we’re on the theme of verse 5 which is that the whole earth, not just Israel, that’s Psalm 33, you’ve got to get that through, it’s not just Israel, it is the whole earth. Psalm 33 is a very critical Psalm, it is the basis of missionary activity in the Old Testament. That Israel had the claim on the nations. Why does she have a claim on the nations? Because it was Israel’s God that made the whole universe; Israel’s God did not just make Israel, He made everything.

Then verse 16 is a general principle, “There is no king saved by the multitude of an army [host]; a might man is not delivered by much strength. [17] An horse is a vain thing for safety; neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.” Now verses 16-17 are actually proverbs; that’s a section of wisdom literature tucked inside the Psalm. Remember we said the fourth step, the fourth step before you get to the fifth step in that progression was wisdom. And here you’ve got a wisdom statement. “No king is saved by a multitude of an army,” now here is where again you have to be careful of the Old Testament mentality; it’s not saying the army is not important, it’s just saying don’t be fooled by what we call normal events, for various reasons. God has made the universe function regularly; it’s that way for many reasons but He has the universe functioning routinely. You can count on the sun, you can count on astronomical motion as a measure of time; you can count on the steadiness of various physical laws. When you build a machine you can make certain calculations in your equations and not have to worry that after the machine is made you have to revise your equations. You don’t have to sweat that; God has built regularity into the system. But here is where you have to beware of what this verse is warning you against. Don’t reason this way: because there is a regularity in the sun’s rising and setting, because there is a regularity in the moon, because there is a uniformity of physical laws, therefore these laws are something in themselves. In other words, the danger always is, and in our generation it’s particularly potent, is that we have some little rule that we make up about, say gravity. Acceleration of gravity, it’s used in a lot of different equations and abbreviated by the little letter g and g is 32 feet per second per second acceleration of a body, roughly speaking, in certain areas, at least around the surface of the earth. Now this is normally a very fine thing, works all the time.

But what God is saying, don’t keep your eyes on that g to the point where you really think that the g is something in itself and not describing what I am doing. Don’t get a fix, oh well, we talk about gravity and we use the noun for that word and we’re so confident that gravity is something in itself and so we move on. But what God is saying, be careful because there going to come some days when Peter walks on water and g doesn’t work. And when you meet that situation and as it were g goes to zero, when you’re in that situation be reminded that g obeys Me, I’m the one behind g. I degree that g be steady and constant for your knowledge sake and for other reasons, but let Me perform a miracle every once in a while to remind you that I am behind g. Now that’s the voice of God in the Old Testament behind miracles. The miracles are not done for entertainment. Miracles are carefully saved for critical times when men get to trust too heavily in the regularity of things and forget therefore that behind the regularity is God.

And the point that we are faced with in verses 16 and 17 is that usually in the course of history it is true that a king is saved by a multitude of an army. Usually, that is the general principle of operation, usually the superior army wins, usually! But what verses 16-17 say, don’t count on it because I am behind it and ultimately I decree who wins and My decrees determine who wins regardless, ultimately, whether the army is strong or weak. Illustration: Joshua in 1 Samuel 14, the assault on Michmash. So verses 16 and 17 is a reminder that we do live in a supernatural universe and you should be aware of that in prayer. What verse 16-17 does, it seems to us, in prayer is that when we make petitions, for example in the area of warfare, whether spiritual or other, whether we make petitions in the realm of some other place where we observe regularity in nature, from the human point of view it’s discouraging because you know there’s the regularity and yet God says you make petition, skip over the regularity to Me who exists behind the regularity and then I’ll determine whether I’m going to break regularity this time or not, but you make the petition to Me, I stand behind it and don’t make the petition to Me, I stand behind it, and don’t make the petition to the regularity.

