Psalm 93
Let’s hear from God’s holy word.
This is Psalm 93. It says, the Lord reigns. He
has robed in majesty. The Lord is robed. He has put
on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established. It shall never be moved. Your
throne is established from of old. You are from everlasting.
The floods have lifted up, O Lord. The floods have lifted up their
voice. The floods lift up their roaring, mightier than the thunders
of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea. The Lord
on high is mighty. Your decrees are very trustworthy.
Holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore. Amen. This is God’s holy and inspired
and inerrant word. And we do ask that he would bless
its reading and preaching to our hearts and minds. Some of
you, I’m sure, are biography junkies, or what do they call
it on television? You know, they do one of these
eight-part series on the monarchies of England or the kings and queens
of some land. And you get very interested. You watch them. You record them. You maybe buy the series and
have it on your shelf. Well, Psalms 93, they’re beginning
with 93. There are eight of them. I’ll
just go all the way through 99. They are the kingship Psalms. And in a sense, you might say
they’re a eight part series on who is Yahweh. who is Jehovah
as king. And so we’ll make our way through
all of these psalms. We’ll end at 100 since we’re
doing 25 at a time. So we’re gonna make it all the
way through the kingship psalms. But I think you’ll find a wonderful
exercise as we go through, even tonight, Psalm 93, but over the
weeks ahead, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, and 99. Now, another thing
you’ll notice about these psalms is very often on Sunday morning
when we have our call to worship, it’s from Psalms 93 to 99. It’s
not from many other places. And there’s a reason for that.
A lot of times you’ll see in church, a call to worship is
just the reading of scripture. It might say something nice about
God. It might say something nice about Christianity, but if there’s
not in there a command to worship, there is then no call to worship.
And so I was taught, and I think it’s right because I still do
it, I haven’t changed. I was taught that we should always
have a call to worship from one of the Psalms that actually does
just that. It calls us, it commands us to
worship, it states, the majesty of God and his worthiness to
be worshiped. And so Psalm 93 is the beginning
of a little eight part set of Psalms that maybe give us a little
window into the monarchy, the kingship of God almighty. So as we make our way through
Psalm 93, we’ll see its meaning and its message for us in a couple
parts. The first begins in verses one
and two, and it’s simply this, God’s reign. Look at verses one
and two. It says, the Lord reigns. Notice
how it spells Lord. It’s capital L, capital O, capital
R, capital D. know that well, that’s in our
English translations, that’s the translation for Jehovah or
Yahweh. Remember when Moses was at the
burning bush and he is commissioned to go to Pharaoh and ask him
to let the people of Israel go from out of slavery, from out
of the land of Egypt. to go into the wilderness to
worship God and then of course God was going to take them into
the promised land. Moses said, who shall I tell Pharaoh has
sent me? And he said simply this, tell
him I am has sent you and I am is the divine personal name of
God Hebrew it is Yahweh and it comes out in our translations
in our English Bibles as capital L, capital O, capital R, capital
D. So who reigns? It is Yahweh. It is the one and only living
and true God. He reigns and there’s four things
in verses 1 through 2 about God’s reign. It speaks of his majesty,
it speaks of his strength, it speaks of the established or
firm or fixed character of God. And then finally it speaks of
his everlasting character. So it speaks of his majesty,
his grandeur. We’re facing in the government
shut down here, whether or not there will be a State of the
Union address. Well, there’s always been a State of the Union
address, and it’s always been in the House chamber. And it’s
come with a lot of pomp and circumstance, a lot of cheering, a lot of booing.
But it’s part of our American government. It takes place in
one of our historic buildings. It takes place every year. It’s a big event, a historic
event. There’s a lot of time and effort and energy and money
that goes into it, maybe in a similar way to an inauguration. And there’s
a majesty, a grandeur to the high office of the president,
to the high office of being a lawmaker. And so when we go to Washington
D.C. and we see the marble buildings, we see the big giant columns
that hold the roofs up, we see firm and fixed and stable architecture. It shows the majesty of America.
Well, translate that into our view of who God is. He is majestic. He is grand. Everything that
goes with who God is is part of his majesty. Now, where do
we get pictures of his majesty? Well, think about places in the
Bible where we get glimpses into heaven. Was it Ezekiel who saw
the throne? He saw the wheels. He saw the
creatures. Or there was Isaiah who saw the
Lord high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. The angels cried holy. Or you go to John’s Patmos experience
when he’s on the isle of Patmos, a prisoner for the sake of Christ
and being persecuted. He’s taken up into heaven and
he’s given a vision. It’s written down for us in the
book of Revelation. He goes into the throne room of glory and
he sees the risen and exalted Christ. He sees God. He sees
the angels. He sees the creatures. He sees
the elders, he sees the spirits of the saints made perfect, and
he catches a glimpse of what is going on behind the curtain
of heaven, and it is full of grandeur, sights and sounds and
noises. We watch the weddings, at least,
of royalty, and we want to see their dress, how big it is, how
long the train is. We want to see everybody all
decked out in Westminster Abbey. and see these sites. It’s been
a while. I don’t know, maybe some of y’all
remember the Queen’s coronation. That’s been quite a while now.
