Psalms Lesson 27

Psalm 135:1-7

...by way of a specific event, there’ll be a cause for praise and there’ll be some sort of conclusion; that’s the three-fold outline to a descriptive praise psalm. And the center section, which is the cause to praise, is usually made up of a summary statement and the amplification of that statement. And there’ll be emphasis in what God has done in creation and what He has done in history. So with that outline in mind and that form analysis in mind, let’s look at Psalm 135 and once again see if we can skim through it before we go verse by verse and get the overall structure of Psalm 135. Would anyone care to say where the call of this Psalm is. [someone says something] Okay, Verse 1; anybody else? [someone says something] Verses 1-2. [someone says something] The first part of 3, okay, 3a, there’s a creative suggestion. If we’re looking at a call section to a Psalm and this section, this call is a general invitation to praise, well, before I add my 3 cents let’s go on to the cause and see if you can isolate the cause from the conclusion.

The Psalm definitely has a conclusion, it’s clearer than most of them and it just changes, as it comes down toward the end there’s a shift that occurs here. Can you spot where the change occurs? [someone says something] Verse 19, you would put verse 19 in the conclusion or would you put it back up with the cause? Okay, you would say verses 19-21 are the conclusion, thereby making the cause section verses… whatever we choose to verse 18.

Now let’s come back and see if we can pinpoint the call section. The call is a generalized invitation to praise God. It can have within it some minor reasons. But the major reasons for praising God obviously have to be reserved have to be reserved for the cause section. Now in verse 3 you definitely have two reasons given for the praise; see the word “for,” and then there’s a reason given, “for it is good. Sing praises unto His name; for it is peasant.” So you’ve got reasons in verse 3. So you might be a nitpicker and say all right, those reasons in verse 3 should belong to the cause section. And then everything up above that we’ll just put into the call section. But for sake of convenience let’s put verses 1-3 as the call. The reason is that if you look in verse 1 you see “Praise ye the LORD,” plural, let’s get together and praise the Lord, “Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise Him, O ye servants of the LORD> [2] Ye who stand in the house of the LORD, in the courts of the house of our God,” so verse 2 would fit with verse 1 amplifying verse 1, that is, who it is that is being invited and then verse 3 a repetition.

Okay, it’s pretty clear cut in this Psalm that our three sections are verses 1-3; verses 4-18 and verses 19-21. There are your three sections. What is a descriptive praise Psalm again, to get the big picture, it is praising God for who He is, because of the reasons given in verses 4-18. Now you want to remember that a descriptive praise Psalm is the highest form of praise because the person who can praise God in a descriptive way has had an accumulation of experience of God in his life so that he can begin to draw generalized truths about God and just simply can praise God for who and what He is. But please notice, before you can get into the position of praising God descriptively you must have enough experience in your personal relationship with the Lord that will give you this base. And this is why this “praise the Lord, praise the Lord” kind of stuff just doesn’t cut it as far as Scripture is concerned because you have to have a large amount of experience and maturity to be able to sit down and praise God.

Now this Psalm is a praise of God and I want you to notice when you read through it that something is being said, and nothing in verses 4-18 has to do with subjective feeling. Nothing! Just notice that, a very important point because when we start dealing with hymns, and we start dealing with songs and so on that are written today we find so many of them have to do with how I feel about Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ probably could care less about how you feel about Him, the issue is what is the truth, the objective truth. And notice in verses 14-18 as we will see in detail, all these are objective historic facts what God has done.

Now let’s come to the outline. Here’s the way I have outlined it. We have done a form analysis of the Psalm. After you’ve found the form of the thing, you start outlining it; that’s the next step. This Psalm I’m going to outline in three large sections following exactly the form; so verses 1-3 is the first large section, verses 4-18 is the next large section and verses 19-21 is the third large section. The first section I’ve called: the priestly servants of Jehovah are called to praise Him. Verses 4-18, the second section can be summarized: they are to praise because Jehovah (or Yahweh) is absolutely sovereign over all. That’s the reason for their praise; it’s not because they flap their tongues at both ends, it’s because they’ve had some reasons for it. The third section is: the priestly servants of Jehovah are called to praise him. See, I’ve repeated verses 1-3 and that’s legitimate because the conclusion of these kind of Psalms is very flexible and can revert back to the introduction. So we have these three sections.

