Psalm 135
As you find your place in Psalm
135, I want to remind you of a little bit about where we are
in the Psalms. I think it’s been August since
we finished the last little section. We did the Psalms of Ascent.
And so as we pick up at Psalm 135 and make a dash to the end, let me remind you of a couple
things Well, first of all, tonight we’ll look at Psalm 135. I’ve
got Psalm 136 written on my paper, but that’s the wrong thing. See, if I say 136, just know
it’s 135. But we’re going to consider, I gave you a little
help here, might, mercy, and majesty. And you’ve got to have
a bookend on either end of the Psalms. But just a quick reminder,
of where we are in the whole book of Psalms. Remember we did,
I think it started last spring through our outside church services
and then through the summer Sunday morning services, we covered
the Psalms of Ascent 120 to 134. And remember our little Our little three-point mantra,
the theme of each of the psalms or each of the groups of three
was the psalmist is in trouble, the psalmist trusts God, and
then the psalmist has a vision or a memory or even a physical
trip to Zion. And so you have the trouble,
trust, and Zion. Remember, the psalmist started
out in Meshach, started out in pagan land and made his way to
Jerusalem and found great help and blessing. And so Psalms 135,
136, and possibly 137, depends on who you ask, are what sometimes
are called orphan psalms. They don’t really go with the
ascent, and they don’t necessarily go with the Psalms of David that
come next. But they’re put in there as really
historical reminders. They have historical reminders
of who God is and what he’s done for Israel. And I think you’ll
find great blessing in them. So that’s a little bit of where
we are in the Psalms with the Psalter, just a quick refresh
before we read. Pick up, if you will, at Psalm
135. Let me get myself there. Okay,
we sang it earlier, now we read it. Praise the Lord. Praise the
name of the Lord. Give praise, O servants of the
Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of
the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord
is good. Sing to his name, for it is pleasant. For the Lord
has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession.
For I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he
does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.
He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth.
He makes the lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind
from his storehouses. He it was who struck down the
firstborn of Egypt. Both man and beast, who in your
midst, O Egypt, sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all
his servants, who struck down many nations and killed mighty
kings, Sihon, the king of the Amorites, Og, the king of Bashan,
and all the kingdoms of Canaan. And he gave their land as a heritage,
a heritage to his people, Israel. Your name, O Lord, endures forever. You’re renowned, O Lord, throughout
all ages, for the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion
on his servants. The idols of the nations are
silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths,
but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear,
nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become
like them. So do all who trust in them.
O house of Israel, bless the Lord. O house of Aaron, bless
the Lord. O house of Levi, bless the Lord.
You who fear the Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord
from Zion. He who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise
the Lord. Amen. This is God’s word for
us. Some of you probably remember
the little song you sang in Sunday school, my God is so big, and
you can probably remember the little hand motions. My God is
so big, so strong, and so mighty. How does the rest of it end?
There’s nothing my God cannot do, and it was ruined by the
veggie tales. It’s just no way to think about
a big, strong, and mighty God. But that’s, in a sense, what
this psalm reminds us of. Our God is big. And our God is
strong and our God is mighty. And it’s deserving of a little
more emphasis than maybe a nursery rhyme song. It gets it into our
heads when we’re little, but here’s a psalm for us big people
who can cut our teeth on such good things. So we want to think
about the psalm tonight in light of might and mercy and majesty. But first we got to take a peek
at verses one through four. as well as verses 19 to 21. You have these bookends on either
side of the meat or the message of the psalm. And in the first
four verses, three times, the second little bookend there at
the end, you’ve got five times a command to praise, a command
to worship God. And so it’s good for us to begin
our consideration of this psalm with a reminder of what I think
we already know very well. but that we are commanded to
worship God. Our lives are made to live to
praise God. Worship in our day and time has
become a spectator sport. You go to church, you’re sung
at. You go to church and you listen to a nice, neat message
and then you get out of there. But it’s a bit different in our
way of thinking, our way of worship, isn’t it? We engage our minds. We have to come to worship in
faith. We have to come to worship knowing who God is. We have to
come to worship knowing what God has done and what he has
promised. to do. And so, as we come to worship
and engage our minds, we come in faith, but we also come in
obedience. I think we well know worship
is an imperative, right? What’s an imperative, y’all remember?