Now if you get bound in and feel defeated in your prayer life it’s because you have subtly absorbed this human viewpoint of our age, that there’s a regularity in nature that something in itself… and the psalmist says no, no, you’re all wrong, 20^th century man who thinks this way, you’re all wrong and you’re deluded and you’ve surprises coming when I interfere with nature like I’m going to do in the Tribulation. It’s going to blow a few equations and the reason is that there will be extraneous influences placed upon physical creation. Then what happens to man’s knowledge. Revelation predicts what happens to man’s knowledge, the very fact that the book of Revelation speaks in mythical terms tells us the entire globe, all of humanity, will apparently drop very fast all of the philosophy and [can’t understand word] they’ve developed and go right back to ancient forms of thought because this is the only way apostate man can reconcile himself to a nature that has miracles in it frequently. If nature has miracles in it frequently man must be a mythologist; if nature has regularity then he can be a scientist. But he’ll be one or the other and the apostasy will drive his heart to explain one or the other but he will always have a human viewpoint explanation.

Then verses 18-19, “Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear Him, upon those who hope in His mercy, [19] To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.” First verse 19 and then I’ll back up to verse 18. Verse 19 is the ultimate effect of all of this, from verses 13-19 and that is there is deliverance, deliverance to those that wait upon the Lord, and the word “soul from death” and “alive in famine” speak to the most extreme pressures a person can face in the physical world. And you’ll notice this, descriptive praise cites extremes. The mentality behind this is that if God can handle the extremes then God can handle anything less than the extremes. If God can keep me alive, the psalmist would reason, from death, and He can keep me alive from the famine, He can do anything for me in my life because everything else is less than that.

Hold the place for the same kind of reasoning and you’ll find it in Romans 8 where Paul again carries this same argument forward. It’s the same kind of thing; in fact, scholars are now arguing, and I wish I had noticed this when I went through Romans before, scholars are now arguing the entire book of Romans was written along the lines of the Psalms, that as you outline the book of Romans it turns out it’s nothing else than a declarative praise Psalm. And that’s very interesting and this is why you see so much time in between the time and Paul’s thinking, that apparently he had meditated in the Psalms so much that when he went to write his letter it just followed out the same kind of form.

Romans 8:32, that’s the same truth applied to you as a believer in Jesus Christ. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for you, how shall He not with Him also freely give you all things.” Argument: from the greater to the lesser; if Christ has died and completely provided for your every need at the cross, then logic quickly says He can provide for the day to day problems; going from the extreme to the details; same logic.

Back to Psalm 33, there’s a tremendous point in verse 18. Psalm 33:18 has a tremendous parallelism in it and I want you to grab it because it clarifies something that I’ve been trying to get across in the Proverbs series. What two characteristics are set in parallel with each other in verse 18? The believers are described and what are the two parallel characteristics? Fear and hope, isn’t that a strange set of characteristics to be parallel one to another. How do you explain the fear of God in the Old Testament? What’s a good English word to describe it; it’s not worrying about oh, He’s going to get me, that’s not the kind of fear they’re mentioning. How is the word “fear” used in the Old Testament? Respect for His authority. How do you think that ties in with the next one, “them that hope in His,” and the word behind “mercy” is chesed. Do you see how this ties together; respect His authority and hope on His chesed. And what did I say chesed was referring to? Covenant arrangement. So he’s got a promise back here, an authoritative declaration by the Word. Respecting His authority is a parallel with trusting His Word. Now isn’t this amazing, that we respect the Lord’s authority when we trust His Word. And when we distrust His Word we violate His authority. This is why God leans on us so hard when we don’t trust Him. God will tolerate us doing a lot of things; a lot of things in society wouldn’t even be tolerated; God will tolerate some of that stuff and He’ll discipline us for it but He won’t spank you as hard as He will for violating His authority when it comes to distrusting and rejecting His promises. That is one thing that God cannot stand. Now all the rest of the stuff He can’t stand but He doesn’t lower the boom so hard as he does… we’re seeing that with Saul and David, a beautiful case history. Saul violates God’s authority at every point because He won’t respect the Word that God has spoken. You disrespect the Word that your Commanding Officer speaks, you violate His authority.