Now we come to detail on verses 1-3. What do you notice about verse 1? What is common to verse 1 that is common to the last verse of this Psalm? How does this Psalm begin and how does it end? [someone says something] All right, it’s addressed to more than one person although it’s singular, the author, because he says “I” in verse 5, but how does it begin and end? What’s the first thing he says and the last thing he says? See the symmetry; is this a Psalm of David? What’s the proper answer to that question? You don’t know exactly because David’s name is not there does not prove David did not write it. If David’s name is there it does prove it but lack of it doesn’t. The Holy Spirit hasn’t told us who wrote it.

Let’s go on to verse 1 and let’s look at detail. “Praise ye the LORD.” In the Hebrew there’s an abbreviated name for Jehovah. Hebrew is read from right to left, sort of like people read the newspaper from the back to the front, well, the Hebrew reader, if you were a Jewish person reading Hebrew you’d be perfectly at home because you have to read everything from the back to the front. In fact, you have to read the page from the right to the left. But if we transliterate this Hebrew this is what it looks like and I’m stopping to do this because this is a very familiar expression and when I transliterate you’ll recognize this immediately because you’ve sung this any number of times. But that’s what the Hebrew looks like, “Praise ye the LORD.” Here’s the way it sounds, hallelu is the Hebrew word for “let us together praise,” and Yah is a short form for Jehovah. And that’s where you get the word “hallelujah.” It’s actually two words; now in most English hymnals it’s one word, that’s how you sing it, and of course if you said this fast in the original language that’s exactly how it sounds. So you’ve been singing in Hebrew and not knowing it, because every time you said “hallelujah” that is exactly how it sounds in the Hebrew, “hallelu yah” actually if you want to say it the correct way. But that is the expression, and that’s how it begins and that’s how it ends. So this Psalm particularly focuses in on this concept of praising God.

What do you notice about verse 1? How many times is it repeated in so many words? Three; can anyone think of any Old Testament passages where this three-fold thing pops up. [someone says something] Okay, Isaiah 6, Isaiah is viewing the angels praising God, and remember what the angels say before the throne as they circulate around the throne, Isaiah is looking at the throne, the Lord Jesus on the throne and the angels are around and what are they saying? “Holy, holy, holy,” three times.

Now turn to Numbers 6 and you’ll see the classic blessing of the Old Testament. If some of you have come from liturgical churches you will recognize this blessing immediately; I can remember many times growing up as a young boy hearing this, and notice again the three-fold structure. Numbers 6:24-26, “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee; [25] The LORD make His face shine on thee, and be gracious unto thee; [26] The LORD lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” How many times? Three. Why? Why three? You can’t be dogmatic but it just seems that when God is praised in the Old Testament it’s always three times; how come? How come it isn’t two; how come it isn’t four? Why is it three? [someone says something] It may be but if it is it’s simply because the Trinity is perfect. The Bible has a system of what we call a numeric and there are numbers that are used consistently throughout Scripture from one end to the other to express themes. Three is tied with the person of God Himself, far before you have an explicit statement of the Trinity. The number five is usually associated with man. The number seven is usually associated with a context completeness. And the number forty is the number of testing. There’s lots of other numbers but these are numbers that… think of Jesus, forty days, Israel’s forty years, you have Goliath coming up to the camp forty days, you see this theme, this constant numerical theme running through Scripture.

“Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD,” what’s the emphasis on “name?” This should be old hat to you? When we see an expression, “praise the name of God,” what does that mean? [someone says something] All right, the essence; name always refers to essence. So the focus is on the character of the Lord, what He is like, which means therefore you have to understand revelation and you can’t be tripping off to your friendly handholding group without the benefit of revelation. You need authoritative revelation of the Word and that’s the only way you’re going to ever find out the character of God. “Praise ye the name of the LORD; Praise Him, O ye servants of the LORD.”

Now beginning in verse 1 and continuing into verse 2 you have a very interesting illustration of something that’s encountered in the Psalms. You watch for this when you’re reading the Psalms. In fact, watch for this everywhere you read in the Bible. You have a movement from the general to the specific. How does that work here in verses 1-2? And while you’re answering that question look at verses 19-20, that’ll help you answer the question. Verses 1, 2, 19 and 20. It starts out with servants in verse 1, “O ye servants of the LORD,” those are the ones who are addressed. Now if it stopped there that would be a term that could be used of any believer, but verse 2 goes on to qualify that out of all of the servants there’s one particular subset that this author is interested in and those are who? Who are those “who stand in the house of the LORD,” and stand “in the courts of the house of our God.” The priests. So here you have the Levites, in particular the group of priests within the Levites, all Levites were not priests in the house of God. So you have a subgroup of a subgroup.

Now if you notice verses 19-20 does the same thing, “Bless the LORD, O house of Israel,” see, all believers, “bless the LORD, O house of Aaron,” that cuts it down further; “Bless the LORD, O house of Levi.” And of course this is often used, Levi here actually isn’t smaller than Aaron but it came to be used interchangeably with the priests. So see how it moves from the general to the specific, so this is a hymn that is instructing the priests to do the praising. Why? What did the priests do and how did the priests pray? Can anyone suggest some of the ways in which the priests would have fulfilled this imperative; this is a command in verse 1 to the priests. So I’m a priest, tell me what I do? He told me to praise God, what do I do now? Say “praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord?” What do I do?

[someone says something] All right, when they served in the various functions of the tabernacle they would praise God, and some taught, but apparently at the central sanctuary they had a Levite choir and we know this from the way David approaches it in Chronicles. He actually… David sets up the music program for the temple, and he has a list of instructions to Asaph. Asaph was the choir director and you’ll see some Psalms here about “the Psalm of Asaph.” Well, David’s telling Asaph what to do and how to set up the music thing and so on, and the Levites were the ones who would sing. So not only did the priests perform in the rituals but they actually sang. So here you have the priests singing and I presume that they would, in response to verses 1-2 actually sing. In fact you could almost say from verses 1-2 that this is an instruction for them not only to perform music but to compose it. And David, as it were, is saying look, I’m giving you a model, now you guys get out your guitars and do something.

Now, verse 3, “Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good. Sing praises unto His name; for it is delightful.” “…it is delightful,” and verse 3 is a good verse to remember because this tells us the highest motivation for worship; not because you have to but because frankly you enjoy it. And you see why verse 3, and why descriptive praise Psalms are indicative of the high level of spiritual maturity? Because the believer has got to the point where he doesn’t have to brown-nose some Christian group or Christian leader, all he has to do is to move on and praise because he wants to. It just comes natural, he just wants to.

Now in verse 3 the praise explicitly comes forth as music. See where it says “Sing praises.” Let me show you something about church architecture that’s wrong. Usually in Protestant churches we build our buildings like this, we have pews with an aisle, then something down the front here and usually the choir loft is up here and everybody is looking at the choir doing their performance. The choir is performing this way. Do you know why that’s wrong? The choir, in Israel, was to lead the congregation in worship, nor perform for them. So actually in church architecture what should be the situation, we’ll save the pews for future comment, but there should be a place actually down the front where the choir sits so both are facing the same direction, or in the back. The choir is not there to perform for the people; the choir is there to lead the people; they are the music experts and they are to guide the people and teach the people the songs. See, the priests taught the people the songs, so actually the choir group should be… there’s a whole architecture of churches, plus the fact it’s stupid to have pews; you know where that comes from? That comes form the Middle Ages where everybody filed out of the pew and came down and took mass at the altar. That’s just Catholicism pure and simple. So this is why you have church architects who actually are operating in a medieval theological structure and aren’t too sharp about it. So verse 3 gives you the praise.