It’s when mom opens the back door and hollers supper. And
that means get in the house, wash up and be at the table,
right? Y’all know imperatives, right?
It’s do it. And so worship is not an option.
For sure, it has become an option in our culture. And now we’re
seeing a high number of people say, don’t need church, just
need spirituality. And I can get that in my yoga
class. I can get that in my walk outside
when I have my own private time with the Lord or on and on the
excuses go. But we come to worship, engaging
our minds. We come in faith, we come in
obedience, but we also come out of our experience with God. We
have a little saying around here. Y’all know it well. What does
saved people do? Saved people sing. We come to
church and we say, I have tasted and I have seen that the Lord
is good. And so we want to tell not only one another, but we
want to tell God how great a God he has been to us. And we affirm
that with one another in our songs. A young fellow that I’ve
been meeting with from time to time who’s headed into ministry
was telling me this past week about going to a minister’s conference
somewhere in Florida. And he had never really been
out of Burlington, out of state, first time on an airplane. And
the one thing he had never experienced was four or 500 men singing a
cappella. And that’s a powerful, powerful
thing to experience when you go to these general synod meetings,
these Presbytery meetings, these men’s preaching conferences,
that sort of thing. And why would a bunch of ministers
singing acapella overwhelm you? Because they know, at least they
better know, the goodness of God and sing it out of their
hearts. And all this in light of the
American church. Pre-COVID, American church was
getting pretty rotten, I think we could all say. COVID has given
a tidal wave and washed through a lot of churches. I think a
lot of churches are all but shut down, which is a mercy of God,
I think in some ways. It has washed out the false gospel
and I think has washed away a lot of false worship. A lot of churches
in America, you could say, had human-centered activity, which
happened to be on a Sunday or sometime over the weekend. But
what do we remember from a psalm like this? What do we remember
from the first couple verses, the latter handful of verses? Well, we see the summons, we
see the call, we see the imperative to worship God. And so we see
it in the call to praise Yahweh. You know the word hallelujah.
That’s the word that would appear in the Hebrew Bible bunches of
times in both these sections. And so we praise Yahweh. Now
question, why would we praise God? We come in faith, so we
know things. We come in obedience, it’s an
imperative. We come born out of experience,
because saved people sing. We’ve tasted and seen that God
is good. But what are some of the reasons that we might worship
God that are listed? Well, in Psalm 135, you have
a handful. Verse three, you see that Uh, the Lord is good. And so
we worship him for his goodness. Uh, verse four, we see his love.
He has chosen Jacob for himself. We get all bent out of shape
in our world about that nasty P word predestination. Uh, but
it’s a wonderful word in the scriptures. God choosing people
out of all the peoples of the earth. He could have chosen Egypt,
the big nation. He could have chosen others who
were more in number, but he set his affection on Israel, not
because of anything in and of themselves, but simply because
he wanted to. And that’s the case with us.
So we worship him for his love. You see in verses five through
seven, his power. We’re going to walk through these
in just a minute in another way. You see his grace in verses eight
through 12, and you see his majesty in verses 13 to 18. And so why
worship God? Do we even have to ask? We really
shouldn’t have to ask, why worship God? Well, he’s our God, our
maker, our creator, our redeemer, our friend, the lover of our
souls. He’s patient, merciful, kind. On and on we can go. And so we come to worship with
all these things in our minds and in our hearts. Let’s think
for just a few moment about the three big categories we have. We’ll look at might in verses
five to seven. mercy in verses 8 to 12 and then
majesty in verses 13 to 18. So let’s first pick up with God’s
might beginning at verse 5. For I know that the Lord is great
and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases,
he does. in heaven, and on earth, and
the seas, and all the deeps. He it is who makes the clouds
rise at the end of the earth, and he makes the lightnings for
rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses. And so we see the might of Almighty
God. We don’t think very often like
maybe they did in the ancient Near East about other gods. and
their abilities. But you remember the showdown
that Moses and Aaron had with Pharaoh and all his sorcerers.