Certainly wasn’t in my lifetime, but you maybe remember that it
was a vision of majesty. And so when it speaks of God’s
reign, it’s one of majesty, one of grandeur, but it’s also one
of strength, one of power. When you particularly read about
the throne of God and revelation, you hear Or you read of sights
and you read of sounds and the sounds that you hear in heaven
are peals of thunder. You read about flashes of lightning. You read about the majesty of
God and everybody in circles bowing and worshiping him. You see his strength to rule
and to reign over creation. I think of strength in particular
when we see our military. Just this year we attended a
football game and there was a flyover. And you feel it when those jets
or those airplanes fly over. You can feel their thrust. You
can feel their thunder when they pass over. And particularly when
they pass over a football arena that’s somewhat of a circle,
it echoes, it thunders a little. Maybe some of you watched the
national football championship the other week with Alabama and
Clemson and the jets, the Air Force jets flew over. You feel
the strength, the majesty. Maybe some of you have been to
Norfolk, you’ve seen the aircraft carriers, you’ve seen the power
and the majesty of our military, its strength. That’s the picture
you have in mind. And then it goes on after speaking
of God’s reign and majesty and strength, it speaks about It’s
established. The world is established. It
shall never be moved. What God does is fixed. Your throne is established from
of old. What does it mean? It does not
change. The young ones are learning in
their catechism that God works primarily two ways. He works
through creation, what he made, and ordinary processes, and he
works through providence. we might could say in his works
of creation, the sun rises every day, the moon comes up at night,
the stars rule over the evening. He established his creation. It does not change the moon and
the cycles. He works through his providence.
He executes his decrees and the normal cycles of life. He does
do miracles. He does do miraculous things
and intervenes at times, but primarily God works through his
creation, the way it was made to work. He works through his
providential care, but the world is established. His throne is
established. Can anyone take it away? Absolutely
not. We’ve seen Satan sure try. We’ve seen nations rage against
the Lord and his anointed, but God, as Psalm 2 says, sits in
the heavens and he laughs. And then there’s the last little
character of his reign. It is everlasting. The end of
verse 2, your throne is established from of old. You are from everlasting. We know when our president became
president, it was two years ago. We know when the one before him
became president, it was eight years ago. We know when the queen
was coronated. We know when this or that dictator
seized power. But God is from of old. He always has been. He is from
everlasting. He is the alpha, the beginning,
the omega. the end. And so there’s a little
glimpse into the reign of Almighty God there in verses one and two. And then in contrast to God and
the stability of his reign, there’s the second thing we want to look
at in verses three and four, and you might call it a raging
world. And it’s explained in nature
in verses three and four. The floods have lifted up, O
Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice. The floods have
lifted up their roaring, mightier than the thunders of many waters,
mightier than the waves of the sea. The Lord on high is mighty.”
The world and both, I’d say the creation or the natural world
and the world have raged. You look at nature. I don’t know
how many of you could hear it, but the wind was, kind of howling
around the corner of the building here while we were praying. It
was quiet in here, but still doing it. You can, you can, you
can hear it. You can feel it. I can, I can
stand here at this door and feel the oncoming cold through the
cracks and, uh, nature, nature rages. We’ve seen ice this year.
We’ve seen rain this year. We’ve seen snow this year. The
Northeast is experiencing, uh, winter weather. in severe ways
and we’ve seen hurricanes, we’ve seen tornadoes, we’ve felt the
earth shake, nature quakes and shakes and huffs and puffs and
blows and rains and winds come and it says the floods have lifted
up, they have lifted up their voice, they’re roaring, it’s
mighty, it is loud, it is noisy, it is tumultuous. And in a second,
he’s going to say, but God’s bigger than that. He’s over it.
He’s ruling over it. But in addition to nature, there’s
the world. And it’s not necessarily spelled out here in this way,
but the understanding in the ancient Near East was that it’s
a topsy-turvy world and we want it to be peaceful and orderly.
And the ancient Near Easterners were always afraid of the sea.
That’s why the story of Jonah is So interesting when they get
out on the ship and they are put out to sea and Jonah is going
to not Nineveh and God gets the sea stirred up. He puts a raging
storm and puts the fear of God not only into the sailors but
into Jonah. That’s a typical ancient Near
Eastern picture of being uncertain. We call uncertainties by natural
things. Some of us may be worried about
a bear market or a bull market or we may be worried about stormy
political times. A lot of times, nature is a way
to describe the world around us. And if you look at human
history, it’s been a tumultuous, a couple thousand years since
the world has been in existence. You read history about nations
rising, nations following wars. You read about plagues. You read
about crime. You read about periods of peace.
And this passage tells us at the end of verse four, the Lord
on high is mighty and he is mightier than the waves of the sea. He
is mightier than the thunders of many waters. There’s one last thing this passage
tells us in verse five. It tells us about God’s rule. So you have a picture as you
make your way through the psalm of God on his throne, God ruling
in majesty, strength. He’s established, he’s everlasting.