Now one further point before we leave verses 1-3, that entire section, if this is an instruction to the priests of the Old Testament, how does it apply to us in the New Testament era? Every believer is a priest in the New Testament era. What then, and how does this verse apply to us? First of all, let’s ask ourselves, in the New Testament era, where is the temple? What corresponds to the Old Testament temple today? There are three answers to this in the New Testament, three things in the New Testament correspond to the Old Testament temple. What are they? Our body, so it would be the individual, 1 Cor. 6:19; the individual, he himself is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The second illustration is less known, it’s from 1 Cor. 3, Paul addresses the Corinthian church and he calls them a temple. So here a local congregation, not the building, the congregation, is the temple. So the local church can be a temple. And finally the third, and all encompassing analog to the Old Testament temple is found in Eph. 2 and what does that refer to? What’s the biggest thing? The body of Christ. So we have in the New Testament three areas that correspond to the Old Testament temple.

Now if this is an address to the priests who are there at the temple, how do verses 1-3 instruct us in the New Testament dispensation. We don’t have a temple, we don’t have Levites, we don’t have priests as a separate caste. What do we do? How do we take, theologically, verses 1-3 and use it today? Or do we just have to dump it and say oh well, that was nice in their time, or can we use it for our time and if we can, how? Let’s start through. Individual, where in the New Testament the individual believer is commanded, or at least encouraged, to praise? Where the individual believer is encouraged to praise God? [someone says something] Ephesians 5, making melody in your heart, in order to fulfill that command it’s got to be individual though it flows out in a group. In the local church, can you think of passages where… in fact, in the Upper Room, do you know what the disciples did before they went out into the night? They sang a hymn, an all male choir. They sang a hymn in the Upper Room before they broke up, didn’t even have an organ, I don’t know how they did it. So the local church can be a place to sing. And finally, the body of Christ; when does the body of Christ do their singing together, all of us, from all the ages, from Augustine, Calvin and Luther and all the saints who are yet to be born? The body of Christ will also sing praises; Revelation 5, that’s when the whole body of Christ gets together. And that will be something to watch, have Handel down the front, and all the believers can get rid of their corrupt voices so those of us who can’t carry a tune in a lead bag can do something.

So we have three areas in the New Testament where this command applies. Now this shows you what your priesthood is. This is addressed to the Old Testament priests and emphasizes the functions of priests. And one of the functions of priests therefore is to sing and make music to God; that is a priestly function. Just like the prophetic function is to teach and proclaim the Word, the priestly function is actually directed back toward God. This is why when we open the service oftentimes we say let’s exercise our priesthood by confessing our sins. You don’t confess your sins to your neighbor, hey, do you know what I did this week, I did a big one. That is invading your privacy and it’s violating the New Testament. You don’t do that. You confess your sins as unto the Lord, so priesthood, your priestly functioning as a priest and when I am, it will always be directed to Him. That is the center of our priesthood; prayer and praise are the two centers for priestly activity in the church age—petition and praise if you want to put it that way, and the praise would include music.

Now verses 4-18, the cause for praise. These Levites, when they composed their music and when they sing they’re going to sing with content and therefore this next section provides the content. Let’s start with verse 4. Remember I said that the cause section gives us reasons and often starts with a summary statement. Now this gets a little difficult but can you divide up the cause section in little pieces. For example, do you see where the summary statement is in verses 4-18; do you see something that’s more or less general and then it’s repeated again later on and amplified. [3] [Someone says something] All right, look at verses 4-6, look at verse 4, what is verse 4 describing? The election of the… [tape turns] … I know that Jehovah is great and our Lord is above all gods. By the way, if you look at verse 5 and then look down at verse 15-18 do you see why verse 5 is amplified later on in the hymn; verse 15, “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. [16] They have mouths, but they speak not,” etc. See, verse 5 is a summary statement amplified in verses 15-18.

