The Voice of the LORD

[0:00] God, we come to you with expectancy, knowing that because of what your Son has accomplished on the cross on our behalf, we have the Spirit as a guarantee.

[0:19] We can approach your throne of grace with confidence, knowing that we will find grace and receive mercy to help us in our time of need.

[0:37] So we now turn to your Word so that we may be informed and transformed by your Word, so that our prayers may be according to your will, they may be stirred up by your Word.

[0:52] So help us speak to us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So we're in Psalm 29. It's a Psalm of David. Psalm 29.

[1:09] It's a very song-like psalm with a lot of repeated lines, refrains. So I will read it out loud, verses 1 to 11. Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings.

[1:22] Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

[1:36] The God of glory thunders. The Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars.

[1:49] The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf. And Syrian like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.

[2:03] The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth. And strips the forest bare.

[2:15] And in His temple all cry, glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord sits enthroned as king forever.

[2:26] May the Lord give strength to His people. May the Lord bless His people with peace. So this psalm is basically teaching us about the power of the voice of the Lord.

[2:37] Invites praise to Him and inspires our peace. So it talks about how it calls the angels, but also obviously by implication human beings, to praise them for strength.

[2:49] You see the word strength in the beginning and the end. And He employs a series of imageries, as you see, throughout the psalm to evoke a sense of the power of the voice of the Lord.

[3:04] And it's parallel in a lot of ways to Exodus 15, which is the song of Moses, where He praises God for overthrowing the Egyptians in the Red Sea. And so He compares the Lord's voice as kind of like the war cry over in the battle, like the voice of the Lord.

[3:22] And He compares it to the crashing thunder in a storm that strikes fear into even the bravest heart, like an inextinguishable fire, wildfire that spreads through the forest.

[3:34] An earthquake that makes even the plains tremble. A voice so powerful that it shatters the cedars, which is kind of, for these guys culturally, that's the image of something that's unbreakable, cedar.

[3:47] And it makes the Lebanon, the mountains of Lebanon, which is their image of durability and stability, skip like a calf. So that's how powerful it is. And then when you think of the Lord this way, the power of the voice of the Lord this way, we can't help but praise Him.

[4:03] And then that, in turn, concludes in verse 11, when He talks about how He says, May the Lord give strength to His people. May the Lord bless His people with peace. And the reason why it inspires peace is because when we are praising Him and recognizing how powerful the voice of the Lord is, we could have peace that transcends our circumstances, as we remember how great He is, how powerful He is.

[4:26] So I'm going to read it one more time, meditatively, and I'd like you guys to think about these answers to these questions. What are the things that worry you today?

[4:36] What are the things that instill fear in you today? What circumstances seem insurmountable to you today?

[4:47] And then listen to this powerful song, how the power of the Lord invites praise and inspires peace.