Now I’m going to take you to the New Testament because I want to show you something, an encounter that Jesus Christ had a soldier that ties this thing together and it’s found in Matthew 8:5. Here is where authority and trust come together just like they come together in Psalm 33. This is dedicated to everybody that hates the military. Please notice that it was a military person who caught on to this principle faster than anyone else. “And when Jesus had entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, [6] And saying, Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the palsy grievously tormented. [7] And Jesus said unto him, I will come and heal him.” Now look at this… look at this guy’s response, verse 8, “But the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof, but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. [9] For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to that man, ‘Go,’ and he goes; to another ‘Come’ and he comes and to my servant, do this and he does it. [10] And when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to them that followed Him, ‘Verily I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” Do you see the link between authority and faith? The centurion was able to perceive the issue of the faith technique because he suddenly realized how does God ever deliver you from a problem.

Now maybe some of you are hazy on this; maybe some of you think that here we have a promise on a piece of paper and you put your trust in a piece of paper and the piece of paper delivers you. That’s not right; it’s not automatic. You’re missing something fantastic if this is your idea of claiming the promises of God. Claiming the promises of God is much more tremendous than trusting in a mere piece of paper and saying, okay, automatically I just hold on to this and it’s automatic. It’s not automatic. Here’s what happens. If you trust in the promise, then God actively does something in history, that moment, in response to your personal act of trust; like Jesus Christ is doing here. It’s like if you’re the soldier and you come and you say Lord, look, I have Your Word, that’s an order and I believe it. And that is trusting the Word and therefore bowing to the authority.

And I just can’t help but wonder, what divine institution is the institution where authority is supposed to be taught according to Scripture? The family. Now doesn’t that suggest to you that if a weak family occurs and if you don’t run your family according to the principles of authority, what will probably happen to children raised in that kind of a family situation? No respect for authority, they’re going to find it difficult to trust the Lord because over and over again the Hebrew word to trust or fear is coupled with the Hebrew word to trust and abide. And you see again how tampering with one of these institutions starts to have awful things start working over here; weeds like crazy come up all over the field and we wonder why we’re having so much spiritual problem. It’s easy; what was going on in the third divine institution with these people 10 or 15 years ago when they were growing up? No authority, no trust, it’s as simple as that. God designed the creation to work that way and here we see one of those tremendous passages in the New Testament where a military man who was a believer had tremendous chokmah because the authority of the military structure is analogous to the authority of God’s command over the universe, the idea of orders.

Now let’s finish Psalm 33 and watch the response, verses 20-22, the last three verses of the Psalm, the final response of the believers. “Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield.” Why is He our help and our shield? [21] “Because our heart rejoices in Him, because we trust in His holy name.” Verse 21 are two “because” clauses, and they both modify “our help and our shield.” Why is the Lord our help and our shield? “Because our heart rejoices,” constantly, “because we have trusted” constantly, “in His holy name. Then verse 22 is a closing petition, “Let Thy chesed,” the word “mercy” is that Hebrew word chesed again, “Let thy chesed, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in Thee.” Now what thought is brought out repetitiously in verses 20, 21 and 22? What is the theme of the last of this Psalm? Trust, trust, trust, trust, the Hebrew vocabulary is exhausted. He has pulled out practically every verb that he can out of the corpus of the Hebrew language to get across the fact that he’s trusting, trusting, trusting, trusting, waiting, leaning on, all these Hebrew verbs are coming out here at the end.

Now is there any accident that the Psalm concludes on the note of trust? Is it an accident that the Psalm ends up here? What has the Psalm taken us through? The fact that Jehovah of Israel is the One who creates; He’s a BIG God, therefore I can trust Him. And if you lose the BIG-ness of God by fooling around, tampering, messing around with the doctrine of creation, where’s the effect going to be over here? You’re going to destroy faith because you’ve made God smaller than He is.