Now verse 6, “Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth,” etc. This describes His ability to work in physical creation, amplified in verse 7. And then verse 4 is amplified in verses 8-14. So verses 4-6 are summary statements. This presses and compresses all the truth into a condensed highly dense statement. Verses 4-6 are compressed, the theology is jammed in here, and it’s expanded in the rest of the Psalm so you can understand it. You could read verses 4-6 and never understand it. Now God never intended us to sing, to praise, to use Bible words, and so on, if we don’t understand them. So verses 4-6 are a summary statement so let’s look at it and then we’ll go on to the amplification.

Verse 4 begins, “For,” so there’s your reason. Why Levites, why am I telling you Levites to get together and do something? Because of the following truth: “For the LORD has chosen Jacob unto Himself, Israel for His peculiar treasure.” The word “chosen” is the word “elect,” God has chosen. By way of application, the individual believer has been chosen in Christ. It is a source or praise and you have the right to thank God for your election. “The LORD has elected Jacob unto Himself, and Israel for His peculiar treasure.” The word “peculiar” doesn’t mean peculiar the way we usually use the word, the word “peculiar treasure” is one word in the Hebrew and it was used for the personal fortunes of a king. In other words, the king would have his general treasury but then in addition to his general treasury he would have his own private fortune. He would have things, the mementos from conflict, from battles, somebody’s sword and something else, he’d kind of have a private museum. And these would be his possessions that were very special to him. So when it says Israel is the Lord’s “peculiar treasure” this verse goes two ways. First of all, the verse tells you He has other treasures. So Israel is not the extent of His election, He has interests outside of Israel; that’s the first thing it tells you. But then it heads in the other direction and says yes, but there’s something very, very special about Israel. She is the Lord’s “peculiar treasure.”

Now, this “peculiar treasure” concept means something like this. We have the Goiim, or the Gentiles, and then we have Jacob or Israel. “Peculiar treasure” stresses the fact that Jacob is something special in the class of all nations, so out of the big sect of all nations we have one member, Israel/Jacob, which is special, relative to the whole group. Now get the concept, “relative to the whole group.” Now a curve ball: how does that apply to the New Testament? The Church is also God’s “peculiar” possession, but peculiar relative to what? If Israel is peculiar relative to all possible nations on earth, to what does the Church compare in the New Testament. [Someone says something] All believers of all ages; it even goes beyond that. The Church is compared to the whole creation. That is astounding; the Church is compared to the whole creation, this is why the Church becomes the temple for the cosmos; the Church judges the angels, the Church, the body of Christ, is the highest part of the entire creation. This is astounding, it’s just so astounding, if you think in terms of distance in the universe, and size and space of the universe, it just clobbers you right between the eyes. To think that we have the privilege of being a part of the most peculiar and highest treasure of God… we’re His private toy in other words. It’s just astounding… nobody from Mars or Galaxy 444 some place, has higher precedence than the Church of Jesus Christ on this planet. That is what a powerful position the body of Christ is. This is why no believer should ever be ashamed of his salvation or ever feel like he can be inundated by Satan or anybody else. We are the top ones in the entire creation; it sounds arrogant to say it, but the New Testament says it, so let’s with the New Testament be arrogant. The Church is God’s peculiar treasure but we get the original peculiar treasure back in the Old Testament era with this phrase.

