Psalm 29: 1 – 11
Powerful voice
A Psalm of David.
1 Give unto the LORD, O you mighty ones, give unto the LORD glory and strength. 2 Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. 3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; The God of glory thunders; The LORD is over many waters. 4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; The voice of the LORD is full of majesty. 5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars, yes, the LORD splinters the cedars of Lebanon. 6 He makes them also skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox. 7 The voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire. 8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; The LORD shakes the Wilderness of Kadesh. 9 The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare; And in His temple everyone says, “Glory!” 10 The LORD sat enthroned at the Flood, and the LORD sits as King forever. 11 The LORD will give strength to His people; The LORD will bless His people with peace.
In the second letter to the disciple Titus Paul wrote in chapter 2 verse 15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
To be honored by our Holy God to share His Amazing Word a teacher needs to do his homework. You need to study the passage by reviewing various sources of valuable truths. One major source often overlooked are the great brothers who came before us who our Lord used to impact their generation.
In today’s scripture we see the Psalmist give great praise and acknowledgement to our Omnipotent Holy Ruler God. His powerful voice does amazing things. He says something and gets immediate results.
We are spoiled to a large degree because of the modern aids available to us. For example, we have sound systems that help us get our teaching to large audiences. In the old days as you know they relied on The Precious Holy Spirit to get their message to their listeners. One man stands out in how his voice our Lord gave power to that it had a significant impact in one of our early country fathers’ – Ben Franklin. This anointed man by our Holy Father God was George Whitefield
Beginning in 1740, George Whitefield preached seven times in America, to crowds sometimes over 25,000. He spread the Great Awakening Revival, which helped unite the Colonies prior to the Revolutionary War.
Ben Franklin wrote in his “Autobiography” that George Whitefield’s voice could be heard almost a mile away: “He preached one evening from the top of the Court-house steps. … Streets were filled with his hearers. … I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard by retiring backwards down the street … and found his voice distinct till I came near Front-street.”
Ben Franklin continued his description of evangelist George Whitefield: “Multitudes of all denominations attended his sermons. … It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through’ the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.”
Sarah Edwards, the wife of Jonathan Edwards, wrote to her brother in New Haven concerning the effects George Whitefield’s ministry: “It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible. Our mechanics shut up their shops, and the day laborers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach, and few returns unaffected.”
George Whitefield had attended Oxford with John and Charles Wesley, who began the Methodist movement. In 1733, when he was converted, George Whitefield exclaimed: “Joy – joy unspeakable – joy that’s full of, big with glory!”
When Whitefield confronted the established churches, doors were closed to him, so he resorted to preaching out-of-doors. Crowds grew so large that no church could hold the number of people.
Ben Franklin helped finance the building of an auditorium in Philadelphia for Whitefield to preach in, which was latter donated as the first building of the University of Pennsylvania. A bronze statue of George Whitefield is on the University’s campus.
The Great Awakening Revival resulted in the founding of Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Rutgers and Columbia Universities.
Franklin printed Whitefield’s journal and sermons. Being postmaster in Philadelphia, Franklin helped spread Whitefield’s his sermons through colonial American.
In one sermon, George Whitefield proclaimed: “Never rest until you can say, ‘the Lord our righteousness.’ Who knows but the Lord may have mercy, nay, abundantly pardon you? Beg of God to give you faith; and if the Lord give you that, you will by it receive Christ, with his righteousness, and his all. … None, none can tell, but those happy souls who have experienced it with what demonstration of the Spirit this conviction comes. …”
George Whitefield continued: “Oh, how amiable, as well as all sufficient, does the blessed Jesus now appear! With what new eyes does the soul now see the Lord its righteousness! Brethren, it is unutterable. … Those who live godly in Christ, may not so much be said to live, as Christ to live in them. … They are led by the Spirit as a child is led by the hand of its father. … They hear, know, and obey his voice. … Being born again in God they habitually live to, and daily walk with God.”
George Whitefield died Sept. 30, 1770. As he was dying, he declared: “How willing I would ever live to preach Christ! But I die to be with Him!”
George Whitefield had declared: “Would you have peace with God? Away, then, to God through Jesus Christ, who has purchased peace; the Lord Jesus has shed his heart’s blood for this. He died for this; he rose again for this; he ascended into the highest heaven and is now interceding at the right hand of God.”
With the powerful voice our Lord gave Whitefield many came to a personal relationship with our Holy God.
Now having explained how the Lord gave a man a powerful voice, let us consider today just a few examples of how powerful our Great and Magnificent Holy God’s voice is.