It was a showdown to see who was really the God of creation,
who was the God of the land and the sea, to see who is the God
of the frogs and the Nile river, to see who is the God of the
sun and to see who was the God of the womb and on and on. And
so we see in this passage, the might of almighty God. I know the Lord is great. and that our Lord or our sovereign
is above all gods. He does whatever he wants, however
he wants, and whenever he wants. What did we just sing a few moments
ago? God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to unfold. And so that’s a brief peek at
the might of God. Think about the mercy of God
in verses eight through 12. It says, he it was who struck
down the firstborn of Egypt. Here’s a little history lesson. Both man and beast. You remember
the plagues. Who in your midst, O Egypt, sent
signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants. God said,
take notice. He struck down many nations,
killed many mighty kings, and then he lists a couple of the
big, bad, nasty ones from the conquest of Israel. Sihon, the king of the Amorites,
Og, the king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of the Canaanites. And you could add to that, you
could think about David and his conquest, all the Philistines,
all the Ites and the Enes, right? They needed to be dealt with
in order to clear the land. And then what did God do after
he was with them in battle? He gave them their land as a
heritage, a heritage to his people, Israel. Remember when God promised
the promised land to the Israelites, he said, you’re going to leave
Egypt. You’re going to plunder their gold and you’re going to go to
a land. You’re going to live in houses.
You did not build with walls. You did not raise with wells.
You did not dig vineyards. You did not plant and on and
on. You’re going to live in a land of milk and honey. And here we
have it, God gave their land as an heritage or as an inheritance. So the God of might, he had a
showdown with all enemies and he brought them into a good and
pleasant place and gave them all that they needed. Well, think
about God’s majesty. You pick this up in verses 13
to 18. Your name, O Lord, endures forever. your renown or your reputation,
O Lord, through all ages. For the Lord will vindicate his
people. He will have compassion on his servants. The idols of
the nations are silver, gold, the work of human hands. They
have mouths, but they do not speak. They have eyes, but do
not see. They have ears, but don’t hear.
Nor is there any breath in their mouth. Those who make them become
like them. And so do all who trust in them. Think of God’s might and his
mercy and now his majesty. God takes good care of his people. He takes wonderful care of his
children. He vindicates. He shows pity
or compassion. And then it’s like religion 101
in a sense, you know, we’ve got the smorgasbord of gods, which
one will I choose? Well, do you want to choose the
almighty and powerful God? Or do you want to choose the
impotent, the unpowerful, you might say God. And don’t you
think when you get to verses 15, 16, 17, and 18, a true Israelite,
a good Bible reading person has to remember The foolish event
at the foot of the mountain when Moses was up the mountain and
he heard the sound thought it was a war cry But he came down
the mountain and what did he hear? He heard the sound of worship
and they were dancing and Hurraying around this golden calf And what
were they saying to that golden calf? It was you, oh calf, that
brought us out of Egypt. It was you that rescued us from
the hands and the bonds of Pharaoh. What does he say here? Well,
these idols, they’re silver and they’re gold. They’re trinkets.
They’re the work of human hands. They have a mouth that’s been
chiseled. They have eyes that have been
painted on. They have ears that have been
carved out of the wood maybe hewn out of the silver or gold.
There’s no breath in their mouth. They can’t see, they can’t speak.
As my mom used to say, they’re deef, dumb, and blind, right? They’re lifeless, they’re unable,
they’re placebos. And this just reminds us of the
foolishness of idols, those who make them become like them. And so we ought to get rid of
anything get rid of anything that is lifeless, that cannot
save us. And so we have a quick little
zip through the psalm. I hope these couple of phrases,
might and mercy and majesty help you. But remember when we come
to worship, we ought to have something to say back to God. We have tasted, we have seen
the Lord is good. Here the psalmist sees God’s might, sees God’s,
mercy and sees his majesty. And so as you spend the week
living for the Lord, you read your Bible, write down the things
that you see that God is and has done and even promised will
do. Think back over your life, the things that you’re thankful
for. And then when you come to worship, it will really just
gush out of you on it. You’ll have a heart so full of
joy, so full of gratitude. that you can’t help say hallelujah
hallelujah praise the lord and sing praises to his name pray
with me lord we give you thanks that you remind us of the call
to worship the command to worship the need to be in your house
with your people singing your praises and telling you all that
you are all that you have done and to enjoy that fellowship
around that common great joy of life. We thank you for these
reminders and pray that you would let us throughout the week. Remember
all that you are, all that you’ve done, and even the promises that
are yes and amen and the Lord Jesus that are yet to be fulfilled.
Pray that you hear us and help us in the name of Christ. Amen.