Now verse 5, “For I know,” this is another reason, but closely tied with verse 4, “I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.” Now if you have an old-fashioned King James translation what is different about the two words for Lord as you look at the text? Do you notice any difference in the way they’re written and if someone does, can someone explain what does that difference mean? The capital “LORD” is the way the King James translators had of tipping you off that that is Yahweh. That’s the covenant name of God, God as He is known when He enters into business contracts with man; He is known as Yahweh or Jehovah. And so, “I know that Jehovah is great,” that means the One who has made a covenant with Israel, which relates back to verse 4, you see. Now when Jehovah, who makes the business contract with Jacob, after He has made it He now becomes “Lord,” little “ord” and that is the word Adonai which means master; it’s not necessarily the word for deity, it just means the boss… the boss. And so our boss “is above all gods.”

Now “the gods” and the use of the word gods here in verse 5 should educate you as to why Jesus Christ doesn’t call Himself God in the New Testament era because it would never have been understood. Your sidewalk skeptic and the classroom person who is just interested in giving you a flippant answer to Christianity will always say ha-ha, the New Testament doesn’t say Jesus is God. It does say, by the way, in four places. But apart from those four places there’s numerous times where Jesus Christ claimed to be God but He doesn’t go around saying “I am God.” It wouldn’t have meant anything for Jesus to go around saying “I am God” because the word “God” didn’t have, in that day and time, the meaning it has in our day and time. And here’s a beautiful illustration of it.

Would you argue from verse 5 that the Jews were polytheists and believed in many gods? Not in our sense of the word God but in their sense, yeah, because what does Elohim refer to? What does their word “God” mean? Any person or entity that claims a divine function and we would say that their term God includes the real God, it would include angels, and sometimes includes men. So Elohim is used over a wide range in the Old Testament. So people who come to very startling conclusions just don’t know how to handle the word. This just simply means our boss is above all competing powers; all competing sovereign claims. Our God is above all state governments; our God is above Baal; our God is above any other sovereign power or person claiming sovereign power. So in effect verse 5 does teach monotheism. “Our God is above all” these things.

That’s the second great thing. Now does anyone upon thought reflection, do any of you see why verse 5 must be placed with verse 4; the truth of verse 5 has to be very quickly brought in to make sense of verse 4. Let’s just think, sharpen your minds, let’s pretend verse 5 is absolutely wrong and that the Lord, the God of Israel, is not above all gods. What would that do to verse 4? All countries had their gods, didn’t they, so what is verse 4 saying? It doesn’t say anything, does it? Verse 4 can’t really say anything unless verse 5 is true. Now another thing, not only would it make verse 4 a trivial statement without verse 5, but I claim that if verse 5 is wrong verse 4 would be a false statement. Why, if verse 5 collapses, does it automatically render ineffective verse 4. If verse 5 goes out we undermine the sovereignty of God.

Now if we knock out the sovereignty of God, what does that do about his action of verse 4? [Someone says something] He has a right to choose, that’s one reason, but another reason is what? Just think, think back, when God chose Abraham, if God was not the kind of God of verse 5 why would verse 4 just fall apart. Verse 4 is a promise that goes to eternity future, right? It goes to eternity future. How can you have a promise that goes to eternity future in a polytheistic system? If you really have many competing gods, how can one of those many competing gods make a promise that is going to be sure if he shares his power with other gods? Because the other gods tomorrow can take over, it’s a game of musical chairs; I can show you some ancient Near Eastern texts where this exactly goes on. They play musical chairs, one day the god of this country is alive and powerful, and the next day the god of this country is alive and powerful. How do you know who’s going to be on the throne tomorrow? So verse 4 makes absolutely no sense unless you have a monotheistic system. And this, by the way, is an implicit proof for monotheism in the Old Testament, the concept of election. In order to make that dogma effective you had to have monotheism presupposed. So don’t get back in the corner by some critic on this. If he’s going to dump monotheism out of the Old Testament he has also got to dump every passage that has to do with God’s choice, election and so on. That has to go all out the window too. So verse 5 and verse 4 are very powerful truths and I want you to see they’re connected in a very strong way.