And then you have a picture of a raging world, both in nature
and in humanity. And then a statement here in
verse five about God’s rule. Your decrees, speaking of Yahweh,
are trustworthy. Holiness befits your house forevermore,
O Lord. His decrees are trustworthy. It speaks here of God’s rule,
his law, his word. Sometimes we hear in Christian
circles, Oh, God’s law, God’s law, God’s law. Like it’s such
a bad thing because guess what we want? We want God’s grace,
God’s grace, God’s grace. And yes, we do want God’s grace.
I mean, how many of us could have, withstood the cross or
withstood the wrath of God, the cup of wrath that Jesus drank?
No, we want God’s grace, understandably so. But one of the things that
we forget when we maybe put God’s law aside and say it’s either
or, it’s God’s law or it’s God’s grace, where would we be without
God’s law? And think of it in many ways,
his laws of nature. his laws of order, his laws that
restrain evil, his laws that teach us who he is, his laws
that show us the way of Christian living out of gratitude for what
God and Christ has done for us, his laws that keep dishonest
people maybe more honest than they would be were it not for
something to restrain them. We got to be careful. to put
law against grace as we so often hear it in the modern day church.
God’s law is a wonderful thing because guess what? It’s his
word, it’s his will, it’s his ways. And God’s law is always
right and it is always just. So what does Psalm 93 do for
us? If you’re driving home tonight and scratching your head and
thinking, okay, God is a king, God rules, what’s that God? to
do with me. Well, a passage like this ought
to get us thinking. Thinking something like this,
isn’t it wonderful that there is an eternal, unchangeable king
who is strong and majestic? Because that’s a whole lot better
than there not being an eternal and unchangeable king who is
strong and majestic. Because if you don’t have order,
guess what you have? Chaos. And so we sit here tonight
living in a world that is ruled and reigned over by a majestic
strong king whose throne is established, it is firm, it is fixed. And
yes, the world may teeter and it may totter, the oceans may
roar and nations may rage, but God is over it all. So that’s what we should think.
The Bible also pushes us to feel or to have emotions. How should
we feel about this? You go home tonight and you lay
down on your pillow and you think of all that’s coming on Monday
morning and Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning and Thursday
morning and Friday morning and Saturday morning before next
Sunday, and you can say, oh me, oh my. How much money have I
got left? What will the stock market do?
Will I be healthy? How much longer will my heart
tick? What about my children? What about my grandchildren?
What about this? What about that? How can a Psalm
like 93 help us? Maybe you watch a little too
much news, get a little worried because of what you see on the
news. You know, are we going to have the apocalypse? You know,
is America not favored like everybody says it is? You know, what about
crime? What about this or that? Well,
Psalm 93, Yahweh reigns. He is robed in majesty and he
has strength. Bible encourages us to think, it encourages us
to feel, to have emotions, but it also encourages us to do.
And Psalm 93 ought to motivate us to worship God, not only in
our regular everyday life, but worship Him on Sundays as we
enter His house. This tells us he is worthy to
be worshiped. I don’t know where most Americans
are when it comes to church. We were riding up Edgewood Avenue
today on the way here, and we were looking at the cars passing
us, and you could see people were dressed up. You could see,
you know, people had on their church face, their church outfits. We still pass people on the way
to church, but what is it people are thinking about church? I
think we had this discussion about a year ago in Sunday school,
and we were thinking about evangelism and outreach. And we were thinking
about asking this diagnostic question when we’re out in the
workplace, the marketplace, the neighborhood. The question was
this, where do you worship God? And somebody said something like
this. That’s really not the question we ask. We ask, where do you
go to church? Well, where do you go to church
can mean a whole lot of nothing. Where do you worship God? Where
is Yahweh who reigns, who is robed in majesty and clothed
in strength? Where is he worshiped by you?
And that’s a, you know, you’d be the weirdo of the neighborhood
if you ask it that way. But that’s the question to ask, right? It’s
a good question to ask of ourselves. Where do we worship God? Well, to think about this in
one final way, I remember the disciples, they wanted to see
They wanted to see God. They wanted to see the face of
God and they wondered how they could get there. They wondered,
would they be able to see the face of God? And Christ told
them, yes, absolutely. And because of the work of Christ,
because of the forgiveness of sins we have, because Christ
has reversed the effects of the fall, he’s done what Adam failed
to do, which is obey God perfectly, through the wonderful covenant
of grace, we one day will enter the presence of Almighty God.
In fact, lately at these handful of funerals we’ve had in the
life of the church, I always stand at the head of the casket
and say this, the souls of believers are at their death made perfect
in holiness and do immediately pass into glory and their bodies
being still united to Christ do rest in the grave until the
resurrection. When we die, we will see God face to face. We will see his exact majesty,
his exact strength. We will see his throne that has
been established from eternity and we will see the everlasting
God. Let’s pause and pray together.
Lord, we are grateful in your love and mercy and kindness to
show us a glimpse of the strength and majesty that you possess
in the Psalms, but we can’t wait for the day we see it with our
eyes. in heaven and we thank you that
through Christ we will and we pray now that as we go into the
world this week that we would worship Christ the king because
of what we’ve heard from psalm 93 but because you are worthy
hear us now as we pray and praise you in Jesus name amen