This Psalm appears to have been written during or after a storm of violence. And we should recognize that when such storms occur in Palestine they can be very violent and very vivid indeed. The very power of this storm brings home to the Psalmist the majesty and power of YHWH. ‘Look at this, O heavenly ones,’ he is saying to the angelic host. ‘And consider the glory of YHWH.’
He is so moved by the storm that, in the midst of the clashing of the thunder, the powerful streaks of lightning lighting up the sky, the powerful wind sweeping across the land and stripping the trees, and the drenching rain pouring from the heavens enveloping everything around, he feels that the only ones he can address are the glorious beings who surround the throne, because only they can appreciate what they are seeing. And he calls on them with their knowledge of the glory of YHWH to bear witness to that glory as revealed in the storm and worship Him in the beauty of His majestic holiness. For he is seeing behind the storm to what it tell him about YHWH.
Then he turns to a consideration of the phenomena of the storm itself, and describes it in vividly poetic style,. Picturesquely he brings out the voice of the thunder, shaking the clouds which are full of flood water, or rolling over the floods which are already being caused by the drenching rain, and vividly portrays the dancing trees which are behaving like living creatures caught up in the storm. He draws our attention to the blinding streaks of forked lightning flashing down from the sky, lightning which in its plurality appears to be hewed out by YHWH and describes equally vividly the bushes in the semi-desert of Kadesh as they are shaken in the tempest. And he visualizes the cowering hinds who in their anxiety at the storm have been brought into a state of premature birth, and finishes with a description of the great forest which is itself being stripped bare of its leaves by the mighty wind. And his summation of all that he has described is simply this, ‘and in His Temple everything says glory’.
He then finally follows all this up with a vivid picture of the heavenly King as He once sat in His majesty at the Flood and is still sitting there in the same majesty this very day. That is what the storm is saying to him. But the thought is not that God will now destroy the earth for a second time, but that He sits there as the One Whose purpose is to impart something of this mighty strength to His people, so that even when the very foundations of life appear to be shaken, they can know that He is there, and will, even in the storms of life, bless them with a remarkable peace which is in startling contrast to all that has described before. Amid a world which appears to have been torn apart the believer hears a voice which says, ‘Peace, perfect peace, in this dark (and violent) world of sin, the blood of Jesus whispers peace within’.
Isaiah put it another way, but with the same majestic perspective, when he says, ‘For thus says the high and lofty One, Who inhabits eternity, Whose Name is Holy. “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones’ (Isaiah 57.15).
A Psalm of David.
1 Give unto the LORD, O you mighty ones, give unto the LORD glory and strength. 2 Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
The Psalmist commences by calling on the mighty heavenly host, ‘the sons of heavenly ones’, to behold the storm and ascribe glory and strength to YHWH, and to worship Him in their holy array (their holy garments for beauty). For he feels that even to them this mighty storm must surely indicate something of the glory and strength of YHWH, and reveal Him as fitting of all honor, and as having power over all things.
Heaven is a place of holy beauty both because God is there and because of the angels who do His bidding. Here it may well indicate distinctive character (holiness - set apartness) in contrast to man.
The whole idea is that these glorious beings all worship YHWH and ascribe glory to Him, and that they can hardly help doing so in the face of this mighty storm with its primordial connections going to the very heart of creation. It is not just a question of very bad weather or even the majesty of the storm. It is a seeing in the mighty storm all the forces of nature that lie behind it, forces which God has under control, and which are the result of the way He created the world. As such they had once been let loose at the Flood, and the thought behind it is that if God were not reigning over it then the whole universe would go into reversal. In Colossians 1.17 our Lord Jesus Is described in terms of ‘He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together’.
The Psalmist now vividly describes the power and awesomeness of the storm and ends up with visualizing true believers sheltering in the Temple and crying, “Glory!” They thus join with Heaven itself (verses 1-2) in ascribing glory to ‘the Lord’.
3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; The God of glory thunders; The LORD is over many waters.
Attention now turns to the storm itself. ‘The voice of YHWH’ occurs seven times in the Psalm indicating its importance to his meaning, ad stressing the completeness of the divine activity. Here is the voice of the Creator at work upon His creation. And there too the voice of God had spoken on the waters (Genesis 1.9), and now here it is happening again. But this time the voice is a voice of thunder and it is reverberating on many waters and is a reminder of the Flood. This vivid picture may be indicating that He sits over the storm clouds which are just waiting to pour out their floods as He thunders upon them (Jeremiah 10.13), or it may indicate that they have already poured out much of their contents, so that it already almost appears as though the whole land is again about to be flooded. Either way He is in control and will not allow another such disaster to happen (Genesis 9.11). However, the point is that He could if He wanted to, all the power is there to be able to do it again, but that instead it is rather His intention to exercise His tremendous power on behalf of His people (verse 11). And what is being described here is the voice of the God of glory mentioned in verse 1 performing His own will.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; The voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
It is instructive to consider what His voice will do, for all is at His command. It is powerful and full of majesty (verse 4). It breaks the cedars in pieces, and makes them skip like young cattle (verses 5-6). It hews out and separates the lightning (verse 7). It ‘shakes’ the wilderness (verse 8). It causes the pregnant hinds to calve (verse 9a) It strips the forest of its leaves (verse 9b). And the resulting cry comes back from the Temple of, “Glory”, as it brings home to His people the majesty of YHWH.