Verse 6 is just another statement of sovereignty. “Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that does He in heaven,” we can treat these as habitual perfects, gnomic perfects, or you can treat it as past summarizing what has gone on in the past in historic revelation. “Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that He did, in heaven, in earth, in the seas, and in all deep places.” Why do you suppose the author spent so much time in verse 6 expanding where the location of God’s works were? Why does he make this list, and by the way, this list is a complete list. In terms of the cosmology of the ancient east this is a complete listing. This is as complete as he can possibly make it. Why is he interested in making this as complete as he can possibly make it? Why doesn’t he just say whatsoever the Lord pleased, that He did. Why does he add these qualifiers? The only kind of God that can do the things in verse 6 is the God who creates ex nihilo, who creates the universe out of nothing. Now it’s not expressed that way in verse 6 but I want you to try to learn to read these doctrines in these idioms in which they are expressed. There’s a lot of deep doctrine expressed here but you lose it if you’re not used to the idioms and the way that people had of stating the dogma. We state it, we have our little box and we put God’s attributes in it and so on, and because these people don’t use that we tend to think well, they don’t say it that way. But they are saying it in their own way, and this is their own way of saying it.

By the way, some of you who have worked in mythology, what is true about those four spheres in verse 6? In the ancient mythology there was a god of heaven, and there was another god of the earth, and there was another god of the underworld, and there was a god of the sea. And what’s this saying? Our God, Jehovah, He reigns in your realm, your realm, your realm and your realm. And that is as strong a way as you can say monotheism. They didn’t even have the word monotheism. This was the only way they could express it, and this is an expression of a monotheism, an absolute sovereignty over all.

The reason I’m making such a big issue out of this is because we as Christians make the following claim and we throw it out to the world and offer anyone to refute us, that no civilization on earth by this time in history had monotheism. Monotheism is only found in Israel and only those areas influenced by Israel. It just isn’t found anywhere else; this is not borrowed product from some place else; it can’t be because there was no such thing as monotheism in the ancient world. It’s not there, absolutely buried and gone. So this struck, verse 4, verse 5, verse 6, would not have been accepted in any country of any part of the ancient world. This is a dogmatic statement as offensive to the ancient world as John 14:6 is offensive to the 20^th century American who doesn’t like it that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except by Him and that means all other ways are wrong. And there are not many roads to heaven; there are not many ways to God. Only one way and that’s through Jesus Christ period, no exceptions. And I can recall as a non-Christian many years ago being deeply offended by John 14:6, in fact, it was the truth of that that had a lot to bringing me around; I couldn’t get around that truth. So that is a dogmatic iconoclastic bombastic statement, it just erupted in the ancient world like an atomic explosion, to say that the God of Israel ruled the underworld, He ruled the heavens, He ruled the sea, and He ruled the land. That means everywhere, God rules the entire universe.

Now we see the cause section. Verse 7 stands by itself; after the summary statement of verses 4, 5 and 6, verse 7 is the first amplification. “He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; He makes lightnings for the rain; He brings the wind out of His treasuries.” Do any of you have an idea of what verse 7 is talking about. [Someone says something] You’ve probably heard the expression the four winds; in ancient mythology they had kind of a literal gods, the gods of the four winds, they were all named. And they were commissioned and let loose at times, and so forth.

But notice verse 7 is doing much the same as verse 6. It’s smashing away at the categories of human viewpoint in that day. Now there is another reason why I’m making a point of this. If, when you present the Word of God to someone, it may be on the job, it may be in the classroom, it may be in your family, it may be somewhere, you must study the person to whom you speak so that when you present the Word it will collide with the human viewpoint distortion of it in that person’s mind. Do not use neutral terminology; point out when you state a truth what it is not, don’t just say: oh, Jesus was a great leader. He was, but the way to get across Jesus Christ’s life was that Jesus Christ was a leader who claimed prerogatives that no man ever has or ever will proclaim to Himself successfully. Jesus Christ claimed not to be a good man; He claimed to God Himself or He’s a liar. That’s the way to state it; you state it in a bombastic way so that you will set up an immediate tension with the human viewpoint around you. Now that’s the way to do it and that’s the way the Psalms do it.

Think of this—who are we talking about here? We’re talking about the Levites. Do you know that in Israel when the Levites would have their choirs and they would sing, the stranger, who would be a traveling salesman from other cultures, could come by and listen to these Levites singing. What would he hear? Put yourself, as a traveling salesman in Israel in that day and age, you come out of the land of polytheism; every other place, you’ve gone to India and you’ve seen polytheism, you’ve come to the Mesopotamian valley to sell your goods there and you see polytheism. You’ve gone down to Egypt and you’ve seen polytheism. Oh, the places had different names and different gods but basically it’s a polytheistic system. Now one day you’re selling your goods around Jerusalem and you happen to hear the choir, and you come to hear this choir sing and all of a sudden you hear them shred the belief of all men that you’ve ever seen. Do you see what an effect it has? This thing absolutely attacks the belief system of every society on earth.

Now I’m trying to show you the revolutionary impact of verse 7 because you read along, la, la, la, la, la and you don’t catch what’s said here. These are very inciting, this incites anger, hostility, it irritates because of these dogmatic claims that are made for Jehovah of Israel. Nowhere would it ever have been like this. Pharaoh would have never have said this of himself. But these Jewish people, they’re always singing about their Jehovah. And it was an irritant, it must have been an irritant in the ancient world for this kind of worship; it must have deliberately irritated the people around them. And we’re not looking for fights but when you are articulating divine viewpoint in Satan’s world if you don’t have a fight you’re articulating it the wrong way. Somewhere along the line there ought to be tension and if you don’t feel the tension, either the other side doesn’t see the issue or you haven’t made the issue clear. There’s always going to be tension, you might as well reconcile it; some of you come from families with loved ones that are not Christians, and you kind of have to pussyfoot around because you’re afraid of friction. And it’s true, it’s very, very delicate in certain family situations. But just remember what these people are doing; they overthrew and challenged the whole ancient world.

Now verse 7 is actually a picture, using mythological viewpoint, but that’s your picture of a thunderstorm. The vapors is a cloud. “He causes the clouds to ascent from the horizon,” it’s a picture of a cumulus cloud growing, and “He makes lightnings for the rain; and He brings the wind out of His treasuries.” And the lightnings for the rain doesn’t mean, as some have said, scientific contradiction, lightning doesn’t cause rain. If someone ever throws that to you I happen to have been a professional meteorologist; nobody knows why it rains to this day. There’s no reason why it rains; condensation will not cause rain. You can have condensation from now until hell freezes over and you’re still never going to get a raindrop. The process of getting a raindrop is one of the greatest mysteries in the world and it happens all the time and to this day it’s not well explained. Even after you get raindrops, to get them to coalesce, is another major physical problem. And to this date there’s no satisfactory explanation. But the rain doesn’t mind that, it goes on raining anyway.

So we have a picture of these vapors, and notice, by the way, the acute sense of observation. You know, every once in a while you hear people say oh, those stupid naïve people in the ancient world, they didn’t have science, look at us, we’ve got science. Well big deal, this is a very accurate description of the vapors that are ascending. They could stand out there and see a cumulus cloud grow. After all, these people are agrarian people, their livelihood depended on the weather, so they were astute observers.

They “make lightnings with the rain,” the word “for” can be with, or in association with. And “the wind,” here’s the wind that comes out of a thunderstorm, that’s the picture of verse 7. But the big point of verse 7 is that Jehovah controls all the process; Jehovah controls the entire process.

Next week we’ll begin at the end of verse 7, I want to comment further on it and then we’ll go on and finish the Psalm.