As a poet he sees the storm as revealing the power and majesty of the voice of YHWH. He sees all this as happening because YHWH is speaking, and His voice is powerful and full of majesty.
5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars, yes, the LORD splinters the cedars of Lebanon. 6 He makes them also skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox.
Nothing seemed more firm and solid than the cedars of Lebanon. They stood there firm and strong, appearing to withstand the tide of history, and were ‘high and lifted up’ (Isaiah 2.13). But before this mighty storm they are broken as though they are but matchsticks. YHWH speaks, and the cedars come crashing down, and their mighty roots are torn up, while others are simply torn apart leaving their stems sticking up into the air.
Even the stolid mountains of Lebanon and Hermon are made to skip like a calf and dance about like a young wild ox as a result of His activity. Sirion is the ancient name for Mount Hermon. Unless there was an earthquake, we must see here the effect of the storm on what was growing on them. All the trees and vegetation were swaying in, and torn by, the wind, making the mountains look alive, and this went on until the vegetation could stand the pressure no longer and collapsed before the storm. It is a picture of huge desolation.
7 The voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire.
And all around were streaks of lightning flashing from Heaven as though they were being hewn out by YHWH. The Psalmist stands in awe as he sees the continual forked lightning splitting the sky, and setting on fire the trees and vegetation, as the thunder continually rolls. He sees it as the very voice of YHWH from Heaven.
8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; The LORD shakes the Wilderness of Kadesh.
And at the other end of the country, in the semi-desert of the Negev, the bushes and trees are shaken, and torn up by their roots, as a mighty hurricane sweeps the land. It is as though the whole area is being taken up and shaken. And it occurs at the command of YHWH. He speaks, and it is done. In it is a hint of the reversal of creation, a reminder of what could happen if the Creator withheld His hand.
9 The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare; And in His temple everyone says, “Glory!”
Meanwhile wildlife also is affected. Such is the effect of this powerful storm that the pregnant hinds come to birth before their time. Nature is being shaken through and through. They are but a vivid example of a more general catastrophe. We are left to imagine the wild beasts cowering in their lairs.
And the great forests of Canaan are being stripped of their leaves as the howling wind tears through them, until the whole of the forests have been laid bare. And all this again at the sevenfold voice of YHWH.
The statement ‘In His temple everything says, “Glory!” references to the heavenly Temple where the angelic hosts are gathered watching in awe this mighty storm, the like of which has not been seen before within the lifetime of those who witnessed it on earth.
The end of the Psalm comes as a surprise. Far from being a judgment of God this mighty display of power is seen as revealing His intention to make His people strong and give them peace. For it is a reminder that He Who originally brought the Flood upon the world, and controls all that happens on earth, still reigns as King, and instead of again destroying the world will utilize His power in giving strength to His people and in establishing them in peace and security. Out of seeming chaos will come blessing.
God is revealed in the same way at the cross. As Jesus hung on the cross all the mighty devastation of the ages was heaped upon Him. But from it was to flow strength to His people, peace with God and a peace which passes all understanding.
10 The LORD sat enthroned at the Flood, and the LORD sits as King forever.
And what does this huge act of power demonstrate? It demonstrates that the same YHWH Who once sat as King when the Flood came on the earth and devastated it, is still the same YHWH Who sits on His throne and reigns today. His power is still unlimited. And yet the very fact that they have survived the storm is an illustration of the fact of God’s mercy. He has not again brought a Flood upon the earth. He reigns supreme and nature is subject to His will, and His voice.
11 The LORD will give strength to His people; The LORD will bless His people with peace.
The Psalmist’s final remarkable conclusion is that this great power which has caused this devastating storm, the like of which has not been seen before in his lifetime, and which has been a manifestation of the glory of YHWH, is the same power that YHWH will exercise in order to strengthen His people and give them peace. He will work in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. And none know this better than those whose whole hope is placed on what God accomplished at the cross and through the resurrection. That was a storm indeed.
